It has become a habit for Mayor Brandon Johnson to invoke race and racism to explain away policy failures, deflect criticism, and shield his allies from accountability. Johnson’s use of this language isn’t about justice — it’s a political tool meant to silence dissent and reclaim support among Black voters disillusioned by his administration’s migrant, safety, and education policies. The truth is that his agenda, along with those of allies like Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, have harmed the very Black communities they claim to champion.
Let’s examine how.
Johnson’s public safety policies have endangered Chicago’s Black residents
Mayor Johnson has consistently minimized Chicago’s crime and violence crisis. Although murders and shootings have declined since the peak of the COVID pandemic, Chicago still reported over 28,000 violent crimes in 2024, with aggravated assaults reaching a 20-year high. Chicago once again will lead the nation in the number of murders, shootings, school age youth murdered and shot, and mass shootings.
Black Chicagoans shoulder most of the burden of violent crime, as 75 percent of murder victims and shooting victims are Black, and Black women, who make up just over 15 percent of the city’s population, comprise over 30 percent of violent crime victims. Yet when confronted with statistics revealing the danger to Black residents, Johnson deflects responsibility with vague nods to “institutional racism” rather than targeted anti-violence measures.
Under Johnson’s leadership, police ranks have fallen short by about 2,000 officers and in 2023, the city failed to respond to 52 percent of high-priority 911 calls, up from 19 percent in 2019. Arrest rates for violent crimes hover around six percent. Johnson’s decision to eliminate the ShotSpotter gunfire detection system — over the objections of aldermen representing the city’s most violent districts — followed activist pressure, not evidence.
Since ShotSpotter was deactivated, 64 people have been shot or killed in areas formerly covered by the system where no 911 call followed.
Traveling on Chicago’s transit system remains wholly unsafe
Chicago’s transit system is unsafe and deteriorating. Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) ridership is stuck at roughly 70 percent of pre-pandemic levels, and fare revenue covers less than 20 percent of the system’s operating costs. While transit users report little concern with reliability and usability, polls have revealed nearly half of riders feel unsafe on buses and trains. Operators report constant threats and harassment, worsening absenteeism and service delays.
While violent crime on the CTA has declined slightly this year, 2025 will likely record the second-highest level of transit-related violence in the past decade, with reported rates still about double what they were 10 years ago, despite ridership being almost 40 percent higher then. Since 2015, violent crimes per passenger trip have tripled and Chicago Police reports now indicate a crime occurs roughly every three hours somewhere in the CTA system. Despite violence surging on the CTA, City Hall’s response has been to crack down on smokers — a cosmetic move rather than a credible safety plan.
Today, the CTA assigns approximately 135 full-time CPD officers to system security — a detail roughly equivalent to the mayor’s protective service. Supplementing that with more off-duty officers working overtime and a patchwork of private security guards-who are unarmed, untrained, and lack arrest powers falls far short of what is required to protect 79 stations, 146 platforms, 335 trains, and 129 bus routes across Chicago.
The CTA’s response to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s call for a comprehensive safety plan as inadequate has been to simply expand the Chicago Police Department’s Voluntary Special Employment Program by 75 to 120 officers. This is no substitute for creating a fully resourced CPD Transit Unit-a unit with enough dedicated, full-time officers empowered to enforce the law and maintain a visible presence throughout the transit system.
This crisis hurts working-class Black residents most. Black riders make up 38 percent of CTA riders and over half are women. The majority earn under $50,000 annually. When the system feels unsafe, more rely on cars — only to be disproportionately fined by red light and speed cameras and parking tickets, adding an enormous financial strain on residents through fines.
Eroding education choice and accountability
From day one, Johnson’s education agenda mirrored the CTU platform: Opposing testing, homework, and school choice. While union leaders exercise their right to choose better schools for their own children — over 30 percent of CPS teachers, including CTU President Davis Gates enroll their children in private schools — Johnson’s appointed Board of Education moved to dismantle selective enrollment schools and place caps on the number of public charter schools and their enrollment.
Johnson and CTU successfully lobbied against the Invest in Kids Act, ending scholarships that enabled over 9,000 low-income students, mostly minority, to attend private schools. CPS spends $8,600 less per pupil for charter students than traditional schools despite similar public funding sources. This is deliberately discriminating against public charter schools, which serve over 54,000 students, 98 percent who are Black and Latino, and 87 percent of whom come from low income families.
As Johnson and the CTU wage a war on select schools and charters, they similarly dismiss standardized testing and school ranking as “junk science.” Just as they label testing and class rank tools to hurt Black pupils, they champion the return of social promotion, the practice of advancing students to the next grade level and not holding either teachers or schools accountable for poor academic performance. In fact, the district has ended the ranking of schools by test scores. Little wonder it can boast record graduation rates for Black students while just 10 percent meet SAT reading standards and a mere eight percent meet math standards.
Johnson’s economic policies are undermining Black prosperity
Johnson’s economic priorities center on taxation and regulation that hinder small businesses — especially minority-owned enterprises. Johnson’s “Bring Chicago Home” real estate transfer tax proposal, while branded as a “mansion tax,” would have pulled over 90 percent of revenue from commercial property sales and apartment buildings, pushing costs directly onto renters and consumers. The mayor’s expanded leave mandates and raising tipped minimum wages further burden small enterprises. Meanwhile, the over 20 taxes and fees in his new budget will impact mostly businesses without regard to their income to pay.
Johnson also pushed an $830 million general obligation bond for affordable housing and infrastructure, but details are thin. To date, the most significant affordable housing investment amounts to $324 million in subsidies for just 505 units — a windfall for politically connected developers, not a broad solution for Black neighborhoods.
