Fifty Years Forward... Are you sure about that, Birmingham?

Are you sure about that?

An article from the February 1980 issue of Ebony, celebrating the election of Richard Arrington - the first black mayor in Birmingham – offers this important quote [A Big Change for Birmingham: City of protests, police dogs, and bombs elects Black Mayor, Ebony, by Alex Poinsett]:

The mayor remembers that it was not too long ago when a Birmingham black could not try on a pair of shoes in a department store, or park in certain public lots, or work behind a sales counter, or appear on stage with whites. His brother remembers:  “Our parents were afraid for us to be out too late at night. We had to go through a white neighborhood in order to get to the one segregated movie theater. So we had to come home early.” 

Unfortunately, in now 74 percent black Birmingham, few department stores exist – a reflection of the economic climate created by the black majority. Black people have the ability to work behind sales counters, but these are primarily at title loan or payday shops that the 77 percent black Birmingham City Council has passed a moratorium on the issuing of new permits, hoping to regulate the only economic growth found in the city. It’s a reflection of the economic climate black people create for themselves, and word has it that patrons of payday shops in Birmingham are no longer allowed to try on shoes.

Being one of America’s most violent cities  -- courtesy of its 74 percent black population –- black people in Birmingham no longer have to fear walking through white neighborhoods (there aren’t any – whites fled the city and created thriving new cities/communities in Hoover, Vestavia Hills, and Mountain Brook); they must fear walking through almost exclusively black neighborhoods, where frequent black-on-black crime is a grim reminder of why Birmingham once had laws in place to protect the interests of its white population.

Once they were overturned, the economic lifeblood of the city – white people – fled to the safety of new, all-white communities, leaving Birmingham in perpetual need of both monetary infusions to make up for its dwindling tax base (and still pay for city services) and blood transfusions for the hospitals, to help keep alive black victims of black crime.

Birmingham is located in Alabama’s 7^th Congressional District. Courtesy of the United States Department of Agriculture, we are afforded a window into understanding the racial reliance on the EBT card throughout the nation.

In 2010, 16 percent of the households in this district required Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP/EBT), with black people making up 87.8% of the households receiving SNAP/EBT.  The 7^th District is 61% percent black and 35% white.

Birmingham will try and celebrate all that has occurred between 1963 and 2013 as some form of “progress,” with Mayor William Bell unveiling a Web site and a slogan for the year-long celebration coming up this year – “Forward.”

What is“Fifty Years Forward” celebrating?:

THEY SAY IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN. And this has never been more true than in 1963, the height of the Civil Rights Movement. The events of that year revealed the best and worst humanity had to offer, as some of Birmingham’s most courageous citizens fought to release their city from the terrible grip of hatred and discrimination. 

Now, 50 Years Forward, we’re coming together to commemorate “The Movement That Changed The World.” And to celebrate those who sacrificed so much to make it happen, armed with nothing more than hope in their hearts, a prayer on their lips, and the winds of freedom at their backs.

Birmingham 2013: 74 percent black and a "high caliber city"

What have the winds of freedom brought to the black citizens of Birmingham? [The killing years, Part One: Accused killers in the Birmingham area, and victims, often under age 25, May 30, 2010, Birmingham News]:

When people are murdered in Jefferson County, chances are the killer was a male under 25 using a gun. 

More than half of the accused killers in the county were 24 or younger, according to a Birmingham News analysis of homicides from 2006 through 2009. 

Nine times out of 10, the victims were shot to death. 

The percentage of homicides with defendants under age 25 who used guns in Jefferson County substantially exceeds the national average, statistics show. 

In Birmingham, where nearly three-quarters of the county's murders occurred, the disparity was even worse from 2006-2009. ·      Black males were 80 percent of the homicide defendants in majority-white Jefferson County and 89 percent in majority-black Birmingham. The national average was 57 percent. 

·       More than 70 percent of the victims in Birmingham were black males, versus 43 percent nationwide in 2007, the only year a comparison was possible. 

·       Guns were used in 86 percent of Birmingham homicides, and 83 percent in the county as a whole, versus 68 percent nationwide. Birmingham's rate is higher among defendants ages 16 through 24.

Do you begin to understand why such laws were once in place in Birmingham and throughout America to protect not just the lives of the white population, but also the private property and integrity of the businesses they ran?

Here’s a little more from that February 1980 issue of Ebony:

Arrington inspired a record 76 percent black voter turnout, edging out “law-and-order” challenger Frank Parsons by 2,000 votes. About 12 percent of white voters and 98 percent of the blacks had picked Richard Arrington as their mayor.
 In a far less euphoric mood, the new mayor pledges to implement programs that will refine management and accountability in city hall, revitalize Birmingham’s downtown, improve neighborhood revitalization and stability and reduce citizen’s fear of crime by beefing up police manpower. “We have broken the barriers of public facilities,” comments State. Sen. J. Richmond Pearson, “but there is a great disparity economically now between the poor black and the whites. We need to be integrated into the economic system.” If that, finally, is the ultimate goal of most black civil righters, Mayor Arrington approaches it with confidence. “A lot of whites who didn’t vote for me nevertheless don’t want to see their black mayor fail, because the world is watching Birmingham.”

Black people can’t be integrated into the economic system that white people created in not just Birmingham, but basically any city or community across the nation (black individuals can, but you don’t base social policy on individuals).

When a city that is 74 percent black has to pass a ban on the issuing of permits to new title loan or payday stores, you get a good idea of the general creditworthiness of its population – with traditional banks and lines of credit out of the question for the majority of the black population, title loan and payday stores fill the void.

Everything from borrowing money to a purchasing a candy bar at one of the gas stations or convenience stores in 2012 Birmingham costs  more since doing business with black people is always quite risky. Whether it's high interest rates to cover high default rates (that no bank would dare lend anymore) or Plexiglass protection at convenience, gas station and liquor stores to protect employees from bullets and muggings, trying to earn a dollar from the 74 percent black population in Birmingham involves a business approach normally reserved for post-apocalyptic war zones.

Some evil men bombed the 16^th Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, taking the lives of four little black girls. This one event, however, can no longer be used to guilt white people from seeing the utter devastation of Birmingham wrought by a majority black population. Curiously, the murder of Birmingham Southern College white coed Quinette Shehane by three black males never became the sensation of interracial violence like the events of 1963 did.

But it did convince administrators to fortify the school, since it was surrounded by entirely black neighborhoods where criminality flourished:

A female Birmingham-Southern student, Quinette Shehane, was kidnapped on Dec. 20, 1976, when she left campus to buy salad dressing at a Graymont Avenue convenience store. She was brutally killed and three men were convicted of her murder.  

