Paging Mrs. O'Leary's Cow

An exodus of capital and the threat of losing more middle class families to the suburbs has Mayor Rahm Emanuel promising big things to the citizens of Chicago (Rahm Emanuel to middle class: Don’t leave for better schools, Chicago Sun-Times, March 25, 2012):

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has a message to the middle class: Don’t leave my city in pursuit of a high quality, high school education for your kids.

The message accompanied a promise, issued during an exclusive interview with the Chicago Sun-Times on Friday — the same day the mayor announced he was doubling the size of an International Baccalaureate diploma program in the Chicago Public Schools. A recent study deemed the program extremely successful in preparing neighborhood high school students for college.

“Don’t head for the doors when your kid’s in fifth grade or sixth grade — for the suburbs — because the city of Chicago is going to give you a high-quality life with a high-quality education for your children,” said Emanuel, speaking in his office and flanked by Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard.

“That’s our commitment to the families of the city of Chicago. And we’re well on our way to starting to put that down payment down,” he said

Chicago Public Schools: 44% Hispanic, 40% Black, 8% white -- Welcome to Brazil

There are only 3200 seats available for the IB program in Chicago Public Schools, with more than 14,000 applicants in 2011 alone. Though white students only make up 8.8 percent of the more than 404,000 student population of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), they are more than 14 percent of the IB program [PK NOTE: I can't find demographic breakdown for just high school population demographics for CPS].

That's right: in Chicago, white students number roughly 32,000 out of 404,000 in CPS, while Black students make up 40 percent and Hispanic/Latino students 44 percent. And you wonder what the future is for the Second City -- one look at Brazil today gives you a clear understanding of Chicago in 2025 (that number doesn't include racial breakdown of private schools, but you get the picture: those blue-collar whites still in the city send their kids to schools that are little more than day-care centers for minority plurality Black and Brown children.

One of the primary reasons there has been an exodus of middle class white people from Chicago, is the high rates of Black (and Brown) crime in the city. What's crazy is the number of Black people who have left Chicago since 2000, with City Journal highlighting the problem of stagnation and population loss (The Second-Rate City?
Chicago’s swift, surprising decline presents formidable challenges for new mayor Rahm Emanuel, Aaron Renn, Spring 2012):

Begin with Chicago’s population decline during the 2000s, an exodus of more than 200,000 people that wiped out the previous decade’s gains. Of the 15 largest cities in the United States in 2010, Chicago was the only one that lost population; indeed, it suffered the second-highest total loss of any city, sandwiched between first-place Detroit and third-place, hurricane-wrecked New Orleans. While New York’s and L.A.’s populations clocked in at record highs in 2010, Chicago’s dropped to a level not seen since 1910. Chicago is also being “Europeanized,” with poorer minorities leaving the center of the city and forced to its inner suburbs: 175,000 of those 200,000 lost people were black.

Fixing Chicago will be a big, difficult project, but it’s necessary. The city’s sparkling core may continue to shine, and magazines may continue to applaud the global city on Lake Michigan—but without a major change in direction, Chicago can expect to see still more people and jobs fleeing for more hospitable locales.

Chicago is 32 percent Black, 32 percent white, and 28 percent Hispanic/Latino; yet, even with the loss of 200,000 Black people, the Black monopoly of virtually all violent crime categories is astounding.

Fixing Chicago and making investment in both the city as a business owner/entrepreneur or as a potential resident to start a family (and provide an actual tax-base outside of Black people whose ability to procreate rests largely on a charitable welfare state to care for their brood) might be as simple as removing the all Black people from the Second City.

As I noted at Vdare though, the reality of nightmarish high-levels of Black crime in Chicago drives the desired migration of white people to Chicago away to other municipalities, so that they can thrive in a community where the public school system doesn't boast numbers of white students that place them solidly in the "minority" camp.

The NBC affiliate in Chicago published an article by Edward McClelland who took great offense that his city would be labeled a more violent place than even war-torn Afghanistan - which of course it has been - and published this article (Chicago Is NOT The World's Deadliest City, August 21, 2012)

Last week, a post on the website Gawker declared Chicago “the World’s Deadliest City,” claiming it’s even more dangerous here than in Kabul, Afghanistan. This year, our nickname is “Chiraq.” The claim has been much-repeated on the Internet.

Since I may have contributed to this label by calling Chicago “The Deadliest Global City,” I  should clear it up. Chicago is not the deadliest city on the globe. It’s not the deadliest city in the United States, or even the Chicago area. It’s the deadliest city with Alpha world city status.

Just in the U.S., Flint, Mich., Detroit, St. Louis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Baltimore and Gary, Ind., all have higher murder rates than Chicago.

Knowing that Chicago is 32 percent Black, and knowing that Detroit is 90 percent Black, why don't we take a quick look at the racial make-up of the most dangerous cities in America that Mr. McClelland reminds us are scarier than Chicago.

St. Louis is 49 percent Black. 

Gary is 84 percent Black. 

Atlanta has dropped from 61 percent to 54 percent Black, though Blacks still commit almost all violent crime in the city.

Flint is 52 percent Black.

Baltimore, which was 80 percent white in 1940, is now 63 percent Black.

New Orleans, despite seeing its population of low income Black severely decimated by Hurricane Katrina, is still 60 percent Black.

Each of these has been tormented by the same particular problem as Chicago -- Black crime. Interesting, all of the cities listed also have some of the worst (and all boast majority Black) public school systems in America.

The future of each of these cities resembles that of Detroit, with Gary sprinting quickly ahead of the others in the race to see which formerly thriving metropolis will die first and come to be nothing more than a colony of that particular states (in the case of Gary; Indiana) tax-payers, subsisting on federal grants, funds, and loans as well to meet public payroll and stave off complete insolvency.

Mr. McClelland can be excused for his defense of Chicago in the face of "Most Dangerous City in the World" claims -- after all, there's always another city in America where Black crime/murder/rape rates are worse.

"We're not number 1," Mr. McClelland can correctly say. But ranking no. 8 in this category is the reason Chicago's future ultimately resembles Detroit.