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A City, Divided

Updated: Nov 9, 2020

Redlining, a practice that began in the 1930s in Chicago has had a great impact particularly seen through education, health, justice & gender inequality practices.


lines of Illinois
Map credit: Frankie Dintin

Redlining refers to bank lenders denying loans to residents based on where they live. The lenders used red markers to demarcate areas with red ink that they would not assist, this largely determined by race. Nowhere clearer is this discriminatory practice shown than in a 2019 exhibit at Chicago’s Federal Reserve.


The exhibit contained the 1930s - era textbook that states:

"People of color certainly have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness but they must recognize the economic disturbance which their presence in a white neighborhood causes and forego their desire to split off from the established district where the rest of their race lives.”

Protest about education is a human right
Photo credit: Kari Lydersen

Educational Gaps


4/10 students don’t graduate

  • Children deserve a quality education. That 40% of CPS students do not graduate is unacceptable. Adequate teaching and education are vital for the future of any city and Chicago do itself a disservice by largely failing its youth. If this city is to have a prosperous future, discriminatory educational practices must end.

  • School closures due to being deemed as “failing” disproportionately located in black and Latinx neighborhoods.

  • Supposed school failures are based on faulty comparisons between schools in low-income areas against those in affluent communities. This is unjust and must stop.


Photo credit: Anna Shvets

Health Gap


White Chicagoans live 30 years longer than Blacks in the city.

  • This is largely based on what neighborhood one lives in. Residents of the affluent Streeterville compared to those in the largely Black and underserved Englewood live much longer. Race should not determine the length of one's life.

No other large city in the United States has this big of a gap

  • This is unsustainable and reflective of the discrimination that exists in present-day Chicago. The life expectancy of a city’s residents is one way to measure a city’s success. Chicago must do more for its older residents if it wants to be viewed positively.


Photo credit: Josh Hild

Justice Gap


Million dollar blocks,” areas in Chicago where a million dollars or greater go towards incarceration; these neighborhoods largely correspond with communities that have majority low-income residents. The neighborhoods most affected include Austin, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and West Englewood.

  • A child’s future should not be determined by the area in which they live. These “million-dollar blocks” are a blemish to Chicago’s reputation

The cars of Black and Latinx families are searched four times more than white Chicagoans, this despite Whites being twice as likely to be in the possession of illegal goods or drugs.

  • Such a discrepancy is heinous. I ask you, the reader:


“What discriminatory practices have you known that were influenced by redlining?"


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