There’s a reason for the violence in Chicago
By Sarah Nasr
It would be disingenuous to say there isn’t any suffering in Chicago. As I write this, there have been more than 1,000 victims of gun violence so far this year, including 236 who died. But I find it incredibly difficult not to cringe when politicians and media pundits speak only about the violence in Chicago. There is so much more to the city — my hometown — that gets overlooked.
Chi-Town is a beautifully diverse place with a population almost evenly split between black, white and Latino Americans. Granted, most of these ethnic groups live in different neighborhoods separated by geography. But listening to the politicians’ rhetoric would leave anyone who’s never been here to think it’s the most dangerous place in America.
Yes, violent crime is a persistent reality in some Chicago neighborhoods. But this isn’t true in all of them.
And the contrast exposes a big part of Chicago’s problems. This sort of violence doesn’t appear out of thin air. It’s a response to a long history of systemic deprivation. Chicago has a legacy of segregation that may be more ingrained than any other city in the country. It’s left the city divided and massively unequal.
This segregation matters because policies, practices and attitudes make resources accessible to some, while creating barriers for others, from housing to healthcare, schools, jobs and a stable local economy. These divisions create some neighborhoods that are prosperous and others that are blighted and isolated. Violence is a symptom of these blighted and isolated communities. You can’t divorce the crime problem from the problem of deep, concentrated poverty.
I think about this issue a lot. I was born in Chicago and spent the first few years in Albany Park, on the Northwest side of the city. Growing up, the color lines of Chicago were made clear when we’d go downtown on the “El” train. Each stop represented a different ethnic community. The furthest I’d ever been was 35th St. on the Red Line, to go to a Sox game. It wasn’t until college that I ventured further south on the Red Line to visit a friend off the Ashland/63rd stop and finally understood how divided Chi-Town really was.
That was in 2000. Fast forward to 2017, when I went back to Chicago with my fellow producers, Maggie, Omar and Michael. Very little has changed.
Some of the most obvious wear and tear on these neighborhoods is displayed in Chicago’s public schools. More than 60 years after the historic ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, segregation in Chicago public schools is still far from being eliminated.
Chicago may not be the most segregated city in the country anymore, but it’s still in the top five. And recently proposed solutions to combat the surging violence range from increasing the number of police on the streets to sending in the National Guard. But not everyone thinks that more police is the answer. For many, the answers lie within the communities that are impacted the most.
