Chicago Needs a Better New Year

I love Chicago.  The Second City has culture, science, commerce and brawn and loves them all equally.  It is a city where you can find a die-hard Cubs fan who also takes visitors to see the “Picasso” thing in Daly Plaza.  Sure, the city runs on corruption.  The famous Chicago columnist, Mike Royko, used to say that in Chicago an honest judge was one who, once he was “fixed” stayed “fixed.”  The whole city runs that way and I doubt it would operate at all if you had to depend on merit and probity, but it is the city of broad shoulders.

     Chicago is also the most segregated city in the United States of America.  While segregation by race has lessened over the last decade it is still true that 1 in 4 blacks, 1 in 6 Hispanics and 1 in 13 whites live in high poverty areas.  Of course, that also means that 3 in 4 blacks, 5 in 6 Hispanics and 12 of 13 whites do not live in these areas—which is good news.  But these are national stats; according to the Brookings Institute, Chicago has a special status.  Whether you are measuring dissimilarity of income or isolation by income, Chicago leads the pack.  [In case you are interested, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Houston have the lowest scores in this large city misery.]

     Whites are in the minority in Chicago, but since 1990, their incomes have risen 52%.  In that same time period, blacks saw a 13% increase, and Hispanics a 15% increase until 2000.  The attacks of 2001 hit minorities hard and they have continued to lose instead of gain ground during the Obama administration.  In the case of blacks, they have lost 25% of their gains.

      Latinos have lower individual incomes than blacks but higher household incomes.  This probably reflects the tendency for Latino households to have both parents in the home and contributing to the family, whereas inner city blacks seem to have permanently abandoned the concept of men raising their children.  This difference in household incomes is even more dramatic when you look at primarily black areas where 52% of the families are below the poverty line, but in primarily Hispanic areas the families below the poverty line is 22%--less than half the number for black households.  

     We also know that income, educational and occupational segregation come in clusters.  If you want to fix one, you have to fix all.  To do that, you have to lead from strength, not weakness.  Three in four blacks do not live in poverty, neither do five of six Hispanics.  We haven’t even looked at the success rate of people from Asia but we should.  Let’s look at how and why the winners have prevailed.  Yes, racial bias is a factor, but that sword cuts both ways. [There is a higher percentage of Blacks who voted for Obama because of his color than Whites who voted against him for the same reason.]  If you want to accept racial discrimination as a reality, than find out how 75% of Blacks and 80% of Latinos have leaped across that divide. 

      Did the winners finish school, even if it was a poor school?  Did they take any job on their way to their best job?  Did they have the benefit of two parents?  A moral anchor?  Willingness to conform if that is what success required?  What was modeled in their home—victimhood or perseverance?  Rights or responsibilities?  Self-indulgence or self-discipline?

     Chicago should work harder to keep the faith.