On avoiding certain neighborhoods

“These tour guides are fighting segregation in Chicago,” read the headline in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune. The article featured two Black Chicagoans who are acquainting people with segregated neighborhoods where typically tourists don’t go. Sherman “Dilla” Thomas’s Chicago Mahogany bus tours take visitors, many of whom are white suburbanites, into South and West Side neighborhoods. Tonika Johnson’s Folded Map Project connects Chicago residents whose addresses are the same except for the “North” or “South” designation.

“Once you learn about the history of a place, it increases the value that you fell about that place, and it can make you question the things that you hear,” the article quoted Johnson.

Thomas admitted that his guests want to steer the discussion to gangs and drugs in his featured neighborhoods, which include North Lawndale, Bronzeville, Englewood, Pullman/Roseland, and Chatham. He doesn’t shy away from talking about gangs but discusses them in the context of causes. Last spring I took Thomas’s wonderful bus tour of North Lawndale, one of the most crime-ridden areas of Chicago. I wondered about how safe I would have felt had it been a walking tour.

A couple of months later, I tested my limits. The Chicago Architecture Center announced a free Juneteenth tour of Oak Woods Cemetery in the Grand Crossing neighborhood on the South Side. No one I asked felt comfortable going. I would have gone in a car but felt nervous taking a bus trip that required a transfer on 67th Street. So I stayed home and wondered about the line between prudence and prejudice. I don’t know whether my decision was racist, but antiracist activist Ibram Y. Kendi might think so. “The idea of the dangerous Black neighborhood is the most dangerous racist idea,” he has said.

Ten years ago an app came out called “Ghetto Tracker” to help people new in a town avoid so-called unsafe areas. After accusations of racism, the name was changed to “Good Part of Town,” but the app was still taken down within days. Other apps reportedly provide crime statistics in less offensive ways, but the ACLU finds them all concerning because they result in “teleological redlining.”

“This redlining could have devastating and destabilizing effects on already marginalized and disenfranchised communities whose businesses would lose foot traffic,” the ACLU said. “And this redlining would likely serve to reinforce existing harmful and negative stereotypes about poor communities and communities of color.” 

I feel embarrassed as a Chicago Greeter that the only Black neighborhood in Chicago with which I’m familiar is Bronzeville. 

What to do? Tonika Johnson has an easy ask: just learn.

“[J]ust focus on taking your time learning,” she said in the Tribune article. “That’s enough and that’s transformative alone.”

I have much to learn, and there are many ways to do so.