The murder reinforced fears that the neighborhood surrounding the campus was dangerous. Security was heightened, and a fence was built around campus. Three years of unsuccessful negotiations to sell the campus to Miles College had already been going on before Neal Berte became president on Feb. 1, 1976. The school had been considering moving to Shelby County.  

Because of the high rates of black crime in areas around Birmingham Southern, administrators plotted to move to a peaceful, majority white county. Without a huge endowment like the University of Chicago or University of Pennsylvania to provide lavish funding for a private army to keep students safe, a wall was erected around the campus -- a fitting exclamation point to Bull Conner's battle in 1963. 

All the promises Richard Arrington made to the voters of Birmingham, which Ebony magazine championed back in 1980, never materialized.

The downtown is dead, save for minor levels of white gentrification beginning to occur; the neighborhoods are all but dead, with property levels rivaling 92 percent black Detroit (“why hasn’t property value been declared ‘racist’ yet?,” you might ask – simple: the left needs to keep rates of taxation high on productive, responsible, law-abiding citizens so they can transfer the wealth to unproductive citizens); and the city resembles a warzone in terms of crime.

But that’s what the City of Birmingham represents in 2012. Preparing to celebrate “50 Years Forward” is… laughable.

Bull Conner’s mistake was in even acknowledging the peaceful demonstrations in Birmingham back in 1963; Our mistake today would be in not acknowledging the sorrowful conditions that black people have created in Birmingham and concluding that similar conditions found in majority black cities and communities throughout the nation are not caused by racism or white privilege --- but by the combined efforts of the black individuals found in these communities.

Commemorating 50 Years: Birmingham's Civil Rights Movement from 50_Years_Forward on Vimeo.

Defund Poverty Inc? Just Go Over the Fiscal Cliff

In 1960, Detroit was 72% white; today, it's 92% black

Memphis, Tennessee. Located in Shelby County, the city of 652,000 is 63 percent black and only 27 percent white. As of 2009, 42 percent of black people in Shelby County were on EBT/Food Stamps, compared to only 6 percent of whites.

We already know that crime follows black people in Memphis wherever they go, courtesy of Section 8 Housing (thanks Atlantic!!).

We already know that Memphis City Schools, an almost entirely black operation, has dissolved its charter to merge with the better managed Shelby County Schools -- because black administrators can't properly run a system and black children produce woeful test scores that bring unwanted scrutiny to the system. 

We already know that Memphis is one of America's most dangerous cities because of its black population.

Now, we know that only with the infusion of (non-existent) federal government money does Memphis exist [Poverty Inc. helps drive Memphis economy:Aid for poor is part of economy, The Commercial Appeal, 12-29-12]:

It is bigger than FedEx Corp.'s $1 billion-plus local payroll.

It is the quiet giant of the local economy.

It's Poverty Inc.

From pawn shops and charities to welfare and Medicaid, the poverty industry pumped an estimated $5.39 billion through the city and county in 2010, according to a study by The Commercial Appeal.

Poring over reports and records, The Commercial Appeal estimated the scale of the poverty industry related to the 100,000 least well off families in the city. The goal: Determine the reliance on federal dollars, which account for about half the poverty dollars here.

Policy leaders in Washington are wrangling over the idea of federal cutbacks, particularly in entitlements. Debate in Washington raised the issue here. How important is federal spending to Memphis's poverty economy?

The Commercial Appeal's study shows federal dollars account for 56 cents of every $1 in the local poverty industry. Of the $5.39 billion, $3.02 billion came from Washington, led by $1.2 billion for Medicaid health insurance and $1.1 billion for the welfare safety net.

In Washington, it's still not clear what programs, if any, may be reduced as lawmakers try to deal with budget deficits. But the reliance on federal spending hasn't been lost on Memphis civic leaders.

"In a way, it would reduce the economic stability of Memphis if the federal government cut back now," said Ruby Bright, executive director of the Women's Foundation For a Greater Memphis.

Just how the newspaper arrived at its $5.39 billion estimate is explained in an analysis today in the Viewpoint section. There are actually more federal dollars flowing into the city and county. But the newspaper focused on the region's impoverished core, the 100,000 least well off families living in the city.

Policy makers in Washington are debating budget cuts at a crucial time for Memphis. From recasting entire neighborhoods to improving grades of Memphis City Schools students, plans are afoot to spruce up Memphis relying on donations and grants, including federal sources. But efforts could fall back amid Washington's general turn toward fiscal austerity.

In Memphis and Shelby County, the poor, the wealthy and those in between received a total of $6.8 billion worth of federal government transfer receipts in 2010, double the amount a decade earlier. The same trend is visible nationally as millions of baby boomers retire every year and receive benefits from federal programs.

Transfer receipts include the traditional welfare aid for the poor as well as social programs nearly everyone else is entitled to, such as Social Security and Medicare, along with particular aid including Veterans Administration benefits and education assistance.

And in a sluggish economy, others have lost jobs and resort to federal disability payments to get by. In Shelby County, temporary disability payments rose sixfold over the decade to $4.3 million in 2010.

"In a good economy, for the better part of the 2000s, employers were much more likely to keep good employees who were chronically ill," said Memphis lawyer Betsy Wilson, a Social Security expert. "As soon as the economy turned down, those people were the first to go."

Politicians note it is often the poorest who have the least voice in Washington. But with lawmakers discussing spending cuts, some executives of Memphis charities say they doubt Washington can maintain aid levels. Michael Allen said he's thinking of new ways to help fund the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Memphis Inc.

"It's going to put more pressure on us to raise private dollars, whether it's from foundations or from individuals,'' said Allen, executive director of the charity, which runs on $3.9 million spread over multiple programs, including counseling for 430 homeless.

 Poverty Inc.

We could have been on Mars, but for the past 50+ years we've been funding the expansion of Poverty Inc. in not just Memphis, but in places like Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Birmingham, Dallas, St. Louis, and Baltimore.

It's been a nationwide dysgenic program paid for with money that could have gone to space exploration, an investment into the breeding of citywide populations of Michael Oher's instead of attempting to push the boundaries of human achievement and knowledge to the Red Planet.

Well, what we've accomplished instead is make Leigh Anne Tuohy feel better about herself and allowed Hollywood to produce a film glorifying Oher's salvation from the mean black streets of Memphis to the only avenue where his labor would produce anything more than minimum wage.

That's progress!

The longer the United States of America is able to provide lavish funds for Poverty Inc., then the fate of cities like Memphis and Birmingham will be inextricably linked to the current conditions of more than 90 percent black Detroit.

Those beneficiaries of Poverty Inc. largess have had quite the run of things in Memphis, with Tennessee Watchdog reporting on the incredible ability of the EBT card to provide lavish purchases in the city that aren't exactly food related [Taxpayers fund special, unusual perks for Memphis welfare recipients, July 28, 2012]. 

