Nearly half of parents with children at home said they would like to leave the city. Three-quarters of all respondents said they believed the city had seriously gotten on the wrong track.
The data, though, is particularly revealing for what it says about the very different experiences in Chicago of blacks and whites, who, because of largely decades-old patterns of segregation, largely inhabit separate sides of the city. Whites and blacks offered bluntly different responses to many questions.
Sixty-three percent of blacks said they thought the biggest problem facing the city was crime, violence or gangs; just 35 percent of whites said the same (they’re more likely to cite economic and budget issues).
The city’s gravest problems – violence, struggling schools and concentrated poverty – are disproportionately experienced by blacks. In fact, it’s possible to live in some North Side neighborhoods and remain entirely untouched by them. The difference between these two realities is the city’s biggest challenge yet.
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