Comment by the_only_law
4 years ago
I feel like People experience or learn about a place once and that paints their view of it for years to come.
Someone else in this thread mentioned the Simpsons and I can't help think about the episode where Homer was vehemently against going to New York, because he had been there in the 70s when it was at its worst.
The Chicago thing isn't from experience, it's from people who've never lived in Chicago repeating it over and over again.
The victims of violence in Chicago are not the white people citing it on TV.
There are parts of Chicago that are really nice, but also parts that are notably worse than the “bad” part of most cities. A lot of the area around UChicago itself was very sketchy compared to any other university area I’ve been to. This was about 5-10 years ago. Maybe it’s improved since although I’d be surprised. It’s not random happenstance that people who have never been are more likely to be afraid of Chicago than New York nowadays.
That was my impression. Beautiful city, shining buildings, and then you walk a few blocks too far in any direction and you're in a very rough, very rundown poor-seeming neighborhood. There was a very clear line demarcating the areas. As opposed to, say, New York, which is nice but a little grimy everywhere.
Or San Francisco, which is, you know.
The Chicago thing is because every summer the national media see fit to report on local crime news from Chicago every time they have an eyepopping number of homicides a week, which is most weeks. I've never lived in Chicago and I don't care about their crime, but the national media won't shut up about it.