Calling Chicago Chiraq is an insult to Iraq

[Torie]

Yes, it is probably fair to put this piece in the right wing rant box, but it is a well crafted rant from a guy who knows how to write, and that gives it a lot of bonus points from me. But I am most curious about his demographic claim, that the "middle class" has largely decamped from the Windy City. Has it?

https://johnkassnews.com/the-city-of-anarchy/

[Saint Milei]

I'm just waiting for someone on atlas to say something wild in this thread so I can get my next infraction.

[beaver2.0]

I still don't know the difference between Chiraq and Chirac.

[lfromnj]

False until the Pandemic Chicago was actually growing during the 2010's primarily thanks to gentrification and Latinos. Blacks were moving out general to areas such as Atlanta though.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Last week there was a suicide bombing at a market in Baghdad that killed 35 people. Chicago might be struggling with an upsurge in shootings but there's no need for hyperbole.

[lfromnj]

Last week there was a suicide bombing at a market in Baghdad that killed 35 people. Chicago might be struggling with an upsurge in shootings but there's no need for hyperbole.

Yup this is extremely absurd. Chicago has issues but its not even comparable to Iraq. Even Englewood isn't.

[Donerail]

But I am most curious about his demographic claim, that the "middle class" has largely decamped from the Windy City. Has it?

Broadly true, and most pronounced in neighborhoods like Chatham and other black-majority areas of the bungalow belt. The middle-class areas dominated by city workers (the Irving Park area in the far northwest, the southwest side Irish areas, Bridgeport) are still about the same. But it's happening at both ends — a lot of places are a lot poorer, but the rich are also no longer confined to a narrow corridor along the lakefront. Most of the north side's like that now. This is, of course, nothing unique to Chicago at all; same demographic shifts are happening in a lot of cities.

False until the Pandemic Chicago was actually growing during the 2010's primarily thanks to gentrification and Latinos. Blacks were moving out general to areas such as Atlanta though.

That doesn't really answer the question. The city can be growing and middle-class areas can be shrinking; in fact, that'd look a lot like some areas getting taken over by gentrifiers (who, at least in the later waves, tend to make a lot more than the metro-wide average) and others becoming majority-Latino (who, in Chicago, tend to make a fair bit less than average).

[Хahar 🤔]

John Kass is astoundingly racist even by the standards of newspaper opinion writers. You can google his name for any number of examples.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Last week there was a suicide bombing at a market in Baghdad that killed 35 people. Chicago might be struggling with an upsurge in shootings but there's no need for hyperbole.

     Really illustrates how well we have it in America, and how little people realize it. Even the worst problems here are tiny compared to what people regularly struggle with in other parts of the world.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

For some reason when looking at the thread title I expected this to be a thread from around 2006 or whatnot, and that got bumped.

[Saint Milei]

Last week there was a suicide bombing at a market in Baghdad that killed 35 people. Chicago might be struggling with an upsurge in shootings but there's no need for hyperbole.

There's months where like 80 people die in chicago. It's comparable at this point.

[Saint Milei]

Some of you guys don't realize how bad some inner cities are in the U.S.

Places like new orleans, detroit, st. louis, baltimore, chicago, atlanta, memphis, baton rouge, and a few other places are literal warzones and have been that way for like 30 years

[Donerail]

Last week there was a suicide bombing at a market in Baghdad that killed 35 people. Chicago might be struggling with an upsurge in shootings but there's no need for hyperbole.

There's months where like 80 people die in chicago. It's comparable at this point.

Hard to calculate civilian death tolls in Iraq from all violence, but I very much doubt you could find a month when only 80 civilians died in Baghdad.

The other important distinction is that a suicide bombing is random — the intent is to cause casualties to random civilians. Gang violence in Chicago is the opposite of that. That's not to say that innocent bystanders aren't affected, or that there's not significant indirect effects of that level of violence on the lives of others, but random civilians generally are not getting targeted — it's gangs of young black and Mexican men shooting at other young black and Mexican men for very specific reasons, usually contests over turf.

I've spent a decent amount of time walking and riding public transit in and through some of the roughest parts of Chicago, and I've never felt like I needed an armored convoy, or that I was ever in any serious danger. If you're white and you show up in one of these neighborhoods, obviously looking like you're not from around there, you might get asked some questions, someone might ask for spare change, but nobody's gonna hurt you. Random white guys showing up are probably there to buy drugs, and shooting customers is bad for business. Or you're an undercover cop, and there's nothing good that can come from messing with an undercover cop. And if you're either of those or something else (a do-gooder activist, an academic (me!), a tourist, whatever), the truth is that cops take killings of white guys a hell of a lot more seriously — and none of the gangbangers have any interest in having the neighborhood flooded with cops, so they'll mostly leave you alone.

