Movin on up!

“No nation can enslave a race of people for hundreds of years, set them free bedraggled and penniless, pit them, without assistance in a hostile environment, against privileged victimizers, and then reasonably expect the gap between the heirs of two groups to narrow.  Lines, begun parallel and left alone, can never touch.”
-- Randall Robinson



Chicago's racial-ethnic composition (as of 2010)



 In a recent discussion with fellow students, a classmate of mine speculated on the fact that, for being a large and very ethnically diverse city, Chicago is still highly segregated along racial lines.  Sadly, this reality has long marred Chicago’s history and in many ways has crippled its progress into the future by holding certain groups hostage, socially and economically.  It shocks many to learn that a substantial portion of Chicago’s residents have lived their entire lives without ever having been downtown.

               

In a city of roughly 3 million, one third, or 1 million, residents are Black and yet in all its history, Chicago only boasts 4 Black-owned banks, and even fewer Black-owned businesses generating revenues of $1M or more.  There are too many contributing factors to discuss in one simple blog post, from Chicago’s history of practicing redlining and restrictive covenants, to its political turmoil plagued by ongoing racism and corruption.  As this Midwestern metropolis embarks on the rocky road towards electing a new mayor, reflections on Chicago’s racial and ethnic divides continue to cross my mind, most especially when I find myself on public transit.

It’s been a lifetime (24 years) since Chicago’s only elected African American mayor, the Honorable Harold L. Washington, successfully bridged social, economic and racial divides to bring Chicagoans together for the collective good.  Yet much remains to be seen from the pool of current candidates, who can bring about a sense of unity that is needed to overcome the deep wounds of a segregated and disjointed community.

Gentrification plays a title role in this quagmire as well, and nowhere is that more evident than on the L train.  I remember living on the NW side a decade ago and having to ride the Blue line from Logan Square to downtown.  Back then the platform was full of mainly brown faces mixed in with a handful of ethnic eastern European folks.  I’d sometimes get little old ladies, presumably feeling nervous in a sea of Latino bodies, coming up to me and asking me something in Polish, mistakenly thinking me a kinswoman. Over the years, I watched the make up of that platform change precipitously from a smattering of Artsy peoples – you know, the kind of 20-something Caucasian who wears earlobe spacers, majors in Fiber & Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute while moonlighting as a bicycle courier, and shares a 4^th floor vintage walk up with a Rastafarian and a Buddhist monk – to a surplus of Yuppie-9 to 5-investment banking types.

Not a decade’s passed since my own “back in the day” (let alone my parents’) when the only pale face the Logan Square Blue Line saw was mine.  Gentrification can take place anywhere, and at alarming rates.  It’s mesmerizing to see places like historic Cabrini Green virtually transform before your eyes from notoriously dangerous housing projects to condos and townhouses valued at half a million dollars.  Yet as places like Logan Square and Humboldt Park, once predominantly Latino, become increasingly gentrified, the far West and South sides of the city that are predominantly Black remain largely untouched and therefore extremely segregated.  One ride on my lovely Red Line and you’ll marvel at the stark contrasts seen from the train window.  As you travel further south of Downtown, the number of white faces drops to almost zero after Sox-35th, home of US Cellular Field (aka the Chicago White Sox’s Comiskey Park).

But what does this all translate to us on a literal level.  As Randall Robinson tells us in the quote at the beginning of this blog, simply put, we can’t expect a change to come without an outright action and effort on our part.  It took America hundreds of years to abolish slavery, at least from a legal standpoint, but the underlying racism and classism still thrive like parasites in every corner of our great nation, greatly impacting how we socialize on a day to day basis.  Given the centuries it took to create this disparity, who knows how long it will take to reverse and recuperate.  One thing’s for sure, whoever Chicago’s next mayor is will have to wrestle with this city’s elephant in the room and would do wise to take a few pages from Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker’s philosophy on responsibility and change through personal action and involvement.  Maybe then will Chicago see a few new train lines going through the vastly underserved West and Far South sides.