The 2016 presidential election confirmed what most of us already knew: Chicago is a blue city in a red nation. But even within this blue island there are some red oases, chief among them Mount Greenwood, in the 19th Ward on the city’s far southwest side.
In 1992 Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns described Mount Greenwood is “an insular, Leave It to Beaver world where white people can live out entire lives without ever getting to know a black person, where people rarely venture beyond understood borders.” A quarter century later it doesn’t seem like much has changed.
Mary and Kevin continued to discuss the Beal shooting, which he called “ridiculous.”
“He pulls out a gun, starts waving a gun around—the cop shoots him,” Kevin said. “There was a white guy shot at a bar down the street here about a year ago. He pulled a gun out, cops shot him.”
“In this area, Obama’s like the fucking next coming of Satan, basically,” he said. “There’s a percentage of people that hate him because he is African-American, unfortunately, yes. But I think a larger majority of people will say they feel like they paid more money for people to get insurance that they think they shouldn’t have to pay for. When the Affordable Care Act came out, so many people around here were fucking furious because our taxes did go up, like, a considerable amount. Everyone thinks all they’re paying for is the ‘people over there,’ like, people in the hood.”
A Hinky Dinks patron named Randy chimed in. As it turns out, he went to Morgan Park High in the 70s. His parents couldn’t afford Catholic school, he said, but he wouldn’t dare send his kids there today. He feels “fortunate” he’s been able to afford the tuition of a private school, so his kids could learn in what he called “a controlled environment.” “I gotta control their friends,” he said. “That’s what you pay your money for.”
