President Joe Biden’s abrupt departure from the presidential race, followed by the apparent anointing of Kamala Harris as his successor, has placed a spotlight on next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Though delegates will be focused on preventing the appearance of chaos inside the convention hall, they shouldn’t neglect the disorder in the neighborhoods outside it.
Chicago, a long-time Democratic bastion, is currently tops in the nation in several troubling categories. Chicago ranks first among American cities in total murders, teenage slayings, and mass shootings. Despite the state and city Democratic Party-led governments’ years-long efforts at promoting racial equality of outcomes (“equity”), government policies have undermined the four most important means of improving outcomes for black residents: public safety, public education, taxation, and public services.
Illinois ranks at or near the bottom among states in terms of racial equality. A 2024 study by WalletHub put it dead last in disparity between blacks and whites according to eight measures of prosperity: poverty, homelessness, share of unsheltered homeless, labor-force participation rate, homeownership rate, share of executive positions, median annual household income, and unemployment rate.
The Archbridge Foundation Index ranked Illinois the tenth-worst state for social mobility, or a person’s ability to climb the income ladder and out-earn the previous generation. Wirepoints’ examination of 2023 U.S. Census Data reported that median black household incomes in Illinois reach only 54 percent of white incomes—the third-worst ratio in the nation, behind only Louisiana (52 percent) and Wisconsin (50 percent).
Illinois is also one of the most taxed states in the country. WalletHub found that it has the highest combined state and local tax rate on U.S. median income households, and Kiplinger’s annual state tax analysis likewise shows that Illinois taxes middle-class families more than any state except New Jersey and Connecticut.
Neither Illinois’ nor Chicago’s racial inequalities stem from a lack of government resources. Rather, much of the blame falls on the state and city governments’ prioritization of special interests.
Start with public safety, the government’s primary responsibility.
Black Chicagoans disproportionately suffer when not enough police officers are available to respond to 911 calls, not enough detectives are on the force to close cases and protect witnesses, and too many restraints get placed on proactive policing. Progressive prosecutors under State’s Attorney Kim Foxx compound these problems by failing to charge violent criminals and, even when charging them, releasing them back into the community before trial.
City and state public safety policies have had a devastating effect on black women in Chicago in particular. A CBS News analysis of Chicago police crime data found that black women accounted for 25 percent of all crime victims in 2022. That year, 30 percent of black women were targeted by crime in Chicago; approximately 14 black girls under 18 years of age were attacked for every white girl in that age group.
The vast majority of this violent crime occurs within black communities. From May 2023 through April 2024, black Chicagoans made up more than three quarters of the city’s homicide victims, despite making up only about 29 percent of its population. Over 90 percent of homicides during that period took place in the South and West Sides. Majority-black districts account for a disproportionate share of 911 calls. Police leaders dedicate resources where they’re needed most: to high-crime areas. This means that more arrests and more dangerous, potentially lethal encounters will invariably occur between police and black alleged perpetrators.
Numerous special interest groups in Illinois and beyond have transformed criminal-justice reform into a lucrative enterprise. These lawyers, advocates, university researchers, consultants, consent-decree monitors, and others have made a business out of treating criminals like victims and police like criminals. Chicago law firms now specialize in suing police for alleged civil rights violations. The city then hires, often at great expense, outside lawyers and firms to defend against these suits. City leaders approve enormous taxpayer-funded settlements, with hundreds of millions of dollars going to these attorneys.
When it comes to public education, city and state governments have similarly suborned the public good—here, to the interests of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). In Chicago, only 6 percent of black students meet state standards in math and 17 percent in reading. Instead of letting parents opt out of the failing zoned public school system, members of the Chicago Board of Education, appointed by the mayor—himself a former CTU organizer—passed a resolution to transition Chicago Public Schools (CPS) away from “privatization and admissions/enrollment policies.” This would complete the CTU’s goal of forcing the district to eliminate all public schools not governed by the CTU contract, such as charter schools, whose superior performance embarrasses the union.
The result of the CTU’s triumphs is that Chicago’s public school kids, overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, are denied not only financial support for private-school alternatives but also the chance to attend public charter and magnet schools. Of the 54,375 Chicago children attending charter schools, 98 percent are black and Latino, and 86 percent receive free or reduced lunch, indicating they come from a low-income household. Of the more than 12,000 students attending magnet schools, over 70 percent are black and Hispanic, and over half are low income.
