Every single day our nation hears stories like this from Chicago. Everyone across the cultural and political spectrum weighs in with their opinions and solutions which they are CERTAIN will work.
My favorite is the Gun Cult who harp continually about how "restrictive" gun laws prohibit ordinary citizens from defending themselves. This results in the "only criminals will have guns" meme which has always cracked me up. So, we make guns easier for them to get? And we allow more, untrained citizens access to guns? I guess the Gun Cult wants a return to this...
I suppose it makes sense since they are largely older, white men who grew up on a Hollywood western view of violence. Yet this on Chicago's ongoing challenges with crime (along with nearly all of them) fails to note the root cause.
Violence in Chicago is the direct result of slavery.
Consider that it was slavery (and the ensuing Jim Crow laws) which drove African Americans north to Chicago over the course of several decades in the 19th and 20th century. The result of such an influx of people resulted in a jolt of increased population density that was economically harmful to the area. With so many people vying for jobs, especially in times of economic contraction, many citizens of Chicago, newly arrive or long time residents, were bound to be disenfranchised economically. Invariably, this leads people to crime and it has continued on to this day with city officials endlessly trying to play catch up in a game they will never win.
So, we are back, once again, with being confronted by the great wound that our society fails to recognize. Violence in Chicago will not be mitigated until our entire country admits that slavery is still having a profound effect on the socioeconomic status of millions of US citizens of color.
We can't even begin to discuss possible solutions until we recognize the problem.
2 comments:
I'm puzzled by your assertions. First, slavery was not a major impetus to the great black migration northwards. Few were able to leave during the period of slavery. It wasn't primarily Jim Crow, either. In 1900, 90% of the American black population was still in the South. The migration started in earnest around 1910 and continued for perhaps three generations. The draw was economic -- northern whites by and large didn't treat blacks much better than southern whites, not back then. JOBS were the key. Relatively well-paying, steady JOBS that the mostly agricultural South simply didn't have. The population surges in Chicago and elsewhere were direct result of large-scale immigration, both internal and foreign -- all looking for JOBS. But isn't that what the Democratic Party stands for today? Large-scale, near uncontrolled immigration, legal or not? That lowers wages and disenfranchises some (your own words, though it's true). It was happening with Poles, Italians, Germans, English, Irish (and in much larger numbers, in toto), but it's slavery that was the real cause?
It's a contributing factor, but not a primary cause. Look to culture, first. White-trash Appalachian culture you have no problem identifying as holding back those people raised in it, but self-destructive urban black culture? Which shares so many of the very same pathologies, even with the white English underclass across the pond. Nah, it's got to be white people's fault.
I would add that many blacks, from the great Frederick Douglass onward, have said (see esp. last paragraph): I understand the anti-slavery societies of this country to be based on two principles, -- first, the freedom of the blacks of this country; and, second, the elevation of them. Let me not be misunderstood here. I am not asking for sympathy at the hands of abolitionists, sympathy at the hands of any. I think the American people are disposed often to be generous rather than just. I look over this country at the present time, and I see Educational Societies, Sanitary Commissions, Freedmen's Associations, and the like, -- all very good: but in regard to the colored people there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. (Applause.) The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. Gen. Banks was distressed with solicitude as to what he should do with the negro. Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, "What shall we do with the negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!
(Future) Senator Patrick Moynihan warned in 1965 about what Federal 'aid' and 'assistance' was doing to the black family and culture. It wasn't limited to blacks, and the same underclass culture plaguing Britain is spreading here. It's a class and culture problem, aided and abetted by well-intentioned 'benevolent' state and Federal programs that actually make the problems worse by treating symptoms, not causes.
Housing programs are an example. The belief seems to be that if lower-class 'families' (scare-quotes because they're often not families by any pre-1970 definition of the word, moms with multiple children by multiple fathers, the latest of whom may or may not be married to them) were financially 'enabled' to own their own homes, they would somehow adopt the middle-class values that traditionally led to home-ownership. Kind of a cargo-cult belief, in my opinion (easily backed up by observation of the last decade or two). Many of those 'enabled' to 'buy' a house subsequently lost that house due to gaming of the rules by banks and others. Some banks decided that if they were not able to refuse loans that in the past they would have turned down on purely financial reasons (but now might be heavily penalized once race was added as a factor), then they would do it and then sell that mortgage on as quickly as possible. And everybody thought that as long as they could sell on those bad mortgages before they truly soured on them, they'd be safe. And in the end, they were moving so fast, hardly anyone knew who truly owned what until the crash came. And our response? Re-inflate that bubble as quickly as possible. Which is getting ready to pop. And who will be most hurt?
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