Federal Troops In Chicago Won't Solve Social Problems

President Donald Trump said that he would send federal troops to Chicago if the murder rate there kept increasing. The truth is the National Guard can only do so much to quell urban violence. The social ills in the black community of Chicago are so deep-seated and have existed for so long that a law-and-order approach can only have limited results. The presence of federal troops might even exacerbate the situation. It will take a slew of people--social workers, religious and civic leaders, psychologists, educators, corporate leaders, and others--to deal with the underlying causes of violence in Chicago and anywhere else. These problems did not occur overnight and they won't be eradicated overnight. To expect a law-and-order solution to be a quick fix is to be living in a fantasy world.

A Tale Of Three Quarrels

In the Notes section of James McGrath Morris's Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2015), he quotes from an article that was part of a series called "Industry USA" that Payne wrote for the Chicago Defender in 1951. The series regarded postwar employment of African Americans in Chicago.

A plant manager (presumably white) is quoted as saying, "When two white people have a quarrel, it's just a quarrel. If two Negroes quarrel, it's a disturbance; but if a white person and a Negro quarrel, it becomes an 'incident.'"

Sad to say, more than sixty years later, that statement still applies.