When people can work, pay for affordable housing and send their children to decent schools in their own communities, those communities become safer. My logic is pretty elementary: folks will be less likely to engage in crime in order to support basic needs, when they have jobs that can provide for those needs. Moreover, the fact that young (White) professionals keep gentrifying these “unsafe” urban spaces suggests that the infusion of resources into communities precedes the reduction in crime.
Furthermore, the Obama administration’s continued investment in the very questionable educational practices that catalyzed a massive Chicago Teacher’s Strike last fall threaten to undermine any affirmative steps he might take to reduce violence and poverty. Chicago Public Schools are composed of 80% Black and Brown students, and Chicago teachers have rebelled against the very kinds of corporate-influenced, test-driven education policies that left Chicago youth as the ground zero of casualties in the national school reform movement.
The challenges facing Black folks in Chicago are myriad, but they have little to do with the decrease in marriage rates. For the president to focus his attention there is an exercise in missing the point.
And Black youth and families in Chicago deserve better.
Brittney C. Cooper, Ph.D. is Assistant professor of Women’s and Gender studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. She is also co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective.
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