This transfer of wealth that funds the very people who help make Memphis one of America's most dangerous cities (and allows for their proliferation) isn't reserved to Elvis Presley's city; think about the violence in Chicago that is almost exclusively black.

Were it not for Poverty Inc. funding a cradle-to-grave society for black people in Chicago, it's hard to imagine the city having 500 murders [Chicago Homicide Rate Spikes, While New York's Plummets, Huffington Post, 12-28-12]:

In a sharp contrast between two of the nation's largest cities, Chicago recorded its 499th murder of 2012 on Thursday night while New York reported 414 murders as of Friday even though it has more than three times the population, according to police.
Plagued by gang violence, Chicago surpassed last year's murder total of 433 in October and is set for the highest rate of homicide since the third largest U.S. city recorded 512 in 2008. The number is likely to top 500 on the last weekend of the year.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Friday that the nation's largest city could finish the year with the lowest number of murders and shootings since 1963, when it began keeping comparable data. The number of murders this year in New York is only about one-fifth the total of 2,245 homicides recorded in the peak year of 1990.

Chicago's McCarthy said the city's high murder rate, up 18 percent over last year as of Dec. 16, was due to gang violence. Eighty percent of the homicides were gang-related and 80 percent of the victims were African-Americans, he said.
Blacks make up about 33 percent of the city's population, according to the 2011 estimate from the U.S. Census.
In August, six people were murdered in the city on a single weekend day, the highest one-day death toll of 2012.
McCarthy and other officials blame the surge on a splintering of the city's traditional gangs and the rise of new cliques and factions that are vying, often violently, for control of turf on the city's south and west sides.
The spike in homicides was especially dramatic in the first quarter of the year, when murders jumped 66 percent. So far in the fourth quarter, McCarthy said, the murder rate is down 15 percent compared with the same period last year. Police have arrested 7,000 more gang members this year than in 2011, he said.
"We're doing what we can do and it's working," McCarthy said.
After mounting criticism of Emanuel and McCarthy earlier this year, the police chief announced a shakeup of his department, transferring some police managers among districts to bolster the battle against gangs.

Chicago was not alone in recording a spike in murders this year. The murder rate in Detroit through Dec. 16 was up more than 12 percent over 2011 and at the highest level in nearly two decades, according to the city's police department.
As of Friday, St. Louis had recorded 113 homicides, the same number as 2011 with one weekend to go in 2012, police spokesman David Marzullo said. Across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis, Illinois, 22 murders have been recorded this year in a town of only 27,000 people.
"The numbers just blow you away for a community as small as East St. Louis," said Brendan Kelly, state's attorney for St. Clair County, whose jurisdiction includes East St. Louis.
The East St. Louis murder rate is actually down from 30 in 2011 because of targeted patrolling of crime hot spots, Kelly said.

 What do Memphis, Detroit, East St. Louis, and Chicago's crime problem have in common? Black people, who exist solely on the transfer of wealth that should have funded space exploration but instead powers Poverty Inc.

East. St. Louis is 97 percent black. Located in St. Clair County, 41 percent of black people received EBT/Food Stamps in 2009 compared to six percent of whites.

Detroit? The skyline and infrastructure white people vacated is a testament to the type of civilization white people can collectively create; the condition of the city in 2012 - a 90 percent + black city - is a testament to the type of civilization black people can collectively create.

The Detroit Free Press bemoaned the skyrocketing murder rate in Detroit, without mentioning the racial demographics of the city or that the Motor City exists solely because of Poverty Inc.'s ability to provide financial assistance, which powers the black cradle-to-grave society there.

Were the black population removed from Detroit and replaced with white people of any class, there would be no murder, crime, or poverty problem. Same with Memphis. Same with Chicago. Same with East St. Louis.

Poverty Inc., which is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from productive citizens to allow the existence of a cradle-to-grave society in the ruins of America's once great (now most dangerous), cities must be cut off.

Are you afraid of the Fiscal Cliff?

Better question: are you afraid of driving in Memphis, Detroit, or the South Side of Chicago?

Well, if you answered "yes" to the second question, know the reason those three places are so violent is courtesy of the continued funding of Poverty Inc. 

Same Tune, Different Pitch: Jesse Jackson on Chicago's 500th Homcide

PK NOTE: Last post on Chicago -- gotta save a lot of good stuff for the book.

Bring back Restrictive Covenants: I want high property value

Not that he was needed nor missed, Jesse Jackson was called to address the 500th homicide in Chicago in 2012 on CNN [Rev. Jesse Jackson Repeatedly Challenged To Defend Chicago Gun Ban After 500th Homicide This Year, Mediate, 12-28-12]. Here's what happened:

Rev. Jesse Jackson appeared on CNN on Friday where he was pressed to defend Chicago’s strict gun control laws following the city’s 500th homicide, 87.5 percent of which are gun-related, this year. Jackson said that Chicago, unlike Newtown, has no gun culture – Newtown, Connecticut, having several gun ranges whereas Chicago has none. He also said that the pressing issues of poverty, unemployment and the lack of a sense of mobility in America’s urban centers are the root causes of gun violence. 

Jackson was asked to defend Chicago’s gun ban, given the staggering rates of gun violence in America’s cities compared to other areas that do not have such strict gun laws and experience less gun violence.

“I think about Newtown, for example, they have three or four gun ranges. There are no gun ranges in Chicago,” Jackson replied. “Newtown is so different than the complexity of the urban crisis.”

“40 percent unemployment does matter,” Jackson continued. “Lack of education does matter.” He said that gun crime and joblessness are inextricably linked.

Jackson was asked again, given Chicago’s gun violence in spite of its strict gun laws, how even stricter gun laws can be justified.

“The guns are not coming from Chicago,” Jackson replied. “Chicago is in a bubble as the manufacturer — we’re a target market for gun flow. And they exploit the poverty and the pain.”

“It’s not gun violence. It’s also poverty and lack of education and lack of dreams, where people think killing is the only way out,” Jackson concluded. “This is the need for an urban policy of reconstruction.”

Oh Jesse... how predictably boring you've gotten. Black violence, a derivative of black culture that white people have been fleeing from for half-a-century is at the heart of the problem in Chicago. And culture is just a manifestation of race, Mr. Jackson.

Newtown is different because one crazy white person gunned down a score of people in one tragic moment; Chicago is nothing more then a lot of black people engaging in continual crazier acts of brazen animal behavior. And their actions in 2012 are nothing new. 

