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By Miriah Bradley,  17        Chicago, IL 

Prompt #1: Everyone wants to live in a so-called "good neighborhood," Why do some communities have little crime while others have crime incidences every day? What would you do to reduce crime in Chicago if you had multiple resources available to you?

Everyone wants to live in a neighborhood that's considered good, but why do communities have such vast ratings regarding crime? 

My name is Miriah, I'm a 16-year-old from Chicago and I believe it can be traced back to slavery which led to the separation and detestation in communities. Even after the 13th amendment outlawed such, the ruling of Plessy v Ferguson, forming the separate but equal in 1896 left an everlasting impact on neighborhoods today. Everything was separate from water fountains, to schools, to housing. Even when the decision of Brown v Board of Education which overturned the ruling of Plessy, the damage was immense and continued. The White flight started, a strategy that consisted of the White demographic moving away to places such as the suburbs to stray away from neighborhoods of color. Maps were created to show which neighborhoods to stay away from, and little help was granted to low-income neighborhoods with people of color. Because nothing was offered, people had to take things into their own hands by committing crimes and creating/joining gangs to survive. People may say that this was such a long time ago and doesn’t affect society today, but it was only 70 years ago. Looking at Chicago, you can see the separation with the Northside having a majority White population, Southside with a majority Black population, and Eastside with a majority Hispanic population. A lot of these neighborhoods in Chicago have had their back turned on them and had to create their way to survive. Unfortunately, some with crime. 

Today Crime has become so normalized that it just continues to increase. With resources available, I would want a time machine built to stop that first slave ship from ever landing in Africa and creating this spiral of events that still impacts society and neighborhoods today.