My heart sank as I read through numerous accounts of the horrific violence in Chicago during the long July Fourth holiday weekend.
With each description of the carnage — from victims suffering multiple gunshot wounds, to reports of drive-by shootings, to young victims injured in a mass shooting, to dozens of bullet casings found at the scene — my heart grew heavier.
In all, more than 100 people were shot and more than 20 were killed.
News media across the country reported the shocking figures. Once again, Chicago was on display as the poster child for urban violence.
It’s hard to fathom what could lead people to commit such heinous acts. But, for some, the reason is crystal clear. It’s because they’re Black.
In the comments to one of the news accounts, some offered cheeky, racially-tinged barbs, while others didn’t mince words. "All black, all the time," read one comment. "They continue to celebrate Juneteenth," read another. And there were one-word comments like "Blactivity" and "Chicongo" along with several references to culture, parenting and Black Lives Matter.
This, too, made my heart sink. "This is hopeless," I thought to myself.
More than 70% of the shooting incidents during Chicago’s long holiday weekend occurred in majority-Black communities. And more than 86% of the victims were Black, according to an analysis of victim data from the city.
None of the media accounts I read shared those figures, but some folks don’t need them. In the minds of some, Black people and Black communities will always be associated with crime and violence. The data just confirms that perception.
It’s easy to recognize the disproportionate levels of violent crime in Black communities. But to stop at Blackness itself as the primary cause is extremely short-sighted, damaging, and, yes, racist.
"Only segregation and private communities with armed security will fix this," read one of the comments. The mention of segregation as a remedy, presumably to keep others safe from Black people, struck me.
While none of us fully understand the intricate web of factors that lead individuals to commit violent acts, we do have some knowledge of conditions often associated with violent crime. Poverty is one, and segregation is another.
We’ve long been aware of the link between poverty and violent crime. Those patterns are evident overall and also within individual racial and ethnic groups. Interestingly, a 2017 Heartland Alliance study of poverty in Illinois found the highest rates of violent crime, excluding homicide, among some rural majority-white counties, CBS2 Chicago reported. Cook County ranked eighth.
We’ve also long been aware of Chicago’s legacy of segregation. The city has often led the nation in Black-white segregation since 1980, according to research from Brown University.
And segregation has costs. Research from the Urban Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Planning Council, a Chicago nonprofit promoting equitable growth, revealed higher levels of Black-white segregation were associated with higher rates of homicide, lower levels of Black income and lower levels of college degrees among both Black and white residents.
The studies don’t prove that poverty or segregation causes violent crime, just that they’re closely related to one another. Where you find one, you’re likely to find the others.
When the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed restrictive covenants, which had barred Black residents from living in many parts of the city for decades, fears of crime, violence and lower housing values led many white residents to the suburbs. The city’s white population fell from 3 million in 1950 to less than 1 million in 2000, according to census data. Similar patterns are showing up in suburban Cook County, which has seen its white population decline by half a million since 2000.
We also know that investment — construction, jobs and commerce — generally flow to areas where white people live, while disinvestment attacks spaces where Black people live. The gentrification of areas just north, west and south of the Loop — underdeveloped, majority-Black spaces in the 1990s that have become lavish and majority-white spaces today — and the economic decline of long-time Black spaces on the city’s South and West sides are prime examples.
Racial fear and stigma drive segregation. The segregation is linked to poor economic conditions, and they’re both related to violent crime. It’s a vicious cycle that keeps repeating itself in the Chicago region.
Considering those connections, is it unreasonable to think that violent crime in Chicago’s Black communities is a product of something far more complex and entrenched than the mere color of someone’s skin?
For decades, anti-violence efforts, mentoring and jobs programs have made strides. It’s flat-out wrong to suggest those efforts don’t work because violent crime levels remain uncomfortably high. That work has changed lives.
Perhaps Chicago’s perplexing problem of violent crime remains because we continue to play the blame-and-shame game. Maybe we need to break the cycle of racial fear and stigma that has haunted this city for more than a century, an approach that requires the involvement of us all.
Alden Loury is data projects editor for WBEZ and writes a column for the Sun-Times.
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