Chuck Ross of Glpiggy.net/ pulled up a money quote, which I'll allow to precede a few money quotes I dug up. Courtesy of Ron Unz's magazine database, Ross dug this factoid up about black people and the violence that has historically followed them wherever they might go [Confronting Black-on-Black Crime, In These Times, 3-3-1997]:

African-Americans have, of course, always suffered disproportionately from crime. As pioneering black scholars W.E.B. DuBois, E. Franklin Frazier and Charles Johnson showed, this disparity is attributable to racist institutions and the legacy of slavery. University of Arizona political scientist James Clarke wrote recently in Society magazine that the black homicide rate in Chicago in 1925 was 103 deaths per 100,000 persons, compared to 11 per 100,000 among whites—and this was during the period when Chicago was earning a reputation for organized white gangsterism. “In Cincinnati,” Clarke continued, “the black rate was 190 per 100,000; in East St. Louis it was 229; in Miami it was a staggering 276. … In New York … black homicide rates were 12 times the white rates.”

That's good stuff, and the type of Hate Facts Mr. Jackson has tried to bury with mounds of dirt his entire life; but there aren't enough shovels or heavy duty tractor farm/construction equipment available to bury the truth forever.

Gun crime and black people are inextricably linked, which is why the white people in Chicago were once united in keeping blacks from moving into their neighborhoods.

Reading the August 1979 "Black-on-Black Crime: The Causes, The Consequences, The Cures" special issue of Ebony magazine is another simple window into the type of urban environments black people unite as individuals to create as a collective. It's also a reminder why the type of communities that white people as individuals create as a collective are such desirable locations for blacks to migrate to and live in.

On p.38 an article is published with the title -- More Blacks Killed On Streets Than in Vietnam:

More blacks were killed by other blacks in the year 1977 than died in the entire, nine-year Vietnam War. Most of the 5,734 blacks killed on the battlefields of Black America in 1977 could have survived Vietnam, since the blacks who died there (5,711) averaged only 634 per year.

 Adam Lanza was a nut, a loon -- what do you call those individual black people back in 1977 who took the lives of fellow black people to the tune of 5,734 people?

Perhaps my favorite part of this entire issue is the article on p.49 --  Destruction in the Cities:

Crime Plays Big Role in Creating Urban Blight

The woman was talking to a newsstand dealer on a South Side Chicago corner about her friend: " I can't blame her. They broke in her house. they took two of her cars off the street and so she just moved to the suburbs." 

She was talking about Black on Black crime and how it is forcing worthy citizens out of Black neighborhoods. She could also have talked about how crime is causing Black businesses to close, factories to move out of town and even poor people to live behind bolted doors. And she could have come to the conclusion that poverty, racism and Black on Black crime can destroy Black communities.

Actually, black people play a big role in creating urban blight, because the urban blight is merely a manifestation of the culture they're create, being incapable of sustaining the business and community culture white people abandon to them.

Hilariously, Jesse Jackson himself is afforded six pages in this special issue to "push" his PUSH for Excellence (PUSH-EXCEL) educational movement as the obvious answer to the ills of black-on-black crime. Ebony was nice enough to let us know his organization received a $700,000 contract from the Health, Education, and Welfare Department "to strengthen three programs in Chicago, Los Angeles and, Kansas City, Mo."

That's roughly a $2.219 million contract today. Give me $2 million... and I shudder to think what I could accomplish.

Well -- here we are in 2012 and the violence in Chicago is largely contained to the black-on-black variety because of the extreme, life-saving levels of segregation in the city and the clustering of black people in the "urban blight" found in their communities that is strangely absent from... white communities.

Here's the most important to learn from the data gleaned from the years 1925, 1979, and 2012 -- the conditions found in black neighborhoods and black communities is merely a reflection of the type of community that black culture is capable of creating. And culture is nothing more then a manifestation of race.

Remember, black individuals can assimilate to white culture, but they can't create white culture; conversely, the black collective is incapable of not only assimilating to white culture, but sustaining it (think Detroit or the South Side of Chicago).

Steve Sailer, a man whom I consider one of the influences for the direction SBPDL has taken, asked, "What are the most plausible theories for what is going on in Chicago?"

Steve, it's really simple: black people merely engaging in the black behavior - we have all grown accustomed to and all eagerly move away from - that is found in every city in America, especially in areas where they are thankfully clustered.

Here's an example of the problem Steve. The Auburn-Gresham community, with a population of 48,743 people that is 97 percent black, is one of the "hardest hit areas" of the black violence in Chicago [Chicago 500th death 2012: Violence, gangs scar Chicago community in 2012, ABC 15, 12-29-12]:

A handful of neighborhoods were especially hard hit, among them Auburn-Gresham; the police district's 43 homicides (as of Dec. 21) ranked highest in the city, and represent an increase of about 20 percent over 2011. The outbreak, fueled partly by feuds among rival factions of Chicago's largest gang, the Gangster Disciples, rippled along 79th street, the main commercial drag. That single corridor offers a window into the wider mayhem that claimed lives, shattered families and left authorities scrambling for answers.

The scars aren't obvious, at first. Drive down West 79th and there's Salaam, a pristine white building of Islamic design, and The Final Call, the restaurant and newspaper operated by the Nation of Islam. Leo Catholic High School for young men. A health clinic. A beauty supply store. Around the corners, neat brick bungalows and block club signs warning: "No Littering. No Loitering. No Loud Music."

Look closer, though, and there are signs of distress and fear: Boarded-up storefronts. Heavy security gates on barber shops and food marts. Thick partitions separating cash registers from customers at the Jamaican jerk and fish joints. Police cars watching kids board city buses at the end of the school day.

Look closer, and the signs of an almost exclusively black community are obvious.

Look even closer, and the historic trends of black people importing their black culture of violence to white areas - which white people then abandon - are even more obvious.

No more city is evident of this fact then Chicagoland.

"Civilization's going to pieces": A Demographic Breakdown of America's Most Dangerous Cities

"Civilization's going to pieces. I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things... The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged... It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

So said Tom Buchanan in the opening chapter of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." Looking at the list of "America's 25 Most Dangerous Cities" is quite depressing, when one thinks that in 1925 - when "The Great Gatsby" was published - cities like Detroit, Flint, Birmingham, Baltimore, Cleveland, Newark, and Buffalo were some of the most important places in America.

Less than 100 years later, these cities have been utterly submerged in a tidal wave of criminality.

Black criminality. And, yes, brown criminality. Driving away businesses, lowering property value, and helping give white flight the necessary lift, thrust, and drag to spirit away, most of the cities on this list have already been submerged by the Black Undertow or are in the process of submitting to the awesome power of the Visible Black Hand of Economics.

Using QuickFacts.Census.Gov, I was able to breakdown the demographics of each of the 25 Most Dangerous Cities in America. Notice any trends?

If You Want Peace, Prepare for War

Coming February 2, 2013

Congratulations to the black and Hispanic people of Chicagoland for once again providing the ammunition necessary to convince Americans why saving money for the future so they can escape from living anywhere near clusters of your people is the single most important ingredient to a safe and productive life [Grim milestone: Austin shooting apparently 500th homicide in Chicago, December 28, 2012, Chicago Tribune]:

Gave Bates smiled through tears as she swiped her hand across her phone, flipping through pictures of her cousin playing around and striking goofy poses. 

