Amid a skyrocketing homicide rate and an online learning crisis that the city has still been unable to address fully, Chicago is spending its time dealing with offensive statues.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s commission has identified 41 “controversial” statues in the city to be reevaluated. The list includes statues of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, as well as a memorial to seven police officers who were killed by a bomb during the Haymarket Riot in 1886.
This was entirely predictable back in 2017, when establishment media figures were mocking the idea that statues of people such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would next be targeted for removal after Confederate monuments. It was obvious this was never going to stop with statues of Robert E. Lee. This is how the Black Lives Matter movement is using its political capital instead of advocating for any real police reform.
Chicago’s commission is a direct result of last summer’s demonstrations and riots as part of a “racial healing and historical reckoning project.” Even Lincoln and Grant, who smashed the Confederacy to end slavery in the United States, are too unclean for adherents of social justice.
This project would be ridiculous even in normal times, but it isn’t even the most important issue the city must reckon with after last summer’s Black Lives Matter riots. Aside from the approximately $66 million in damages that resulted from them, the city also faces a high and rising homicide rate — a 50% rise in homicides in 2020 compared to 2019, which has carried over into 2021, with 73 people killed in just seven weeks.
Meanwhile, the city is still slow-rolling its school reopenings, thanks, in part, to the intransigence of its teachers union. The city is very slowly reintroducing limited in-person schooling for elementary students, while high school students are stranded with online schooling and no in-person classes on the horizon.
Just as San Francisco has focused on renaming schools rather than reopening them, Chicago’s priorities here are backward. If the city wanted to address “racial healing,” it could start by reopening schools and dealing with its homicide problem, two issues that disproportionately harm black residents and other minorities.
Reevaluating statues commemorating Lincoln or police officers murdered in 1886 is not just stupid. It also does nothing to address any of the problems facing Chicago residents today. It won’t lower the homicide rate, get students back into schools, or address anything outside of that all-encompassing phantom known as “systemic racism.” Lightfoot’s commission is a joke, as are those targeting these statues.
