African-American politicians benefited from segregation
Earlier this year, the Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot declared racism to be a public health crisis. Her announcement followed a comprehensive report by the Chicago Department of Public Health, which contained a litany of grim statistics: Black children born in Chicago are three times more likely to die in the first year of life than other infants in the city; half of Chicago’s HIV-positive residents are black, in spite of African Americans making up just 30% of the population; African American Chicagoans are nine times more likely to be murdered and can expect to live nine years less than average; in Englewood on the South Side, where 95% of residents are Black, life expectancy is just 60-years-old, lower than in Afghanistan.
