4 ms·

>Obviously there are crime issues in certain parts of the city but most of the people I hear loudly complain about it are old white people that don't live here

>Obviously there are crime issues in certain parts of the city but most of the people I hear loudly complain about it are old white people that don't live here anymore. So you've spoken to a large number of the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who live in the neighborhoods most plagued by crime and know that they don't complain about it? It just has to be some derogatory classification of subgroup such as "old white people", As if the hundreds of murders per year were little more than something for them to whine about? >Chicago has a significant crime delta between neighborhoods that, if one were to read about it, can only be thought of in terms of extreme racial injustice. "Only" in terms of racial injustice? So those violent crime numbers by neighborhood are entirely the fault of the aforementioned white people? The people actually committing them in these neighborhoods have no agency or fault in what they do to their own neighborhoods? This logic just keeps getting more twisted in the absurdities it has to push to sustain itself. Doubtless there is racial injustice in a U.S. city with a famously corrupt police/civil administration like Chicago, but in recent decades Chicago has had multiple black mayors and a large percentage of its government and police are staffed by African Americans or people of color in general. Yet they somehow have had no say or co-responsibility for anything that has remained problematic?

turndown 4y ago
>So you've spoken to a large number of the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who live in the neighborhoods most plagued by crime and know that they don't complain about it? It just has to be some derogatory classification of subgroup such as "old white people", As if the hundreds of murders per year were little more than something for them to whine about? Basically a strawman but whatever, I pointed out that this person was obviously white(the culture comment, growing up in Evanston) and lived in Lake View, two places I will call light on crime compared to South Side. OP is trying to describe Chicago as crime-ridden - when in actuality they would have never lived anywhere near the actual crime epicenters of Chicago and are only operating on fear-mongering. >Only" in terms of racial injustice? So those violent crime numbers by neighborhood are entirely the fault of the aforementioned white people? The people actually committing them in these neighborhoods have no agency or fault in what they do to their own neighborhoods? Again, a strawman, but whatever. If you want to paint the problems of an entire area on someone/some group, then the government that dominates your local area is the best option. >This logic just keeps getting more twisted in the absurdities it has to push to sustain itself. When you twist everyone's words to misrepresent them and make them illogical, are you shocked that you get lemonade from lemons? >Doubtless there is racial injustice in a U.S. city with a famously corrupt police/civil administration like Chicago, but in recent decades Chicago has had multiple black mayors and a large percentage of its government and police are staffed by African Americans or people of color in general That's right, because there have been three black mayors since 1983 and because there is no more explicit policy of racism in the Chicago PD no policies that were formulated by racism, or economic impacts from racism exist anymore.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  >OP is trying to describe Chicago as crime-ridden - when in actuality they would have never lived anywhere near the actual crime epicenters of Chicago and are only operating on fear-mongering. Besides being a pretty low-quality, racist comment overall (e.g., "I pointed out that this person was obviously white(the culture comment, growing up in Evanston) and lived in Lake View"), this specific bit of reasoning is particularly poorly-reasoned. Two things can be true: north-side Chicago can be crime ridden compared to other places and also it can have less crime than South-Side Chicago. The latter doesn't refute the former.
  - turndown 4y ago
    >Two things can be true: north-side Chicago can be crime ridden compared to other places and also it can have less crime than South-Side Chicago. The latter doesn't refute the former. This doesn't appear to be responding to anything I said - I said they didn't live near the actual crime epicenters of Chicago and thus couldn't accurately comment on it. Chicago, as an urban area, will have higher crime rates just by population rate - that doesn't actually mean they lived in a high crime area. >Besides being a pretty low-quality, racist comment overall (e.g., "I pointed out that this person was obviously white(the culture comment, growing up in Evanston) and lived in Lake View" I am white - if it's racist to point out how resoundingly white OPs bias and POV is then so be it. Go read that comment back, along with the culture comment and now living in rural Colorado - connect the dots or not. I know tons of white people that used to live here that no longer do because they don't feel it's "a nice place to live anymore."
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      > This doesn't appear to be responding to anything I said - I said they didn't live near the actual crime epicenters of Chicago and thus couldn't accurately comment on it. Chicago, as an urban area, will have higher crime rates just by population rate - that doesn't actually mean they lived in a high crime area. The parent didn't claim to live near "the epicenter of crime" nor does one need to live near the epicenter to find that crime is too high for their liking. Your comment was a non sequitur (responding to "crime is too high in Chicago" with "you don't live near the epicenter"). > I am white - if it's racist to point out how resoundingly white OPs bias and POV is then so be it. Go read that comment back, along with the culture comment and now living in rural Colorado - connect the dots or not. I know tons of white people that used to live here that no longer do because they don't feel it's "a nice place to live anymore." Yes, I read the comment correctly the first time. Assuming someone's race and then assuming that the person's race impacts how they see the world is racism. Writing someone off because of their race is racism.
tptacek 4y ago
We're talking about quality of living issues for people in the tech industry, not social justice. The issue of crime was raised in the context of why someone would want to move away from Chicago, not as an invitation to reckon with the moral horror of it. This will be an entirely different (and less useful) thread if we embark on the tangent of American crime and its causes and responses. It is more or less simply the case that people who work in the tech industry, the kinds of people who are choosing whether to live in Chicago or Austin or Portland or San Francisco, are not living in the neighborhoods where it's unsafe to walk to school or to set foot in the park after sundown. Lawndale and Lakeview might as well be different cities. There is bleed --- increasingly --- from rough neighborhoods to the wealthier ones, especially with respect to property crime, but also with robberies. But there are robberies all over San Francisco, too. If you're choosing between those two cities, violent crime is probably not a meaningful metric for you.
throwaway894345 4y ago
> So you've spoken to a large number of the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who live in the neighborhoods most plagued by crime and know that they don't complain about it? Chicago is really segregated. It's very easy to forget that one's experience in an expensive, largely-white, progressive, north-side neighborhood isn't representative of the city as a whole. Moreover, if the only "diverse" people you speak with are those who have had good educations, landed well-paying jobs, moved to a nice north-side neighborhood, and so on, you might not realize that they aren't representative of "diverse" communities more broadly (particularly when the portrait painted by the media differs so much from reality). TL;DR--we have to be careful when we generalize about "what life is like in Chicago" because it's easy to extrapolate our own experiences onto tons of people who live in neighborhoods that don't remotely resemble our own (and I strongly suspect that's what's happening when the OP says "most of the people I hear complain about crime are old white people that don't live here any more").