The CTU also pressured the state legislature to make Illinois the “only state in the nation” to eliminate the tiny state-supported school choice program. It served more than 9,600 children, the majority from middle- and low-income families, and cost the state less than 1 percent of what it spends annually on public K–12 education. In 2023 and 2024, at least 20 states created or expanded school choice, bringing the number of states offering such programs to 33, including ten states that offer universal school choice. Despite these programs’ popularity and evidence of superior student results, Illinois’s union-captured elected leaders won’t even consider them.
Finally, Illinois’ and Chicago’s public expenditures fail to deliver effective public services worth the exorbitant taxes they levy, leaving communities that depend on those services ever further behind. As a result of this toxic combination of nation-leading taxes and wasteful spending, middle-class families—particularly black households—are fleeing to other states.
Crushing state and city tax burdens harm families and businesses alike. Kiplinger’s annual state tax analysis found that Illinois has the second-highest property taxes, eighth-highest combined sales tax, and above-average income taxes. Wirepoints reports that, when measured as a percentage of home values, Illinois’ property taxes are the nation’s highest. Since 1990, as a share of household incomes, the average property tax bill has spiked 62 percent. Each year, Illinoisans pay a nation-leading average of 1.9 percent of their home value in property taxes, far higher than neighboring states. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy found that businesses in Chicago are burdened with the second-highest commercial property taxes among large U.S. cities.
Meantime, the goal of state and city public spending is to expand government by fattening the public payrolls. While Illinois has ranked near the bottom in state job growth over the past decade, what job growth Chicago has seen since the pandemic has largely been in the government sector. From April 2023 to April 2024, for example, Illinois’ state and local governments added 25,700 new jobs. The professional business services sector lost 33,100 jobs, a reduction of 3.4 percent of sector jobs, and information jobs shrank by a whopping 5.9 percent, or 5,600 positions.
Continued public-sector growth is unsustainable. With over $530 billion in state and local government retirement obligations, state employee pension expenses now consume 20 percent of the state general funds budget. Currently, Illinois has 132,188 working and retired government employees making over $100,000 a year, up from 94,000 just six years ago. Chicago’s municipal employee pensions and other debt services consume about 80 percent of city property-tax revenues.
Compounding the heavy state and local tax and debt burdens are ever-expanding government mandates and business regulations. Examples include the recent large increases in the minimum wage, the elimination of the subminimum wage for tip workers, and a doubling of the mandated paid-leave days for private employees. Johnson during the campaign talked a restoration of the head tax, a tax on jet fuel, an increase in the hotel tax, and even a city income tax on commuters that he later backed away from. Recent talk has been about broadening the sales tax to include services.
Growing government for its own sake is producing catastrophic results, especially for Illinois’ black families. The state’s black unemployment rate was 10.5 percent in Q1 2023, the nation’s second-highest rate, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Surrounding states had lower black unemployment rates: Michigan, at 6.4 percent; Indiana, at 6 percent; Iowa, at 5.2 percent; and Missouri at just 4.6 percent.
Investors aren’t necessarily averse to putting their money in Chicago, but repeated government failures have substantially curtailed investment in black communities. A 2022 study by the Urban Institute found that Chicago ranked 40th out of the 100 largest U.S. cities, with annual investment totaling $20,450 per household between 2010 and 2020. But census tracts with 80 percent or more black residents generated only $7,801 in annual investment. In comparable tracts where blacks compose less than 20 percent of the population, investment totaled $25,889. The reason for this disparity isn’t racism; it’s the noxious, government-driven result of public insecurity, poor-quality schools, and eroding economic opportunity.
All these factors are putting Illinoisans in an increasingly impossible situation, and many are fleeing the state as a result. New census data for 2023 shows that the state population has dropped yet again, with losses totaling a quarter-million since 2020. The Chicago area lost population for the third straight year, ranking behind only New York City and Los Angeles among big metros. Illinois is bleeding businesses, too, ranking behind only California and New York in out-of-state business relocation.
Black families are leading the exodus. Since 2000, more than 261,000 blacks have left Chicago, overwhelmingly middle-income families with children. The number of black children aged 17 and younger has fallen by 49 percent from 2000 to 2020, compared with 14 percent for black adults. The much steeper decline among young people reflects the lack of affordable quality educational options for black families in this supposedly progressive city and state.
As the Democratic conventioneers fret about their national prospects in November, they would do well to take a moment to question the results of the progressive equity agenda in their host city and state. In Chicago and Illinois alike, government policies on public safety, education, taxation, and public services are only widening inequalities.
Photo: Nisian Hughes / The Image Bank Unreleased via Getty Images