The EconomistJuly 25th 2020 Special reportThe Midwest 72 African-Americans in Chicago.
Chicago can feel almost as segregated as South Africa just after
apartheid. Only part of the problem is policing. Protests erupted
across America this summer after the killing of George Floyd. Peo-
ple were furious because jittery or callous police have long killed
black Americans with so few consequences. Minneapolis was
pressed to disband its police department. Chicago was convulsed
in 2014 when video showed a policeman shooting a teenager, La-
quan McDonald, 16 times. The officer’s trial ended with the first
murder conviction for an on-duty Chicago policeman in almost
half a century. Now its police operate under a “consent decree”, in
which the Justice Department oversees reform.
The bigger concerns are inequality and segregation. Carmelo
Barbaro, at the University of Chicago, says too many people are
born in neighbourhoods that limit their prospects. Historical pro-
blems are known: black students kept out of white schools; black
people denied mortgages; violent attacks by white residents who
corralled African-Americans into a few areas of cities. Formally
such restrictions no longer exist. De facto many do.
History matters
Until a century ago, the Midwest was mainly settled by white im-
migrants, especially farmers, craftsmen and traders who had come
from central and northern Europe. As Isabel Wilkerson has writ-
ten, the subsequent influx of black southerners coming north to
escape Jim Crow was dramatic, disruptive and ill-managed. For six
decades after 1915 millions of people flocked to the industrial Mid-
west. Chicago’s black population rocketed from less than 3%
(44,000 people) to more than 33% (or 1m). Northern, Germanic
whites were “brittle” in their response, says John Gurda, a histori-
an of Milwaukee. Poorer white people often saw newcomers as
gate-crashers competing for jobs and housing.
African-Americans were forced into a few places, creating a
housing pattern discernible today. Of the 25 cities with the worst
racial segregation in America, 15 are in the Midwest. Myron Orfield
of the University of Minnesota Law School says that racial divi-
sions have increased in Minneapolis-St Paul this century. Poverty
and race are closely aligned. In Madison, Wisconsin’s capital, 42%
of the black population live in poverty, against 10.5% of white resi-
dents. Julie Moore Wolfe, mayor of Decatur, Illinois, says decades
of white flight and racial sorting has left the town more divided
than ever. She foresees more problems because of a “horrific”
high-school drop-out rate of over 50% for black boys.
James Loewen has documented how
residents in small towns in Illinois, even in
the late 20th century, excluded African-
Americans. Their method was blunt: signs
on roadsides threatened to kill black peo-
ple present after dark. He began research
into “sundown towns” in 1999 and expect-
ed to discover ten historical examples in
the state. Instead by 2018 he described find-
ing 507. Many remain overwhelmingly
white. Activists such as Jamala Rogers and
Tef Poe, in St. Louis, Missouri, say nobody
should be surprised. And when black peo-
ple are no longer forcibly excluded,
wealthy white folk often go.
After many went to leafy Clayton county
beyond St. Louis’s airport, poorer black
people moved into Ferguson on the edge of
the city. As its fiscal base collapsed, police
were ordered to raise revenue from fines
for driving offences. They mostly targeted
black drivers. These and other local finesbrought in 20% of Ferguson’s city budget
by 2013, just before a policeman, in 2014,
killed Michael Brown, a black teenager,
sparking big protests. Don’t just focus on
police, says Walter Johnson, author of a
history of St. Louis. Look at structures that
foster racism, such as how the still white-
run city farmed “its poor and working-class
black population for revenue”.
The notorious eight-mile line in Detroit
divides rich, mostly white, suburbs from
the 80%-black city. Detroit’s (white) mayor, Michael Duggan, talks
of forming ten commercial corridors to spread the wealth. But suc-
cess depends on breaching that line. Without public transport, sty-
mied by suburban officials, city residents cannot travel for jobs.
Milwaukee is the most racially segregated of America’s 51 large
metro areas. Almost 80% of its black residents would have to move
to be distributed similarly to whites. Instead, most have been
clumped for decades near the defunct site of a car-parts maker.
Some places are vibrant, but most are not. In one area 42% of
households are in poverty, six times more than in nearby suburbs.
Walk around the north side and you see why so many of the 7m
black Midwesterners feel trapped. Chris Arnade, a writer who
spent two years documenting “back-row towns”, says desperate
people end up seeking salvation through the church, guns or
drugs. Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin’s first black lieutenant-gover-
nor, said the summer protests call for actions to reduce “systemic
inequity and injustice”.
Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s mayor, says the answer is to tackle
poverty, while facing up to “the original sin of slavery” and 400
years of repression. She would like to redirect city spending on the
police to stricken neighbourhoods. A paper for the Brookings In-
stitution two years ago by Benjamin Austin, Edward Glaeser and
Lawrence Summers, points to the importance of jobs. It noted that
many of America’s worst social and economic problems are in the
Midwest. In Flint, a mostly black city in Michigan, the male jobless
rate was over 35% even when America had near full employment.
Cities that don’t grow, notes Mr Glaeser, can’t change the “hous-
ing patterns established in the 1950s to 1970s”. Those that do, like
Portland and Seattle in the west, are better at integrating schools
and housing. Without growth, gains for one racial group often
make another feel it is losing. Yet the Midwest has examples of pro-
gress. John Cranley, mayor of Cincinnati, says that in race riots in
2001 “we hit rock bottom”. But his city has
managed to cut poverty, improve troubled
neighbourhoods and reform the police.
Cincinnati is trying to spread entrepre-
neurial activity by getting more black busi-
nesses as suppliers to its biggest compa-
nies, Procter & Gamble and Kroger.
Darrin Redus, a local business accelera-
tor, says that 67 black-owned firms now do
business worth $1.2bn in annual revenues,
employing some 3,500 people. His goal,
pre-pandemic, was to double those figures
by 2023. Such efforts to spread prosperity
are essential for overall urban success, he
insists. Others say that only when black
residents of cities are helped to accumulate
wealth will the economy of the whole city
benefit. Mr Barnes is blunter. Not tackling
structural problems on race is like ignoring
internal bleeding, he says. “You may not
see it, but the outcome will be catastrophic
if left untreated.” 7The big sort
United States, black-white segregation,bymetroarea
2013-17, 100=complete segregationSource: Governing analysis of 2017,
five-year American Community Survey*Metro areaswithblack
populations over 10,000USmedian*MinneapolisKansas CityColumbusIndianapolisPittsburghCincinnatiSt. LouisClevelandDetroitChicagoMilwaukee10075502503.62.22.12.12.32.22.82.04.3 439.51.6Population, 2019, mChicago can feel
almost as segre-
gated as South
Africa just after
apartheid