Blind spots can mar view of Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1938047,CST-EDT-esther14.article

December 14, 2009

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Sun-Times Columnist

The first time I ever set foot in Pilsen was as a newly hired reporter after a white editor asked me to go there to "find some Latino stories" for the next day's paper.

That might sound weird to some, but I'd always been a Little Village gal. For as long as I can remember, my family had made monthly Sunday treks from our Lake View two-flat to "La Garra" at the University of Illinois at Chicago, also known as the Maxwell Street flea market. Afterwards, it was up to 26th Street to hit the Mexican bakeries and shops.

And I cannot remember a time when I wasn't intimately familiar with the city's Hasidic Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Iranian and Polish neighborhoods, but Pilsen was just a big old blind spot for me.

I've often written about how I hate it when people assume I grew up there -- that's a sort of a blind spot, too. It's one of many, many blind spots many of us didn't even know we had until a transplant to our fine city took it upon herself to define them.

Fascinated by Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods when she arrived back in 2000, Maria Krysan, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at UIC, decided to gauge residents' knowledge of city communities and quickly realized that Chicago's North Sider vs. South Sider pride stands akin to that of the Union and the Confederacy in the 1800s.

In her report, "Black-White-Latino Differences in Community Knowledge," based on a 2005 survey of more than 700 adults living in Cook County, Krysan explored the gaps in awareness these different groups had of the myriad segregated, integrated and everywhere-in-between neighborhoods in the Chicago region. She called these gaps "blind spots."

Like all good studies, it quantified gut feelings that had never before been confirmed, with simultaneously obvious and shocking results.

For instance, on the common-sense front, Krysan found that whites were generally unfamiliar with communities that featured a significant black population or were racially integrated -- including a few communities with majority white populations, such as Beverly and Homewood/ Flossmoor. Relatively unknown communities for at least a third of the African Americans surveyed included distant suburbs with majority white populations, such as Libertyville and Crystal Lake, in addition to racially and ethnically diverse Chicago neighborhoods such as Uptown, Logan Square and Albany Park.

Latinos, though, are in a league of their own when it comes to blind spots. Hispanics, when compared to whites and blacks, were oblivious to more than twice as many communities.

With the exception of Hispanic-centric spots such as Humboldt Park, Cicero, Pilsen and Little Village, more than half of the 41 communities used as examples in the study were "unknown" to a third or more of the Hispanic respondents. We were equally in the dark about segregated, integrated, city and suburban communities alike.

"Well, the bright side is that once you control for background characteristics like socioeconomic status and number of years of residency in the city, Latinos are quite knowledgeable about a wide range of communities; more so, in fact, than whites and blacks," Krysan told me. "But, from a practical standpoint, you can control away any factor to level the results and, the fact is, the Hispanic community in Chicago is still relatively new to this city -- not in all cases, of course, but generally -- and these blind spots do exist."

The neighborhood knowledge gap for Hispanics isn't the end of the world, but it keeps us more apart than we actually are. As it turns out, there are lots of inviting racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods and suburbs, in addition to the well-marketed Oak Park, but most of us just don't know about them.

It has now been many, many years since I first set foot in Pilsen, but judging from my knowledge of the 41 neighborhoods on Krysan's list, I still need to get out more. And, probably, so do you.

Comments

[Guadalupe M. Avery Avila]

Esther, I agree with your comment on how "Latinos are even more oblivious.." I've tried for years to invite friends, collegues, co-workers, usually Mexican, Hispanic. And they answer w/"Que pasa si me paso de la parada? (When going by bus or L) or "Es muy peligroso! (When the neighborhood is mostly Black) I usually will tell them, if they don't speak English, that I will write them a note to give to the conductor and he or she will let them know where to get off and I will meet them there.
Or for the Black neighborhoods, I tell them that they are in more danger in a largely Hispanic neighborhood, because people usually attack their own, not people of other cultures or races.

But, so many times, I don't keep count any more, I'm the only Hispanic at these meetings.

So all I can attribute it to is the negative propaganda that the "unknown powers that be" put out there and that the Hispanic people swallow "hook, line and sinker!!"

Lupe Avery, El Techno Colibri

[jack spatafora]

Chicago is famous for being the city of neighborhoods. As you know, you can literally see and smell and feel the differences as you move from one to another. For anyone unable or unwilling to engage in foreign travel, you can really "travel the world" right here if you know where and when to go. Pretty fabulous...

[Justin]

We've created a tool that helps housing seekers overcome these blindspots - www.MoveSmart.org. It's based on Prof. Krysan's research (she sits on our board of directors). The site is brand new and many features are not yet live, but basic neighborhood searching works. We'd love to hear what you think!

[John Viramontes]

And if you unable to "get out" one can always armchair it and discover Pilsen, Little Village and other neighborhoods via the work of Stuart Dybek, such as his book "Coast of Chicago"