"He was a lot of fun, very good at imitating people," Bates said of Nathaniel T. Jackson, 40. "He just had so much fun all the time. And we all grew up together in the same house." 

Jackson was standing outside a store in the Austin neighborhood around 9 p.m. Thursday when someone walked up and shot him in the head, police said. His death was apparently the 500th homicide in Chicago this year, marking a grim milestone. The city last reached that toll in 2008. 

Jackson grew up on the West Side, a few miles away from where he was gunned down, and had been released from prison this past summer after serving a sentence for robbery. He had been shot several years ago, after an earlier stint in jail, and Bates said she constantly warned him to be careful on the street. 

"The last time he was out, someone had shot him several times, in the back,"  Bates said as she stood outside Stroger Hospital, where Jackson was pronounced dead. "He was a fighter, he was a survivor." 

Police had no motive on the shooting outside Noah Foods at Augusta Boulevard and Lavergne Avenue. No one was in custody. 

As of Thursday night, homicides were up 17 percent over last year in Chicago, and shootings had increased by 11 percent, according to police statistics. 

Largely contributing to the spike was the unusual number of homicides that occurred during the early part of the year, when the  city experienced unseasonable warmth. In the first three months of the year, homicides ran about 60 percent ahead of the 2011 rate.

Trying to humanize a thug by making him sound like a typical cocktail lounge comedian - who happened to just get out of jail for the second time - is the name-of-the-game for the Chicago Tribune. 

Now do you begin to understand why dismantling Restrictive Covenants was such an important goal of those hoping to break the back of local resistance to integration? Nothing destroys property value and the ability for local businesses to turn a profit like the introduction of one black family - no matter how posh they might be - to the neighborhood. 

Nothing. 

You begin to realize why the Chicago Tribune once wrote editorials denouncing Martin Luther King as an outside agitator when he came to Chicagoland, where he encountered a people more determined to protect their way of life then he had in places like Birmingham and Atlanta [MLK blogging: From their archives, to my archives, to you, 4.4.08, Chicago Reader]:        

"Where Inflamatory Words Take Us" (Jul. 30)When the Rev. Martin Luther King said that Chicago invited rioting by ignoring and downgrading the "nonviolent" civil rights movement, he engaged in his usual prattle about the "white power structure" and "power elite." Riots, he said, helped whites relieve their guilt feelings because the Negroes can be blamed for lawlessness. As one who as contended that "unjust laws" can be broken with impunity, King, as Mayor Daley has remarked, has made his own contribution to incendiarism. But he does not hold himself at fault: it's all the blame of the "power structure."

"Patience at an End" (Aug. 5; emphasis mine) 

We believe that the vast body of Chicagoans, white and Negro, has come to the end of its patience with tumult and violence in the streets, and that it will support any necessary action to see that lawlessness is banished.

As a first step, police have in custody a 15-year-old charged with aggravated battery in the assault on the firemen. We believe that the courts should impose the stiffest penalty that the law allows in order to warn street corner gangs that from now on they are not going to be let off with kid-glove treatment.

The same treatment should be accorded the imported prophets of "nonviolence" who are seeking to incite trouble with marches into white neighborhoods. The Rev. Martin Luther King of Atlanta is expected to lead another of these forays into the Gage Park area, where whites were baited into a near-riot last week-end which resulted in injuries to some 50 persons, a score of whom were policemen, and a dozen cars were burned.

It would be well to advise King in advance that if he manages to produce a similar result he and his lieutenants can expect to find themselves in the lockup. King profited from a sojourn of this kind in the south by writing a so-called "Letter from Birmingham Jail." . . . 

"Why Must We Put Up With Daily Brawls?" (Aug. 9)

The "civil rights" marchers are only hurting themselves and their cause. Chicago is retrogressing to the condition of a frontier town in early days, where shots are fired in the air and challenges to combat are hurled. The town marshals are busier than in a TV western.

Why are they making phony civil rights marches? All for what? Simply because a lot of misguided people are induced to slog down sidewalks in quiet communities at the behest of King, Raby, Bevel, and the rest of the crop of paid professional agitators. What do these agitators think they are accomplishing? "I have to do this--to expose myself--to bring this hate into the open," King says self-righteously. Who gave him the commission, and what is the result except to inflate his vanity?

The time has come when the great body of fine and decent Negro Chicagoans ought to take action to get King off their backs. They have found homes here, and opportunities seldom found in southern states. Their incomes have enormously improved. They have the impartial protection of the law, and they are accustomed to peace and order. They are contributing to Chicago, not trying to tear Chicago down.

Sunday's march was thru the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood, a community of modest but good homes. Families ordinarily would be enjoying the chance to sit on the front porch reading the paper, to sprinkle their lawns and work in their gardens, or go to the park or beach. Instead, they are confronted by a shuffling procession of strangers carrying signs and posing as martyrs. The spectacle is repulsive to right-thinking people.

"The Sabotage of Chicago" (Aug. 18; watch for the rather stunning interpretation of anti-criminal syndicate laws at the end, it's pretty audacious. Emphases mine.)

It is not enough that Martin Luther King and his "nonviolent" marchers have brought violence, resentment, and global notoriety to Chicago. On top of all this, according to Police Supt. O.W. Wilson, they are largely to blame for a 25 percent increase in the city's crime rate.The police feel obligated to protect them. It has been their deliberate tactic to disperse the police force so that it is spread too thin to be effective anywhere. . . .

With the police thus tied up, it is natural that professional criminals and hoodlums should take advantage of the the opportunity to prey upon the public in their own manner. Nor is it irrelevant to note that there were 72 murders in Chicago in July--an all time high for any month. . . . 

What a different tune the Chicago Tribune once sang; instead of trying paint career black thugs/criminals such as Nathaniel T. Jackson as a comedic genius, the paper once published the truth about Organized Blackness. 

And now, on February 2, 2013, so will we. 

Second City Confidential: The Black Experience in Chicagoland will be a book like none other; a history of black people in Chicago - and the conditions they have created for themselves - from the pen of a Paul Kersey. 

In 2012 we brought you Escape from Detroit and Black Mecca Down. In 2013, we start with the Second City. 

KMSP-TV

A Kernel of Truth: What a Lawsuit Filed by Three Black Teachers in Chicago Tells us About Life in Obama's City

Occasionally, a story is reported in the press containing kernels of truth which haven't quite popped correctly to produce the buttery, easily digestible popcorn the media usually feeds the public  [3 teachers, union sue CPS, allege racial bias School overhauls target South: West side campuses with higher percentages of African-American staff, educators say, Chicago Tribune, December 28, 2012]:

Three Chicago Public Schools teachers who lost their jobs this year said in a lawsuit that the district's process for "turnaround" schools is racially discriminatory because it targets West and South side campuses with a higher percentage of African-American teachers and staff. 