Johnson’s support for a multi-billion-dollar Bears stadium plan with a price tag of $1.5 billion in public subsidies. The mayor’s plan also includes $152 million in tax increment financing for downtown development. However, only a fraction has been dedicated to “affordable” housing. This continuation of the practice of prioritizing the politically connected betrays the priorities of his progressive supporters.
The tax burden and property inequities
Cook County’s record 2024 property tax increase — averaging 16.7 percent — hit Black neighborhoods hardest with a staggering 133 percent increase. In West Garfield Park, the median homeowner’s tax bill jumped nearly $2,000 — a staggering 133 percent increase. In nearby North Lawndale, bills rose by nearly $1,900, or 99 percent. On Chicago’s South Side, Englewood, one of Chicago’s most economically blighted areas, tax bills climbed by $609, or 82 percent.
The property tax appeals system, which has remained without reform under Preckwinkle’s 15-year tenure, overwhelmingly favors large commercial interests. Studies show such appeals have shifted at least $2 billion in taxes onto residential property owners. As the tax burden is moved to residents, the outdated tax sale system has been ruled unconstitutional for stripping homeowners’ equity, disproportionately affecting Black families. According to “Housing Action Illinois,” 73 percent of tax sale evictions occur in majority-Black ZIP codes.
Fees and fines disproportionately punish Black drivers
City Hall is tormenting residents and visitors who dare to drive by issuing over $4 million in red light, speed camera, and parking tickets. While these fees and fines have generated $350 million in revenue, they impact those who can least afford to pay and are driving thousands of families into debt. A 2022 ProPublica investigation found Chicago households in majority Black and Hispanic ZIP codes are ticketed at twice the rate of predominantly white neighborhoods.
Why are Mayor Johnson and his radical left supporters comfortable with collecting $350 million annually from traffic enforcement cameras or parking tickets from Chicago residents, 40 percent of which are from the city's poorest residents? Ticket debt piles up disproportionately in the city’s low-income, mostly black neighborhoods. Since 2007, of the 10 ZIP codes with the most accumulated ticket debt per adult, eight are majority black, according to a ProPublica Illinois analysis of ticket data and figures from the U.S. Census.
Johnson remains idle as Chicago’s water system poisons residents
Contaminated drinking water is a slow-moving epidemic in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. A crisis that continues to exact devastating consequences, an overwhelming majority of residents affected are Black and Latino. Today, nearly 412,000 lead service lines continue to deliver brain-damaging toxins into homes. Also found in these lines are high concentrations of toxic “Forever Chemicals” — PFAS — synthetic chemicals that do not break down in the environment. Even if every lead pipe were replaced tomorrow, Chicagoans would still be exposed to substances linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, and immune system disorders.
The devastating consequences of environmental neglect are written clearly in Chicago’s health disparities. According to the Chicago Department of Public Health and NYU Langone Health, Chicago has the largest life expectancy gap between neighborhoods of any major U.S. city. In 2023, Asian/Pacific Islander Chicagoans lived on average to 86.8 years, compared to just 71.8 years for Black Chicagoans. At the neighborhood level, the Loop boasted a life expectancy of 87.3 years, while residents of West Garfield Park averaged only 66.6 years.
These staggering 20-year life expectancy gaps cannot be understood without considering environmental and public health inequities. Poorer neighborhoods, disproportionately Black and Latino, are far more likely to endure the daily realities of toxic water, unmitigated pollution, and a lack of affordable alternatives like bottled water or effective filtration. Chicago has the largest life expectancy gap among the 500 largest cities in the country.
Johnson preferring migrants over Black residents
The mayor’s migrant policies have come at the expense of the Black community. Since taking office in May 2023, Johnson has consistently supported Chicago’s sanctuary city policy that openly invites migrants, refuses to cooperate with federal authorities on immigration law, and provided unprecedented city assistance to new arrivals. What Johnson has furnished to migrants is extensive and costly: Emergency shelter, housing, healthcare, legal services, job-readiness support; victims compensation, and public schooling.
All told, the Johnson administration has committed nearly $400 million to migrant health and welfare so far, while the state has provided over $800 million for housing and other services and almost $1 billion more for migrant healthcare. Wirepoints reports the school district itself has spent between $212 million and $400 million on migrant students and the CTU actually demanded unsuccessfully an additional $2,000 per migrant child in the teachers’ contract, to which the district did not agree.
Contrast that spending with his other priorities in his quest to overcome historic injustices. The Mayor’s “Treatment not Trauma” program is largely an extension of Lori Lightfoot’s program and will have only opened five of the 12 community mental health centers closed by Mayor Emanuel. The claim of 10,000 new affordable housing units in the pipeline is pure fiction. For Black families the message is clear, their needs come second to illegal migrants.
Black Chicagoans are voting with their feet
Democratic Party policies at the city, county and state level have made Illinois residents the most taxed in the nation yet have left the state the least equitable. From 2000 to 2020, Chicago lost 265,000 Black residents — mostly working- and middle-class families with school-age children. The Black child population fell 49 percent compared to just 14 percent for Black adults. People are leaving because of unsafe neighborhoods, lack of quality school options, and high taxes and fees. Johnson is making things worse.
Equity can’t be realized without safe neighborhoods, functioning schools, safe and efficient public transit, and policies that foster local wealth-building. Dependency on government is not a path to liberation. Johnson’s record increasingly suggests either a failure to understand these fundamentals or a refusal to prioritize them.
Resorting to racial rhetoric as a universal excuse for inherited problems and mounting failures and "tax the rich" rhetoric as the solution to all problems does a disservice to all Chicagoans. The city needs practical, serious solutions over divisive posturing.
