Another fine example of self-censorship by the media. The story goes on at length about a problem with groups of youth wandering around the tourist parts of downtown looking for trouble or opportunity.
If you haven’t spent time in Chicago, being in the Midwest and fairly flat, the city was rebuilt after the Great Fire using a square grid system. Streets are numbered with 8 blocks to the mile. A few streets run at an angle – at some point, they started naming the streets on the South Side of downtown after the Presidents of the United States in order, but you won’t find a Reagan Avenue.
Roosevelt used to the “dividing line” that was part of the social “rules” that everyone understood. If your skin was black, you didn’t live North of Roosevelt – if you were white or hispanic or Asian, you didn’t live south of Roosevelt. Whites have been fleeing the North Side, so that rule no longer applies – blacks have been moving out of the city as well, with Hispanics growing in influence in the city.
One of my memories of living in Chicago (around 1991) was one morning being on a subway platform in Evanston (just North of the Chicago) and watching a Mexican woman and black woman getting in what appeared to be an unprovoked scuffle – maybe they had a prior history with each other, but it was pretty obvious that race was a factor. It had the look for a “watcha looking at?” confrontation.
So this stoy carefully avoids pointing out that this is a problem with black gangs. The 3 names and addresses they mentioned are from 3500-8400 south, which puts them scarely in the poor black part of town – probably from public housing projects… 95th Street is an important dividing line on the South Side – the railroads have a major East/West raised viaduct – south of 95th, the city was more inustrial and no longer residential. It’s a demarcation point, like 8 milre road in Detroit or 125th street in Harlem in New York.
Perhaps Rahm didn’t get the memo from Eric Holder to not use police to intimidate black youth.
http://atlantapost.com/2011/06/07/obama-and-department-of-justice-cracks-down-on-police-brutality/
The Chicago Tribune doubles down on Stupid.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/tribnation/chi-when-race-is-mentioned-in-the-chicago-tribune-20110610,0,136289.story
Race is relevant because the Attorney General has said that police (like those in Chicago) should stop being suspicious of blacks because of their race. All around the country, groups of black youth are taking the hint and running with it.
“Old Media” can’t hide the truth. People have a right to know what they want to know, not what you want them to know.