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The outrage of the predominantly white editorial boards at Johnson’s response principally shared a panic of the potential effects of recurring teen riots on downtown business, public safety and tourism. The Tribune went so far as to cosign Ald. Raymond Lopez’s call to hold teens and their parents “accountable,” often a euphemism for the involvement of punitive justice or economic amercements.
The editorial boards’ indignation isn’t novel but only reflects the dominant racialized authoritarian attitudes and corporate logics that have created a veritable war on youth of color, especially Black youth, in Chicago.
These editorial boards’ preoccupation with the welfare of business over the well-being of Black youth reflects the corporate logics of cost-benefit analyses and high-stakes test-based accountability schemes that justified the historic closing of 50 schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods and ongoing cuts to their educational system.
Their desire for disciplinary action against these Black teens participates in a love affair with the logic of punishment when it comes to dealing with youth of color that engenders zero-tolerance policies, hyper-surveillance and policing in their schools to make them spaces of criminalization rather than education and that articulate a school-to-prison pipeline.
The lust for punitive action against youth of color and ingrained notions about their (lack of) value pursues Black and Brown youth from school to the street where they are subject to reflexive, excessive police force as the executions of youth and young adults of color like Laquan McDonald, Adam Toledo, Rekia Boyd or Quintonio Legrier demonstrate.
In this context, Johnson’s refusal to demonize Black teens while underscoring the historic and perpetual disinvestment of their communities is nothing short of revolutionary.
That Johnson has doubled down on this position despite backlash distinguishes him from his predecessors. Johnson refuses to use Black youth as political currency.
But, Johnson pre-empting and calling out the demonization of Black youth matters so much more in a post-civil rights U.S. that has increasingly demonized youth of color, often treating them as a generation of suspects and perpetual threat. The unjust incarceration of the Exonerated 5, that police would test the body of Trayvon Martin for drugs but not his assailant George Zimmerman, or that Black youth are four times more likely to be incarcerated than their white peers all reflect this reality.
The teens’ behavior like attacking residents and passing cars “has no place in our city,” as Johnson said. But, as a former teacher like Johnson and youth workers like myself know, problematic youth behavior is symptomatic of larger problems — whether personal, at home or social.
When Black youth are three times more likely to live in poverty than white children, when Black youth in Illinois are twice as likely to live in poverty, and when stressors such as poverty, racism and violence can literally alter the brain development of Black children and inflect their behavior, Johnson rightfully draws attention to the disinvested communities contouring the life experience of so many youth of color in Chicago.
Throughout his campaign, Johnson repeatedly said his plan was to focus on “root causes” of obstacles to public safety. When Johnson does just that, it’s disturbing how much it upsets Crain’s editorial board, which seemingly (and in step with historical practice) would rather frame youth of color as depraved rather than deprived.
Perhaps what’s so upsetting to these editorial boards is how these teens violated unspoken, naturalized precepts of city order like that violence can regularly happen elsewhere but not downtown or that the city’s center is a playground for the privileged not poor youth of color who should just act up in their neighborhoods outside of tourists’ view.
Another phrase Johnson repeated during his campaign was: “The most radical thing we can do is love the people of Chicago.” Johnson viewing teens of the downtown maelstrom through a lens of compassion rather than condemnation is what radical love in politics looks like.
In doing so, he signals new logic — and heart — governing Chicago. Hopefully, it can yield a revolutionary Chicago, one where youth of color, specifically Black youth, are not treated as disposable but as persons worthy of opportunities, resources, love and redemption.
Ricardo Gamboa is a Chicago-based artist, activist, and academic.
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