Maybe if you're carrying some expensive stuff, you look oblivious, and someone figures out you're not there to buy drugs, you might be divested of some of your property. That kind of random street crime can happen and does. But it's frankly a lot less likely there than it is in, say, Wrigleyville, where the people are a lot richer, a lot drunker, and much less likely to be armed. If you make your money off of robbing people, as Willie Sutton observed, you go where the money is.

[Mopsus]

During my first semester at Truman State I went on a field trip to a mosque in St. Louis. I remember there was a family of Syrian refugees there who had just buried one of their sons, killed in a botched burglary, in the country they had sought as a refuge from violence. The grievousness of that story has stayed with me.

[Mr. Illini]

1) Chicago is not America's murder capital. Our violent crime rate is lower than a whole host of American cities. We often have the highest TOTAL number of violent crimes because we are the third biggest city in the country and are more violent than NY and LA.

2) The middle class is evaporating in Chicago, which is true of almost all American cities (and, generally, America as a whole). This phenomena is far from unique to Chicago and, admittedly without data to back it up, seems to be even worse in coastal cities like SF, NY, Washington, etc. The cost of living here is still far lower than those cities.

3) None of this is to deny Chicago's problems, but instead to stop people like John Kass from using our city (his city too) as a racist dog whistle. Conservatives love to point at Chicago and say "look at how horrible" as a way of scapegoating a city known for Democratic politics and a large black population for problems that actually exist on a larger, nation-wide scale. Democrat-run city! This allows them to absolve themselves and their party of any responsibility for the matter.

[Saint Milei]

Last week there was a suicide bombing at a market in Baghdad that killed 35 people. Chicago might be struggling with an upsurge in shootings but there's no need for hyperbole.

There's months where like 80 people die in chicago. It's comparable at this point.

Hard to calculate civilian death tolls in Iraq from all violence, but I very much doubt you could find a month when only 80 civilians died in Baghdad.

The other important distinction is that a suicide bombing is random — the intent is to cause casualties to random civilians. Gang violence in Chicago is the opposite of that. That's not to say that innocent bystanders aren't affected, or that there's not significant indirect effects of that level of violence on the lives of others, but random civilians generally are not getting targeted — it's gangs of young black and Mexican men shooting at other young black and Mexican men for very specific reasons, usually contests over turf.

I've spent a decent amount of time walking and riding public transit in and through some of the roughest parts of Chicago, and I've never felt like I needed an armored convoy, or that I was ever in any serious danger. If you're white and you show up in one of these neighborhoods, obviously looking like you're not from around there, you might get asked some questions, someone might ask for spare change, but nobody's gonna hurt you. Random white guys showing up are probably there to buy drugs, and shooting customers is bad for business. Or you're an undercover cop, and there's nothing good that can come from messing with an undercover cop. And if you're either of those or something else (a do-gooder activist, an academic (me!), a tourist, whatever), the truth is that cops take killings of white guys a hell of a lot more seriously — and none of the gangbangers have any interest in having the neighborhood flooded with cops, so they'll mostly leave you alone.

Maybe if you're carrying some expensive stuff, you look oblivious, and someone figures out you're not there to buy drugs, you might be divested of some of your property. That kind of random street crime can happen and does. But it's frankly a lot less likely there than it is in, say, Wrigleyville, where the people are a lot richer, a lot drunker, and much less likely to be armed. If you make your money off of robbing people, as Willie Sutton observed, you go where the money is.

I should have specified it's comparable if you are black or white. Riding through public transportation isn't the same as living in an inner city. Innocent civilians are often killed in inner cities due to affiliation. If you ask people in those communities do they feel safe or do they fear for their children, I guarantee you on average, they would disagree with you. While it's true in these cities certain demographics aren't targeted, the fact that we are even discussing chicago and a nation in the middle east is pretty telling how dangerous an inner city can be. And if we factor how bad inner cities were in the 80s and 90s, it becomes even worse. A city averaging 1000 murders where the overwhelming majority of the murders happen to one group is just as bad as a warzone

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Some of you guys don't realize how bad some inner cities are in the U.S.

Places like new orleans, detroit, st. louis, baltimore, chicago, atlanta, memphis, baton rouge, and a few other places are literal warzones and have been that way for like 30 years

Detroit resident here. pls clarify