Urban America Losing The Culture War

Baltimore made news not long ago with the revelation that in 23 schools not a single student was performing at grade level in reading or math. CRT was probably a different story. Not to be outdone by upstart Baltimore, Chicago is now reporting identical results at 55 schools.

Chicago is in the midst of a mayoral election, but there are still some things that can’t be discussed, as Wirepoints reports:

Unwed births, illiterate children and black-on-black crime: What Chicago’s mayoral candidates ignore

Our failing urban areas are where the rubber meets the road in our culture wars, and where we find the losers in that war—victims of progressive ideological dogma’s refusal to deal with human nature, preferring to deal with concepts unconnected to the real world. The Wirepoints article lays it on the line in its introductory paragraphs:

Chicago’s mayoral candidates may seem like they’re paying attention to the plight of the black community when they talk about crime, more money for city schools, and tough job prospects. 

But they won’t talk about the uncomfortable issues. Like fathers who’ve gone missing. Or kids who can’t read. Or the hair-trigger violence that’s fueled by low self-esteem. 

There’s more that’s off the table: merit, achievement and excellence. 

To progressives who celebrate black victimhood, these assertions will seem to be way over the line. They’re not. 

Because if you won’t talk about births to unmarried mothers, kids raised without fathers and students who are functionally illiterate, you’re skating past the root causes of today’s troubles. The numbers are eye-popping: 8 of every 10 black babies in Chicago are born to an unmarried mother. Only 1 in 10 black students in Chicago Public Schools can read at grade level. Four of every five Chicago murder victims is black. And seven out of every ten known murder perpetrators in Chicago is black. 

The data is hiding in plain view.

Wirepoints proceeds to present that data in easy to digest tables—and bear in mind that the black population of Chicago is actually only 28%. Check some of that data out:

There’s more, and I encourage everyone to follow the link and ponder the data. What Wirepoints doesn’t mention in this article, but what they’ve been all over in the past, is that Illinois has turned over to the Government School Teachers Unions a veto over everything to do with education in their schools. In practice, that means that Illinois has ceded control of its fiscal future to public unions. For example, despite plummeting enrollment (see above) the teachers have vetoed any and all school closures—we’re documented the absurd results in the past.

The results are predictable, given the radical agenda of public sector unions:

What’s also staggering is that city officials and candidates don’t challenge the dismal reading and math results in Chicago’s public schools. It’s all a game, played with the future of the city’s children. Kids can’t read, but 100% of CPS teachers were evaluated as “excellent or proficient” in 2021. …

It goes even further. Take a look at the CPS web page on equity. Instead of pushing for better results, they choose instead to highlight and promote an activist video titled “How Can We Win?” It asserts blacks can’t win; and endorses looting and burning to vent frustration.

As for black on black crime, here’s some eye popping data that point directly to culture issues, the ones no one can mention:

What about the perpetrators? In 2022 alone, more than 75 percent of all convicted murderers in Cook County were black, according to a database kept by the Office of State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. That’s in line with more long-term data. From 1991 through 2011, blacks were more than 70 percent of the known murder perpetrators charged, according to the Chicago Police Department data. 

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In 2021 the head of the University of Chicago Crime Lab testified to the U.S. Senate that three-quarters of Chicago’s shootings were tied to arguments. She stated, “the vast majority of murders in America are not motivated by money, robberies, or wars between gangs over drug turf. They are most often the result of an argument that spins out of control…”

Economist Glenn Loury—a Chicago native—laid it on the line in a recent substack, and a PBS interview. His basic point is inarguable. At some point something has to give, but sadly—given the point we’ve already reached—that will only happen with even more social turmoil than we’re already experiencing:

South Side Chicago native Glenn Loury was the first black tenured economist at Harvard and now teaches at Brown University. Loury recently said,

“We’re in the twenty-first century. The year is 2023. The country is changing and changing and changing. Tens of millions of non-European immigrants are making lives here. The politics of this country, the Hispanics are a more significant ethnicity than the blacks in the long term when you think about ethnic pluralism in the country. The Chinese are coming, the world is changing. Globalization. Nobody’s got time for a person who can’t read and who can’t count….I think this is shtick. ‘We were enslaved. We are black. We are owed something’ is a house of cards.The idea that, perpetually, you would warp American institutions to favor people who were not excelling on the merits because of these kinds of second and third-order claims about exclusion and racism? It shouldn’t happen and it won’t happen.”