turndown 4y ago

>So you've spoken to a large number of the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who live in the neighborhoods most plagued by crime and know that they don't complain about it? It just has to be some derogatory classification of subgroup such as "old white people", As if the hundreds of murders per year were little more than something for them to whine about? Basically a strawman but whatever, I pointed out that this person was obviously white(the culture comment, growing up in Evanston) and lived in Lake View, two places I will call light on crime compared to South Side. OP is trying to describe Chicago as crime-ridden - when in actuality they would have never lived anywhere near the actual crime epicenters of Chicago and are only operating on fear-mongering. >Only" in terms of racial injustice? So those violent crime numbers by neighborhood are entirely the fault of the aforementioned white people? The people actually committing them in these neighborhoods have no agency or fault in what they do to their own neighborhoods? Again, a strawman, but whatever. If you want to paint the problems of an entire area on someone/some group, then the government that dominates your local area is the best option. >This logic just keeps getting more twisted in the absurdities it has to push to sustain itself. When you twist everyone's words to misrepresent them and make them illogical, are you shocked that you get lemonade from lemons? >Doubtless there is racial injustice in a U.S. city with a famously corrupt police/civil administration like Chicago, but in recent decades Chicago has had multiple black mayors and a large percentage of its government and police are staffed by African Americans or people of color in general That's right, because there have been three black mayors since 1983 and because there is no more explicit policy of racism in the Chicago PD no policies that were formulated by racism, or economic impacts from racism exist anymore.

