Comment Re:I'm a teacher at a Title 1 School (Score 1, Informative) 163
Chicago's violent crime rate isn't REALLY that high. On a per-capita basis, it's kind of middling; Danville, Illinois is a vastly more dangerous place for its residents and nearby Elkhart and Goshen are similarly worse than Gary, Indiana, where I live. Coverage of crime in Chicago (and Gary) drives a particular narrative among those of a certain political bent that some community with a majority of non-white residents are the equivalent of Robocop's Detroit or post-occupation Fallujah. It just isn't so.
While I'm at it, one of the biggest current drivers of violent crime in Chicago right now is the redevelopment of the Robert Taylor and Cabrini Green public housing facilities. Both of those communities were turned into mixed income housing without any plan or thought given to how the diaspora of their residents would impact the area. What happened in actuality was that Chicago's majority-black street gangs lost their longtime strongholds, which allowed LatinX-majority gangs funded by Mexican and South American cartels to move in and (violently) compete for territory. The ongoing territorial disputes do make some areas of Chicago dangerous. I am not denying that. It's just something a lot deeper than "Chicago has all the crime." Street gangs exist in every big city. Violent crime exists anywhere there are human beings. Chicago does not need or deserve to be singled out when the godless urban hellholes of St. Louis, MO and Omaha, NE are both much, much higher in terms of violent crime rates per capita.