Letters to the editor 05-29-25

FALSE NARRATIVE

As a former Springfield resident and engaged member of this community, I find the recent article “Economic gaps persist for Blacks” (May 15) to be less a data analysis and more a narrative instrument – crafted to reinforce the profitable illusion of racism rather than provide a clear-eyed view of economic complexity.

Let’s ground ourselves in verifiable data: Springfield’s population is approximately 114,000. Roughly 19% identify as Black or African American. The overall poverty rate is 13.9%, and 37.5% of residents hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. These metrics are citywide, not racially exclusive.

The article implies that poverty in Springfield is primarily a Black problem. Yet it fails to provide demographic poverty breakdowns. In doing so, it erases struggling rural white and impoverished urban white populations who make up a significant portion of the city’s low-income households. That kind of omission is not journalism; it’s agenda-setting.

More importantly, the real issue in Springfield is intraracial, not interracial. Many Black-led nonprofits are either unaware of the local excellence within their own demographic – or worse, they avoid engaging with it because it disrupts their funding narrative. There are Black professionals, business owners and property investors thriving in this city, but their stories are often excluded because they don’t fit the template of persistent struggle.

Some community representatives suffer from the same detachment. They don’t live in, and rarely visit, the areas they claim to represent. As a result, their understanding of the community is shaped by stereotypes and spreadsheets, not personal engagement or visible progress. The result? A manufactured narrative of crisis, designed to attract grant funding. Ironically, once the money arrives, these same organizations struggle to spend it – because the inflated poverty statistics they sold simply don’t match reality on the ground.

Springfield’s economic infrastructure supports a diverse workforce. The top 10 employers in Springfield show no shortage of institutional opportunity: The state of Illinois, Memorial Health, HSHS, Springfield Clinic, Springfield School District 186, University of Illinois Springfield, SIU School of Medicine, city of Springfield, Horace Mann and Blue Cross Blue Shield. Black professionals occupy positions in all of these institutions.

Black homeownership is visible and growing. Economic independence is alive and well. Yet this is rarely covered, because it doesn’t sell papers or win grants.

Reducing a diverse, working-class city to a template of systemic victimhood does nothing to empower communities. It inflates grievance narratives, excuses policy failure and distracts from actionable, inclusive solutions.

We must confront the truth: Data can be used to illuminate or manipulate. In this case, it’s being manipulated – to tell a story of race-based despair where a story of community resilience and economic agency exists.

Springfield is not a city defined by division. It is built on individual action and communal effort – not demographic acceptance. It’s time our local reporting started reflecting that.

Kelvin D. Coburn Sr.

Chatham

ADDRESS DIVIDES

I was shocked to see, graphically, how terrible the income disparity by race is in Springfield.  While efforts have been made to address this long-standing problem, they have suffered from either design or execution failures. Now the response, mainly from Republicans, is to train their amen chorus to just own their racism, disparage DEI and capture the flag of victimhood (a.k.a. “reverse discrimination”).

This approach is not about solving the problem, but about absolving themselves of any responsibility and walking away. We can’t ignore race as a factor when it correlates so strongly with poverty. Racial preferences (prejudices) in hiring, housing, schooling and policing are as plain as the color on one’s face. I wish we would just get over ourselves and work to remove this obvious divide in our community.  It’s like a sickness that is slowly killing us.

Jeffrey Hobbs

Springfield

LOOK AT ZONING

The May 15 cover story talked at length of the segregation and exclusion faced by Black households in Springfield and throughout Illinois. Not once in the 3,971-word article was the word “zoning” used.

The “structural issues” referenced in the article begin with exclusionary zoning. U.S. zoning wasn’t actually designed to keep residential areas away from factories, it originated as a way to keep Chinese immigrants out of certain areas of San Francisco and Jews out of Fifth Avenue in New York City.

After explicitly racial zoning was outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act, cities found a workaround. Instead of banning Black people from white neighborhoods, they made it prohibitively expensive for modest to low-income households to move there by banning affordable housing types that used to be common, such as apartments, two- and three-flats or rowhouses. Only single-family homes on large lots would be allowed, creating a de facto wall to keep working-class families out of advantaged neighborhoods. 

Zoning restrictions are the reason our cities are still segregated. This state-sponsored segregation limits families’ abilities to move to opportunity, to be closer to jobs or in good school districts. According to the book

Excluded, the stricter the zoning, the higher the level of segregation. It’s not just segregation and limited opportunity for people of color; zoning artificially restricts the overall number of homes, pushing up housing costs for all and driving inflation.

The good news is that two bills, HB 1813 and HB 1814, would begin to tear down these invisible walls that keep so many Illinoisians from creating better lives for themselves. They would legalize coach houses, townhouses, two, three- and four-flats in most communities, creating more affordable options in the places that need it most.

Ben Wolfenstein

Chicago

NO DISCRIMINATION

The trades are open to those who are willing. Hard work does not discriminate.

Kirk Donley

Via Facebook.com/illinoistimes

This article appears in May 29 – Jun 4, 2025.