whiteis.qxd
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I lived in Chicago for 13 years, and your article on Lakeview’s resistance to a women’s shelter in the community [Neighborhood News, February 20] illustrates all too well what’s happened to the city over the last decade or so. As one of the neighborhood “activists” puts it, this isn’t just about “evil little yuppies concerned about…property values.” No, it’s about intolerance, stereotypes, and prejudice–and, in a very real sense, about conquest.
When American cities finally become unlivable, it won’t be due to any stereotyped “underclass” pathologies; it’ll be the soulless arrogance and opportunistic power-grabbing of the rich that will eventually do the trick. They demand permit parking so they can continue with their two-member household, two-to-three-vehicle lifestyle; they speculate in real estate, whine when these activities raise property taxes, and then try to kick out (or buy out) good Christians who still care about the poor who’ve been displaced; they tear down vintage buildings and replace them with cookie-cutter monstrosities; they exude an elitist intolerance that the old-fashioned “white ethnics,” for all their unfortunate bigotry and racial fears, could never have dreamed of; they turn a once-vital (and productive) city into a sanitized playground for money changers.
