Putting his remarks in context, Chicago is a very segregated city. White people go here, black people go there. Latinos are off there, there, and there. It's gotten better over the years, but gentrification has calcified this tendency in some respects. Now there are white neighborhoods that are upper middle class and white, surrounded by poorer minority neighborhoods. Everyone played the game. "Don't go here, here, or here. Here is ok during the day. Never at night." If you were in a "bad" neighborhood and got mugged, well, what were you doing there?! This wasn't even largely a white sentiment - it was largely economic. Middle-class African-Americans held the same views towards those neighborhoods.
Hell, the public transit system shares the sentiment. Rock Island Metra doesn't stop in Robbins at night unless you specifically ask (a high crime African American suburb).
Kirk's reflecting that mindset. It's a common one in the area.
I grew up in Chicago and spent much of my adult life in the city proper. There were simply neighborhoods you did not go, and if you had to, you moved through quickly. Those neighborhoods were disproportionately African-American.
We can and should discuss the why. Institutional racism, red-lining, lack of economic opportunities, a school system that abjectly failed minority youth because districts are overly dependent on property taxes. There are a host of problems that Illinois and Chicago politicians have utterly failed to tackle in an effective way. Too busy working the spoils system.
Kirk is a tone deaf idiot, and he's mouthing a largely white sentiment that he no doubt shares with many of his white constituents.
But, that is a reality in Chicago. The people he's addressing know exactly what he's talking about. It's a sad state of affairs. When opportunity is not there, when the police are there to beat people down instead of help raise them up by providing a secure environment, when drug laws are breaking up families, when the social safety net is under attack, and when you slather all that in the disproportionate punishment of institutional racism, some neighborhoods fall by the wayside. The more fortunate and privileged avoid them.
With Rahm in charge, I don't see it changing in the near future. But, at least my home state will have Tammy Duckworth soon. That should help.
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