September 27, 2008 Disparities Between Blacks and Asians in Chicago

During the twentieth century there were large migrations of many ethnicities to Chicago, two of the biggest immigrant groups were Asian Americans, from the completed transcontinental railways, and the African Americans, that became displaced after the sharecrop system of the cotton plantation became mechanized. While it can be said that African Americans were forced into slums and ghettos, why had the Asians moved into a tight knit communities? While, it is said Asians involuntary segregated themselves and the blacks were forcefully segregated because of many important factors. Some of this can easily be answered by Mayor Richard Daley’s political machine or the ripple effects of segregation laws from the south. Though, the way this all played out can still be seen today and shows that Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in America.

After the completion of the transcontinental railways, Asians from the West Coast began to spread out to the Midwest, most of them ending up in Chicago. This migration was mostly due to pressure from the white majority that targeted and persecuted as well as from the race riots that occurred in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 1860’s. But the largest influx of Asians to Chicago began in the 1950’s and 60’s when communism began to take hold in China. The first Chinese community in Chicago was built around Van Burren and Clark Streets. The community then moved outside the Chicago’s Loop because of the cities 1960’s housing problems, discrimination from increased rent on Asians renting apartments, and the pressures of the finical district in Chicago growing within the Loop. So in response, the community leaders moved the community to an 8 block square, bounded by Cermak Road, the railways, Wentworth and south to 26^th Street. This small community is thriving, and has only recently begun to spread past its boundaries.

The Chinese culture is strong on family values. You may see many families all living together, from grandparents to newborns all relatively close. While in America, Asians may want to keep their values strong, this is one reason that they live in close communities. Another reason why Asians in America live in close communities is because the “Far Eastern Culture” is much different than the “Western American Culture” and in fear that they may end up melting into the rest of American Society, they stress their culture from their food and architecture, to their holidays and ceremonies. While walking in Chinatown you see this in the most obvious fashion and by looking around it tells you, “This is a Chinese Community! Welcome to Chicago’s Chinatown!”

As the steady migration of Asian Americans to Chinatown continued, African Americans moving from the South began to struggle to Chicago. African Americans moved from the South because of the vast unequal treatment and word from the North about easy, higher paying jobs that blacks could work. Blacks were moving into the poorer areas of Chicago’s Southside, which was referred to as the “Black Belt”, and while Chinatown is in the “Black Belt” the disparity between the two communities are immensely seen. It can also be said, that as blacks moved up from the South, they lived with family members or friends that made their way to Chicago too, creating a close knit community. Over time the new migrants would then establish a well paying job they would move out and buy their own place. This is ironically similar to the way Chinatown migrants worked.

Ii my opinion one of the problems in why blacks then began to struggle was because they were migrating up in such larger numbers. This caused the borders from which blacks lived to boil out into predominantly white communities. Whites then felt threatened and targeted blacks by hazing any new blacks into the white neighborhoods. This tension built and in the view of whites the lager black community is more of a threat than the Asian community.

Chicago’s Mayor at the time Richard Daley used this segregation to his advantage. The Democratic Machine, as it is called, kept groups segregated by having the area elect an alderman of the areas predominant race. The mayor pressures the alderman to get there voters out and in turn he promises the aldermen that he would bring jobs to that area. Mayor Daley kept the areas in his favor by also promising that he will keep Irish neighborhoods Irish, Jewish neighborhoods Jewish, and black neighborhoods black. This continued to keep Chicago so largely segregated.

The blacks struggle also comes from the rippling effect of the “Jim Crow Laws” of the South. In which blacks were mistreated and segregated by these laws. The hatred of blacks grows and the economies in which the blacks live struggle and grow into ghettos since they are the areas that they were forced to and the unwanted spots by whites.

Keeping blacks in tight areas caused the need for more housing and so the Chicago Housing Authority built large housing units in these areas. These housing projects became run down and unkempt because the police let violence and crime to grow. This is where the projects became ghettos and so the black community became disastrous compared to Chinatown’s successful community.

These two large migrant groups became largely dissimilar and it continues to this day, while Chinatown is still rather small and blacks are still kept within the Southside or near the Chicago Housing’s projects. It is problematic and difficult to help this segregated city to unify each other. But the chief reason to why African American migrants from the twentieth century to Chicago were forced to slums and ghettos was the overwhelming discrimination of blacks throughout the country and the vats and fast rate at which the black migration had occurred.

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Works Cited

Lemann, Nicholas. The Promise Land. New York: Vintage, 1991.