Eve L. Ewing Discusses Race & Class in Chicago

At The Intercept, Eve. L. Ewing visits Jeremy Scahill to discuss her hometown, Chicago, and the projections imposed on it every election cycle. As Ewing explains, "basically the way I feel about it is that it’s very convenient to use Chicago as a symbol that is really for many people kind of like an effective dog-whistle." Let's pick up with her there: 

It frightens people. It’s used in the service of the same kind of rhetoric that we heard in past presidential administrations with things like, “welfare queens” and “crack babies.” Right? These are these are racialized images that are meant to inspire fear and loathing in the hearts of Americans and to make them feel as though there’s justification for any kind of extreme crackdown, right, that might happen afterwards.

It has nothing to do with an actual desire to help or care for uplift or support or nurture or even listen to people who actually live here, because if it did stem from that genuine desire, there would be so many different kinds of interventions like providing us with more social services and resources, helping us hold our elected officials accountable for our educational system, responding to the Department of Justice and their inquiry into the fact that the Chicago Police Department has longstanding — generations-long — systemic racism.

Those are the things that would actually help Chicago, and Chicagoans will be quick to tell you that, but it’s really not about us, it’s really about using this symbol as a scary, violent, black place that is supposed to inspire fear in the hearts of Americans and unfortunately it works pretty well.

Read more at The Intercept.