throwaway894345 4y ago
>OP is trying to describe Chicago as crime-ridden - when in actuality they would have never lived anywhere near the actual crime epicenters of Chicago and are only operating on fear-mongering. Besides being a pretty low-quality, racist comment overall (e.g., "I pointed out that this person was obviously white(the culture comment, growing up in Evanston) and lived in Lake View"), this specific bit of reasoning is particularly poorly-reasoned. Two things can be true: north-side Chicago can be crime ridden compared to other places and also it can have less crime than South-Side Chicago. The latter doesn't refute the former.
- turndown 4y ago
  >Two things can be true: north-side Chicago can be crime ridden compared to other places and also it can have less crime than South-Side Chicago. The latter doesn't refute the former. This doesn't appear to be responding to anything I said - I said they didn't live near the actual crime epicenters of Chicago and thus couldn't accurately comment on it. Chicago, as an urban area, will have higher crime rates just by population rate - that doesn't actually mean they lived in a high crime area. >Besides being a pretty low-quality, racist comment overall (e.g., "I pointed out that this person was obviously white(the culture comment, growing up in Evanston) and lived in Lake View" I am white - if it's racist to point out how resoundingly white OPs bias and POV is then so be it. Go read that comment back, along with the culture comment and now living in rural Colorado - connect the dots or not. I know tons of white people that used to live here that no longer do because they don't feel it's "a nice place to live anymore."
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    > This doesn't appear to be responding to anything I said - I said they didn't live near the actual crime epicenters of Chicago and thus couldn't accurately comment on it. Chicago, as an urban area, will have higher crime rates just by population rate - that doesn't actually mean they lived in a high crime area. The parent didn't claim to live near "the epicenter of crime" nor does one need to live near the epicenter to find that crime is too high for their liking. Your comment was a non sequitur (responding to "crime is too high in Chicago" with "you don't live near the epicenter"). > I am white - if it's racist to point out how resoundingly white OPs bias and POV is then so be it. Go read that comment back, along with the culture comment and now living in rural Colorado - connect the dots or not. I know tons of white people that used to live here that no longer do because they don't feel it's "a nice place to live anymore." Yes, I read the comment correctly the first time. Assuming someone's race and then assuming that the person's race impacts how they see the world is racism. Writing someone off because of their race is racism.

tptacek 4y ago

We're talking about quality of living issues for people in the tech industry, not social justice. The issue of crime was raised in the context of why someone would want to move away from Chicago, not as an invitation to reckon with the moral horror of it. This will be an entirely different (and less useful) thread if we embark on the tangent of American crime and its causes and responses. It is more or less simply the case that people who work in the tech industry, the kinds of people who are choosing whether to live in Chicago or Austin or Portland or San Francisco, are not living in the neighborhoods where it's unsafe to walk to school or to set foot in the park after sundown. Lawndale and Lakeview might as well be different cities. There is bleed --- increasingly --- from rough neighborhoods to the wealthier ones, especially with respect to property crime, but also with robberies. But there are robberies all over San Francisco, too. If you're choosing between those two cities, violent crime is probably not a meaningful metric for you.

throwaway894345 4y ago

> So you've spoken to a large number of the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who live in the neighborhoods most plagued by crime and know that they don't complain about it? Chicago is really segregated. It's very easy to forget that one's experience in an expensive, largely-white, progressive, north-side neighborhood isn't representative of the city as a whole. Moreover, if the only "diverse" people you speak with are those who have had good educations, landed well-paying jobs, moved to a nice north-side neighborhood, and so on, you might not realize that they aren't representative of "diverse" communities more broadly (particularly when the portrait painted by the media differs so much from reality). TL;DR--we have to be careful when we generalize about "what life is like in Chicago" because it's easy to extrapolate our own experiences onto tons of people who live in neighborhoods that don't remotely resemble our own (and I strongly suspect that's what's happening when the OP says "most of the people I hear complain about crime are old white people that don't live here any more").