Segregated City
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A good deal of resistance to public efforts at desegregation, besides obvious conservative biases, is mere fatigue at the repeated failures of housing and community development programs to break the generational cycles of persistent poverty, crime, single-parent households, and academic failure. Justifying public expenditure is very difficult in the current economic environment for even successful programs, and when the tax burden is placed disproportionately on the middle class, as in Chicago, additional spending on rent vouchers or affordable housing is politically impossible. When people think it doesn’t work, they’re not going to spend more on it hoping for a change. Del Valle makes the best point in this article—schools and programming for young children and their parents is the best investment of time and money to end poverty and the racial isolation that accompanies it in Chicago. People rarely overcome the impact and limitations of their upbringing and education, but children can be taught to think of themselves differently. —Juansinmiedo
There is still plenty of discrimination as far as where people live in Chicago. If you are living in a neighborhood where 99 percent of the residents are one color, you are going to experience some less than welcoming attitudes from some folks. There is a lot more tolerance than there was 40 years ago in certain ways, but when you talk about who’s your neighbor lots of people are uncomfortable having a neighbor who is the only black or white family around. I can see why many black families that can well afford to live in a middle-class neighborhood still gravitate to a mostly black community. You really can’t expect those with means to live in a ghetto, regardless of their skin color.
