Woke UChicago Students Too Afraid To Call Out Obama For Gentrifying The South Side  

A group of leftist students from the University of Chicago are demanding that their university pay over $1 billion in reparations to the residents of Chicago’s South Side for displacing black people living in the area. However, the university is not what’s displacing the residents. Rather, it is Barack Obama and his presidential center, which have caused the median home price to more than double in the South Side, forcing people to leave the area.

Although Obama claims that his $500 million presidential center will benefit Chicago’s Woodlawn and South Shore neighborhoods, residents are saying it’s not true. As one resident puts it, “property tax is gonna be higher,” and “Black Americans are not going to be able to afford to live over here [because of the price hike].”

UCAD, the student group responsible for demanding reparations, acknowledged that the Obama Center is increasing land values and rental prices on the South Side. However, the group directs its ‘chattel slavery’ accusation at the University for a legacy that is inaccurate. The University of Chicago moved to a wholly different location in Chicago in 1890 with no financial support from the then deceased Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The students are also wrongfully stating that the university displaces locals. If UCAD really wanted to help the residents of the South Side, they could appeal to Obama, the real cause of gentrification in the area. 

The privileged UChicago leftist students seek to show-off their performative outrage without taking real action. They could have directed their activism towards calling out the true source of the problem, Barack Obama. Obama was happy to take Chicago’s Black votes during his Senate and presidential elections, but his actions indicate otherwise. 

It’s clear that the displacement of Black residents from the South Side exemplifies Democrats’ true feelings towards minorities. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s cash bail-abolishing Safety Act, also known as the “purge law,” and the ‘catch and release’ policies of Cook County District Attorney Kim Foxx make poor, minority-occupied neighborhoods more dangerous. Welfare programs further discourage marriage, promotes decades of fatherless homes, and the expectation of dependence on government, thereby pushing children towards poverty, incarceration, and drug and alcohol abuse. Obama spoke out about absent fathers 15 years ago, but during his political career, he expanded the welfare system, causing 65% of black children to be raised by single parents today.

UChicago students have rallied on behalf of black Chicagoans, calling for the abolition of both the university and the Chicago Police Department. But black Chicagoans in Hyde Park repeatedly indicated that the region needs police protection. It’s characteristic of UChicago leftists and liberal college students in general, who have the self-righteous audacity to make false accusations, yet fail to address the core problems affecting minority communities.