The teachers, Donald L. Garrett Jr., Robert Green and Vivonell Brown Jr., are joined in the federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Chicago Teachers Union. The lawsuit asks for class-action status, saying the district discriminates against African-American teachers and paraprofessionals when it selects schools for "turnaround" based on performance, "resulting in the termination of all employees of the schools."  

The lawsuit said the percentage of African-Americans teaching in the district has declined from about 41 percent in 2000 to about 29 percent in 2011. That corresponds with the district's "intentional actions, policies and practices to phase out, close, combine or reconstitute purportedly poor-performing schools," the lawsuit said. 

In February, the district designated 10 schools as "turnaround" and later fired 347 tenured teachers from those schools, along with staff, the lawsuit said. CPS declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, saying it hadn't yet been served.

So schools in the less than 8 percent white (out of 404,000 students) Chicago Public Schools system that are in need of "turnaround" also happen to have both a high percentage of black teachers and black students? Teach for America jobs in the urban areas of America, especially Chicago, are a highly sought-after resume builder for white kids hoping one day to have their story of improving the lives of minority children told in a best-selling non-fiction work or in a Hollywood feature.

At the very least, a Lifetime original movie will do.

The few kernels of truth contained in this Chicago Tribune story on displaced black teachers is nothing compared to disposed kernels of veracity, which, when pieced together, provide a hilarious glimpse into the sunk cost known as Chicago Public Schools, and the impending insolvency of the city of Chicago once the almost 87 percent brown and black children of the CPS system grow to maturity.

First, no matter the amount of money or time invested by - preferably white - pedagogues, the pesky achievement gap is present in the CPS system [CPS fails to close performance gap: Black students still losing academic ground despite reforms, study finds,11-14-2011, Chicago Tribune]:

 Twenty years of reform efforts and programs targeting low-income families in Chicago Public Schools has only widened the performance gap between white and African-American students, a troubling trend at odds with what has occurred nationally. 

Across the city, and spanning three eras of CPS leadership, black elementary school students have lost ground to their white, Latino and Asian classmates in testing proficiency in math and reading, according to a recent analysis by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. 

Even for schools so often weighed down by violence, poverty and dysfunction in their neighborhoods, news of this growing deficit was surprising to researchers considering the strides African-American students had made nationally over the same period. 

"It has certainly been shocking to us to discover there has been progress in some areas but without equity progress not shared equally among all the students," said Marisa de la Torre, a researcher on a recent report by the consortium that examined two decades of changes within CPS. "You don't really want to leave one group of students behind." 

This is an important issue in Chicago, where almost half of CPS students are black, the vast majority from low-income households. Yet for all the talk and attention paid to boosting African-American achievement in recent years, there has been no such breakthrough.

Well... what exactly does a "turnaround" school like, save one that practices either grade inflation or outright cheating?

But what kind of culture, what kind of climate do these children - of which, only 8 percent are white - create in the CPS system? Besides the horrible grades and test scores the primarily non-white children, especially in the almost entirely black South Side of Chicago, produce, what does the environment look like in the CPS system? 

How about one that has an Orwellian-sounding "CPS Security Command Center" -- a 24/7 manned eye-in-the-sky that provides the most comprehensive school monitoring and surveillance in the nation. Yes, you read that correctly -- a "CPS Security Command Center" exists on a 24/7 basis in Chicago, a powerful reminder of the type of conditions and environment created by a student population that is only 8 percent white [New CPS Security Chief to Gain Trust, Involve Community to Keep Students Safe, MyFox Chicago, March 29,2012]:

Every parent wants to send their kids to a great school. But thousands of parents just pray their children come home in one piece. Without safety, a school can't be great. 

In her first interview since taking over this area for Chicago Public Schools, the new Chief of Security spoke about how she's about a whole new way of keeping students safe. 

Metal detectors, pat-downs and backpack searches. They're the first order of the day in many schools - not exactly the ritual of champions. 

"Immediately when you see those metal detectors, it sets in your mind, oh my goodness, this is a place where they need metal detectors?" CPS Security Chief Jaine Chou said. "You know you're on guard suddenly." 

"Back in the early 90s it was really rough in the schools, it's definitely better now," CPS security officer Dave Wagner said. "I think better security procedures, safe practices, you know." 

The retired Chicago police sergeant works in the CPS Security Command Center, one of the most extensive school surveillance operations in the country. It's still manned 24-7. 

Chou denied that cameras are replacing people to save money. On the contrary, she said relationships are key to her strategy. 

"A kid who has a tip is not going to to be able to tell that tip to a camera," Chou said. "That kid is going to have to tell that tip to an adult that they trust." 

Chou backs up her holistic approach with a realistic hotline to the cops. She just hopes to use it less and less. 

"If we can get the groundswell of the students, of the families, of the community, ideally you can start weaning people off of the need for the hardcore tactics," Chou said. "I think across the country people are starting to see that law enforcement alone is not going to be enough."

These are the conditions created by a student population that is 87 percent black and brown in the CPS system; a Big Brother state has been assembled in Chicago to babysit the 404,000+ students enrolled in the K-12 CPS system, of which only eight percent are white. 

And black teachers are suing over being fired from an area of the city that is exclusively black, the conditions created by these students requiring the erection of a sophisticated infrastructure of surveillance humming 24/7? Just how invasive our cameras in the CPS system? [Chicago Public Schools officials eyeing updated security cameras for 14 high schools

District proposing $7 million for new high-definition surveillance devices, which will feed to police stations and citywide network, Chicago Tribune, July 24, 2011]:

The Chicago Public Schools' current security camera system, introduced in 1999, has 7,000-plus analog cameras across 268 schools. At 365 schools, there are no security cameras. Two other high schools, Solorio and South Shore, already have received the new digital cameras.

In light of the Newtown Tragedy, we got this promise from Chairman Chou, I'm sorry, Chief of Security for the CPS system [Security chief vows no further cuts in uniformed cops at CPS high schools, Chicago Sun-Times, 12-17-12]:

The security chief for Chicago Public Schools vowed Monday to absorb a $5 million cut in annual security funding with no further cuts in the 153 uniformed police officers permanently assigned to high schools.

“We will not be impacting the number of full-time officers we have inside schools today,” chief safety and security officer Jadine Chou said in the wake of the Connecticut school massacre.

Chou acknowledged that the school security budget has been reduced — from $18 million a year ago to $13 million this year.

Asked how she plans to absorb that $5 million cut without reducing the number of officers, “We’re still working with the police and exploring other avenues that can accomplish the same goal. Other efficiencies,” she said, refusing to reveal specifics.

