Yes, this is a racist town. Having spent plenty of time both in New York and here, I have seen a marked difference in the behaviors of it’s minority residents – there is a brutally noticeable difference between the two. Board the Green Line, which serves the West Side, and find yourself one of perhaps two white faces, and observe the depression, almost palpable in the air. There is fear, there is an atmosphere of downtroddenness, which can be extremely difficult to come to terms with.

Case in point: Ogden Avenue, a major thoroughfare cutting a wide swath across the west side into the downtown area, was, a number of years back, cut off in numerous places, making passage from the ghettoes into the wealthy Gold Coast area impossible. There is an opinion widely held among long time residents, that this was done to keep poor blacks "where they belonged", so to speak. Of course, this is one small example, but with repeated mini-atrocities such as this, one can hardly blame residents for their feelings of hopelessness.

But thankfully, some things change with the times, such as the many North Side neighborhoods which have found themselves infused with new influxes of immigrant populations – Koreans, Vietnamese, Hispanic and many Blacks have found their way into once very white areas.