Capitol Fax: Decline of Black Chicago

Well actually I added the title, a recurring theme on this blog as of late.

Either way Rich Miller discusses this on his blog yesterday. It's been in the news that that latino population of Chicago has overtaken the population of Blacks. It's already been documented that over the past decaded Blacks have been leaving Chicago. Blacks are either heading to the suburbs or they're leaving the state entirely.

What say you on this?

Tribune: Millionaires are leaving Chicago, report says

I found this most interesting:

Millionaires are leaving Chicago more than any other city in the United States on a net basis, according to a new report.

About 3,000 individuals with net assets of $1 million or more, not including their primary residence, moved from the city last year, with many citing rising racial tensions and worries about crime as factors in the decision, according to research firm New World Wealth. That represented about 2 percent of the city's high net worth individuals....
Chicago was among four cities worldwide with the biggest flight of millionaires.

And then it got more interesting:

Most of the millionaires who left Paris and Rome fled their countries, while Chicagoans moved elsewhere in the United States, said New World Wealth, whose data is used by luxury-goods companies, private banks and real estate professionals, among others.
...
Findings of the New World Wealth report are consistent with a Nielsen study released late last year that showed Chicago is losing large numbers of affluent African-Americans.

The Nielsen report found that the Chicago area has fallen out of the top echelon of U.S. cities when it comes to the percentage of black households earning more than $100,000. In 2000, Chicago ranked seventh among the cities with the largest percentage of black households with income at that level or higher, but in 2015, Chicago had dropped out of the top 10.

The question is now what's going on in our fair city. Why are there fears of racial tension? Why are the more wealthier Blacks leaving the area entirely and taking their resources with them?

Fewer Black teachers in CPS?

There are a lot of changes going on at CPS. To start there will be a new CEO in Forrest Claypool and a new school board chairman in Frank Clark. Now another issue has arisen:

Just 15 years go, 40 percent teachers in CPS schools were black. Today, it’s 23 percent. Many black students are segregated into majority black schools—like National Teachers Academy in the South Loop, where [Taree Porter] teaches.
...
The face of Chicago Public Schools teachers is changing: the teaching workforce is whiter and less experienced. Meanwhile, most of the students in Chicago’s public schools are Hispanic and African American. Black enrollment has gone down, but black students still make up 39 percent of the district.
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[Chicago Teachers Union researcher Pavlyn Jankov] said the number and percentage of schools where there are virtually no staff or no students who are African American has increased a lot too. In just the last decade the number of schools with fewer than a 10 percent black teaching staff jumped from 69 to 223. Schools with no black teachers soared from 10 to 50.

Of course, school policies aren’t the only thing going on. There also may be fewer black teachers because other professions have opened up to African Americans.

While Black enrollment is going down in CPS schools there are still schools with a significant population of Black students.

So why is the Latino caucus seemingly more interested in this subject?

Members of the Chicago City Council’s Latino Caucus are calling on the school district to hire more Latinos as teachers, principals, and administrators.

The push comes after WBEZ reported on the gap between the percentages of Latino teachers and Latino students. Data shows the percentage of Hispanic teachers is crawling upward, but not enough to keep pace with the rapidly growing Hispanic student population. Latino students now make up the largest ethnic group in Chicago Public Schools, at 46 percent.

Congrats to the opening up of new professions, but if the lack of Blacks in a classroom is problematic what can be done to encourage other Blacks to consider teaching?

Chicago News Coop: Black Chicagoans Fuel Growth of South Suburbs

And here's the why:

But many left despite having good jobs in the city. Although the census data does not indicate where those who left Chicago ended up, the new population figures show that Matteson recorded the largest numerical increase in blacks of any city in the Chicago area.

Statistics obtained by the Chicago News Cooperative reveal rising income levels in parts of Matteson and other south suburbs where the black population grew rapidly in the last decade, suggesting that high wage earners factored prominently in the movement from the city to the southern periphery of Cook County.

The trend of blacks’ leaving Chicago in the past decade apparently included all economic levels, said Alec Brownlow, a geography professor at DePaul University. Spiking foreclosure rates in South Side and West Side neighborhoods increased the already high number of vacant and abandoned homes, making those areas less popular with middle-income blacks, Mr. Brownlow said.

“I would imagine that the wave of out-migrants displaced by the teardown of public housing units is supplementing the middle classes moved by the foreclosure crisis,” he said.

Then there's also this:

But whatever their income level, the newcomers say they feel more at ease after leaving the city. James Turner, an engineer at the University of Chicago, said he and his wife moved to Newbury Estates in 2005 because “there is too much chaos” in Englewood, where they used to live. Mr. Turner, 58, recalled his old neighborhood as he worked in the front yard of his 3,000-square-foot home.

“You can’t trust the city,” Mr. Turner said. “You can’t trust it to have peace unless you are somewhere on the North Side, next to the lake. Maybe Rahm Emanuel can do something and put the police where they should be.”

Foreclosures and concerns over safety to name a couple I've been able to excerpt. What if some of the ills they hoped to escape came out to Matteson with these individuals?

Also mentioned in this article CHA transplants from the many now demolished and revitalized housing projects around the city.

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