“It is my charge to make the appropriate allocation changes. I’m not prepared to discuss how we will do that. But we will do it while maintaining the level of safety. That will not include reducing police presence inside the schools.”

Last year, high schools were offered $25,000 in cash for every police officer they agreed to give up in a move that CPS hoped would reduce the number of officers permanently assigned to high schools from 200 to 60. That would have freed 140 officers for street duty.

At the time, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he was not certain whether every high school needed two uniformed officers stationed inside at a cost of $25 million or whether there was another, more cost-effective way to provide the same level of security.

The second look by a school system drowning in red ink was prompted by a tripling in the annual tab for police service.

“They’re asking some fundamental questions that need to be asked. Just because it was done in the past doesn’t mean it was the right way to do it or the most cost-effective way to do it,” the mayor said at the time.

“Schools are different. Student bodies are different. The officers are different. How do we achieve the level of safety I want across every school, regardless of where it is, and what is the best way to achieve it?”

Schools are different; student bodies are different. The Chicago Public System is a reminder of the type of academic and moral culture created by a K-12 population that is 87 percent black and brown; it's a reminder of the extreme measures necessary in the implementation of a massive security apparatus aptly named

"CPS Security Command Center" -- a 24/7 manned eye-in-the-sky that provides the most comprehensive school monitoring and surveillance in the nation. 

There is no "turnaround" for the Chicago Public System or the city of Chicago; one day, there will simply be a turning away of any attention on the city of Chicago, allowing the citizens of the Second City to wallow in the misery of the conditions their off-springs and themselves have created. 

Why did segregation once exist? 

Look upon the 2012 CPS system and marvel at the reason a school system that is eight percent white must have something called a "CPS Security Command Center" to maintain order.

Life During Wartime: 8% White Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Spending on Security, Police and Metal Detectors

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) already have armed cops in schools; and metal detectors; and cameras; and resource officers; and off-duty cops...

In response to the massacre in Newtown, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said, "“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said at a news conference in Washington. LaPierre also called on Congress to act immediately “to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school in this nation.”

Police officers in schools? What if a city in America, whose demographics currently look like what a potential future America might look like, offers a glimpse into a world where police are in every classroom?

Chicago.

A city that is roughly 33 percent white, 33 percent black and 33 percent Hispanic offers a public school system of 400,000+ students that is 41 percent black, 44 percent Hispanic and 8 percent white.

It's a glimpse into the type of demographic the managerial elite of the Disingenuous White Liberal (DWL) variety hope to replicate across America -- of course, their children attend private schools, free from the burden of unruly black children.

What is life like inside the Chicago Public School (CPS) system? Well... it's a low-level security prison [Student and Teacher Safety in Chicago Public Schools: The Roles of Community Context and School Social Organization, University of Chicago, May 2011]:

  ...metal detectors, which are present throughout CPS high schools, greet students upon entering; folding tables corral students at the main entrance and at informal security “checkpoints” throughout hallways; folding metal gates are pulled across entrances to stairwells and padlocked. There is a constant police presence outside and inside the school.

And you wonder why white parents fled to the suburbs or send their children to private schools; these are the conditions that black and brown children create in public schools, necessitating extreme measures to prevent violence in the high schools of Chicago. When it happens, administrators are baffled, considering the precautions taken to ensure a somewhat peaceful environment [2 wounded in Chicago school shooting, 4/11/2007, USA TODAY]:

 As two teens recovered from bullet wounds, authorities tried to determine how one of them got a 9 mm handgun past a school's metal detectors and into a science classroom where the gun accidentally discharged.  

 "How the weapon got into the building obviously is a main concern for us," said Michael Vaughn, a spokesman for Chicago Public Schools. Students are required to go through metal detectors at the school's main entrances, he said. School administrators indicated the teen who brought the gun to school arrived later in the school day, Vaughn said.  

But students are supposed to be screened any time they enter the building, he said. School officials planned to interview the students involved and review footage from the school's extensive surveillance camera system, Vaughn said. Additional security measures would be used to help screen students at the building's entrances, he said.

Now do you understand why the CPS system has so few white kids? Now do you understand why the CPS system must exert a not insignificant portion of its yearly budget on maintaining a police presence in all the high schools? [Chicago Public Schools Could Cut Cops In Budget Crisis, 7/6/2011, Huffington Post]:

For the last three years, two uniformed Chicago police officers have been stationed at each of the city's roughly 100 public high schools. 

But as the Chicago Public Schools stare down the barrel of a $700 million budget deficit, every dollar of spending is being called into question. With the police department now demanding more than three times what CPS has been paying them for the officers in schools, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, the district plans to take a much closer look at the program. 

Over the weekend, the paper wrote that CPS has been paying the police department around $8 million a year for the officers. But the Chicago Police Department has long insisted that that wasn't nearly enough: in fact, they argue, police supervision costs more like $25 million a year. 

With Rahm Emanuel's election as mayor, his newly-appointed schools team revisited the question and found the CPD's claim to be reasonable. It agreed that the full cost should be $25 million a year -- and also agreed to pay the difference from the last three years. 

That means CPS is on the hook for around $70 million to the police force this year, the Sun-Timeswrites.

Why the NRA is so reticent on the matters of the true nature of school violence (and gun violence) in America is beyond me... why they can't mention the true reason behind the rising cost of policing the increasingly diverse United States is a testament to the ineffectual nature of "conservative" resistance. 

Of course, that's not the only cost to the CPS system. In the book "Gun Violence: The Real Cost" by Philip J. Cook , we learn on p. 88-89 just how "low-level" the security presence in the 8 percent white, 86 percent brown/black CPS really is (perhaps the more tactical word would be... isn't):

Consider, for example, the security expenditures made by the Chicago pubic school system. Each of the city’s 69 public high schools has a walk-through metal detector that cost between $2,500 and $3,000 to purchase. The Chicago pubic school system also employs 994 full0-time security personnel who each cost the system around $25,000 per year, in addition to 445 off-duty Chicago police officers who work part-time for the schools at an annual cost of around $15,000 and 140 full-time police officers from the Chicago Police Department’s Youth Division who are permanently assigned to the public schools at an annual cost of around $67,000. The Chicago pubic school system thus spends around $41 million each year for school security personnel, in addition to the costs of purchasing and maintaining metal detectors. While some of these preventive measures would stay in place even if gun misuse was eliminated, since knives and box-cutters will still pose a threat to student safety, the level of expenditures would almost surely be lower in a world without gun violence. 

Now do you understand why the CPS system has so few white students? Adam Lanza wasn't a student or an educator at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut -- the almost exclusively non-white students in the CPS system require an increasingly high-level and sophisticated security measures to maintain a semblance of peace and discipline.

Life During Wartime: A Glimpse in the War Zone known as Chicago Public Schools

Chicago and the quality of life found in the CPS system represents the future for all of America, unless brave men and women dare stand and speak a truth that members of the NRA and its executive board are fearful of ever being exposed to: the level of expenditures on security measures in the CPS system would almost surely be lower in a nation without brown or black people;  the level of expenditures on security measures in the entire nation would almost surely be lower without brown or black people.

At least J.P Morgan and the federal government are providing grants to the CPS system to combat the violence caused by black and brown children, as opposed to passing the cost on to the already beleaguered taxpayer of Cook County and the state of Illinois [Chicago Public Schools Focus on Security, Chicago Defender, 1-27-2010]

During the 2008-09 school year there were 116,000 incidents recorded at CPS. Incidents range from a shouting match between students to a food fight in the cafeteria. 

But the total number of “serious misconduct” incidents, which usually means an occurrence so bad, such as violence, that the student was either suspended or expelled, was 17,000, according to Shields. 

There is a minimum of two Chicago police officers assigned to each high school.And like Shields, who spent 23 years with CPD, Ron Huberman, chief executive officer for CPS, is also a former Chicago cop. 

But CPS does not rely solely on police assistance when it comes to security for its 408,000 students, said Shields. It relies more on the 2,000 security guards on CPS payroll - with a starting salary of $26,000 - and the 6,200 cameras installed throughout the school district. There are an average of seven security guards at each high school. 

And while the bulk of its security budget is spent on personnel costs, Shields, who earns $150,000 a year, said long term plans include using more cameras.“Video surveillance is a lot more useful because security guards can only be in one place at a time. Cameras are helping us immensely. Plus, cameras can capture activity in the community, which is where most school incidents occur,” he said.J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. awarded CPS a $2.5 million grant, which will be used to purchase more cameras. 

“J.P. Morgan is the first major corporation to step for security at CPS and we thank them,” Shields said. “We are also reaching out to other corporations for help.”Huberman said its security efforts are paying off. 

“There were 143 CPS students shot last school year and this school year there were only 102, so violence incidents are down,” he said. “And none of these shootings took place on school grounds.” 

CPS received $30 million in federal stimulus money to combat violence and Huberman added that among the things he plans to do is to make traveling to and from school more safer for students. 

“We plan to spend $2 million to develop a safe passage program to make sure students are safe when traveling to and from school,” he told the Defender. 

Additionally, CPS will award a $10 million contract to a community organization to assist it with conflict resolutions strategies, which could include in-school suspensions rather than at-home suspensions. The final $18 million will be used to create a Culture of Calm program at designated schools identified to have high incidents of violence. There are 38 schools targeted for the new program, many of them are on the South Side.

The South Side of Chicago? That area is almost entirely black, where the descendants of the "great migration" of black people from the Southern states reside... the joys of "Manifest Destruction"...

But the NRA won't make any noise on this subject, nor will anyone on the "right".

Instead, we live in a nation ruled by the radical left, who publish white papers like this: [The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve Research-based Proposals To Strengthen Elementary And Secondary Education In The Chicago Public Schools, Issued by the Chicago Teachers Union, February 2012]: 

Chicago’s Students Deserve Social Justice SEGREGATED SCHOOLING

CPS schools operate in an environment of intense segregation, a culmination of decades of racist public policies and market forces that have segregated Chicago’s communities and neighborhoods. Within CPS, 69% of all African American students (and 42% of Latinos) go to schools that are “intensely segregated” — schools that have more than 90% of their student body composed of the same ethnicity. 

Chicago Public Schools remains one of the urban school systems that “only a few percentage points from an experience of total apartheid.” 

More than three-fourths of CPS students come from families who are eligible for free lunch, which for a family of four means earning less than $30,000 a year. 

Nearly half of all African American students (71,500) and one-third of all Latino students (58,700) go to a school where more than 90% of the students qualify for free lunch. Only 3.3% of white students go to such schools. White students typically attend schools where fewer than 25% of students are free-lunch eligible. 

This is the case in more than two-thirds of schools with a majority of white students. 

THE CRIMINALIZATION OF STUDENTS

These pressures for test results manifest not only in instructional and managerial practices but often in punitive measures directed against students and teachers. Nationwide, minorities are suspended at substantially higher rates than white students, and this discipline gap has increased over time. 

56 CPS had the highest suspension rate of all big-city school districts in 2008, with 13% of students suspended. One out of every four Black male students was suspended. Black males comprised nearly the majority of suspensions despite being only a quarter of the CPS student population.  Police involvement in CPS also disproportionately impacts black students. 

Of the 5,574 juveniles arrested on CPS grounds in 2010, 74% were African American. These issues are prevalent at charter schools as well. Unwarranted punitive measures, expulsions and “counseling out” of disruptive students are common at schools run by private management organizations. 

When standardized testing results determine the relative value of students, and schools run by private operators are unaccountable to the public, these schools push out troubled low-performing students. 

Punitive policies against the most disadvantaged students, standards of education prescribed for others by those in power, and segregated educational opportunities are symptomatic of corporate-run public education, whose agenda is disempowering working-class communities. This strategy of educating students is inequitable and does not improve learning. 

An oft-referenced model of school improvement is Finland, yet policymakers fail to grasp the fundamental goal of Finland’s educational reforms: to establish educational equity for all students. 

What would it cost to have equitable treatment of our children? In our society students segregated by socio-economic status do not have equal access to education. Merely equalizing resources between the children of the haves and have-nots is insufficient. Students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds require additional support services to supplement their learning and emotional growth. 

Yet CPS does not even attempt this ‘nominal’ equity. Bringing real equity into the education system will require a depth of commitment and resources that is totally outside the scope of CPS’ current “reform” agenda. Nearly 60 years since the famous Brown vs. Board of Education decision to end racist inequities in education, CPS and other public school systems are moving in the opposite direction. Schools are becoming more segregated and education less equitable, often under the guise of “closing the achievement gap.” Our students do not deserve this!

Actually, the students of the CPS system (of which only 8 percent are white) do deserve everything they get, especially the extreme security measures necessary for creating a safe environment for the teachers brave enough to babysit the 85-87 percent black or brown students of the CPS system. 

The reason segregation exists in Chicago is powerfully illustrated by the reality of the CPS system, a point the NRA can't make when addressing gun violence in America; that a mentally disturbed white kid killed a bunch of kids in Newtown has become the casus belli against private ownership of legal firearms in America, while the conditions that black and brown kids create the CPS system is a crisis that only DWLs care about when writing long articles bemoaning how police are only necessary in non-white schools. 

This is America in 2012. 

It won't last forever. 

All it takes is good men and women to say "enough." 

If not, the conditions of the CPS system are coming to a school district near you (at least we know no further cuts will be made to the security measures in place in Chicago Public Schools). 

And your guns will be confiscated in the process.