Recent Coverage
CBS News Chicago | April 18, 2023
A groundbreaking study out of UIC's Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy finds that Chicagoland Arab American communities face widespread racism and a lack of support and resources from government agencies. Co-author Dr. Nadine Naber of “Beyond Erasure and Profiling: Cultivating Strong and Vibrant Arab American Communities in Chicagoland” joins the stream to talk about the findings with our Brad Edwards.
State rep wants to talk about race, face masks and why a cop stopped him outside a South Loop store
Chicago Sun-Times | May 6, 2020
From the article: "State Rep. Kam Buckner wants to spark public conversation about why a Chicago police officer stopped him outside a big-box store Sunday in the South Loop and asked for a receipt for the items in his cart, as well as an ID.
There’s a long history in Chicago of racial disparities and how people experience the police,” says Amanda Lewis, director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And the class dimensions of being a politician and lawyer, those aren’t protective. What matters the most as the kind of signifier in that moment is your race, and the consequences can be really dangerous.”
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2020
The damaging divide: how inequality costs all Chicagoans
Chicago Crain’s Business | February 28, 2020
This article highlights findings from IRRPP’s Between the Great Migration and Growing Exodus: The Future of Black Chicago? report and notes that, while there are many competing explanations for the loss of Chicago’s black population, “one underlying narrative has been true since the 1980s, when Chicago first began to experience an outflow of blacks: Disparities between minorities and whites started widening, particularly in wages and wealth. And that inequality continues growing.”
Is Lightfoot’s war on poverty too late to stop Chicago’s black exodus?
Chicago Reporter | February 28, 2020
Between the Great Migration and Growing Exodus: The Future of Black Chicago?, a report from the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, describes a city that ballooned beginning in the 1930s as black people migrated north to avoid the constraints of the Jim Crow south reaching its pinnacle in the ‘80s. But once here, they found a new set of inequities and the population has been on decline since.
Southside Weekly | February 18, 2020
At one point, Chicago was the land of opportunity for millions of Black Americans who were leaving the Jim Crow South. The industrial city expanded rapidly through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as waves of Black Southerners sought economic opportunity in Chicago and permanently settled in the city. However, a combination of factors, including the collapse of the manufacturing sector and discriminatory policies, caused this trend to reverse in the 1980s, according to a recent report on changing Black Chicago demographics from IRRPP. Since then, Black communities in Chicago have lost about 350,000 residents.
What’s Behind Chicago’s Black Exodus
WTTW | February 18, 2020
IRRPP Associate Director Iván Arenas joined WTTW on Chicago Tonight to discuss IRRPP’s latest report about the declining number of Chicago’s black population.
The Tale of Two Cities; Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 29
U.S. Congress | February 12, 2020
Illinois Congressman Bobby Lee Rush cites IRRPP report on the congressional floor: “Madam Speaker, I rise today to sound the alarm among the shrinking Black population in cities across the U.S. According to a recent study by the University of Illinois at Chicago, the city of Chicago lost 350,000 Black residents between 1980 and 2016.”
UIC report details why Chicago’s black population is declining
WGN | February 1, 2020
Stacey Sutton, an assistant professor of urban planning and policy at UIC, joined WGN Weekend Morning News to discuss why the population is declining.
Block Club Chicago | January 30, 2020
Government policies, like closing schools and creating health care deserts, are leading Black people to leave Chicago, according to a newly released report.
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2019
New Community Garden Aims to Shed Light on Urban Indians
WTTW | August 7, 2019
From the article: “A primary purpose [of the Adversity and Resiliency for Chicago’s First report] is to also shed light that there is a native community here in Chicago and to bring attention to some of the challenges that the community faces,” said Angela Walden, a research assistant professor at UIC’s Department of Medicine and a featured expert in the report.
In addition to recognizing those struggles, Walden, a member of the Cherokee Nation, said it’s important to remember what native people bring to the table, and she said the First Nations Garden is a prime example of just that. “This is a really great example of youth in the community reclaiming a space of land and indigenizing it. I think just to drive by and see traditional structures in that space in a city, is pretty unique.”
Study Highlights The Challenges And Contributions Of Native Americans In Chicago
WBEZ | June 7, 2019
Natalie Moore reports on the newly released report Adversity and Resiliency for Chicago’s First: The State of Racial Justice for American Indian Chicagoans. “The story was hard to tell because the genocide, displacement and violence had been so successful. So it was a matter of trying to figure out the lack of good data,” said IRRPP Director Amanda Lewis.
The invisibility of Chicago’s Native American residents
Chicago Tribune | June 7, 2019
This IRRPP Op-Ed notes that Native Americans in Chicagoland have largely been left out of current local conversations about how to address racial equity even as they are diligently tackling issues of housing precarity, job discrimination, health disparities and stereotypical cultural representations despite too few resources and too little support. As our report highlights, much work remains to be done locally to provide Native American young people in Chicago and in Illinois a path to prosperity, and we all have a part to play in ensuring that future.
New UIC report on racial inequity for Native Americans in Chicago
Newswise | June 7, 2019
Newswise outlines key findings and contributors to IRRPP’s new report, Adversity and Resiliency for Chicago’s First: The State of Racial Justice for American Indian Chicagoans, which documents the historical and ongoing contributions of Native Americans in Chicago and examines how racial inequity impacts members of this community today.
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2018
New UIC report details barriers facing Chicago’s Asian Americans
Metropolitan Family Services | April 23, 2018
Despite popular stereotypes that Asian Americans are a “model minority” unaffected by racial discrimination, a new report from University of Illinois at Chicago researchers details the barriers that Chicago’s Asian Americans face due to racial inequities in housing, education and labor.
Mayor Emanuel falls back on old, harmful stereotypes about our communities
Asian Americans Advancing Justice
A post by Asian Americans Advancing Justice notes that Asian Americans and Asian American students are pigeonholed by regressive stereotypes like the “model minority” myth, which masks the everyday struggles of Asian Americans that exist at the margins, including refugee families, undocumented and mixed-status families, and low-income communities and recommends reading IRRPP’s A Tale of Diversity, Disparity, and Discrimination: The State of Racial Justice for Asian American Chicagoans report.
Fifty years later, what the Kerner report tells us about race in Chicago today
The Chicago Reporter | February 26, 2018
This IRRPP Op-ed notes that, fifty years later, the findings from the Kerner report remain all too familiar. As our Tale of Three Cities Report documented through data on housing, employment, education, criminal justice, and health, many of the racial dynamics in Chicago in 2018 are all too similar to those of 1968. What has changed over the past half-century? One major change is that there are now three Chicago’s, not just two. On average, white, African American and Latino Chicagoans live in different neighborhoods, attend different schools, and have vastly different life experiences.
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2017 press coverage
For middle-class blacks, success can be a double-edged sword
Chicago Reporter | May 29, 2017
This IRRPP Op-ed highlights findings from our latest report about the paradox of the black middle-class experience in that it includes both significant privilege vis-à-vis working class and poor black peers and significant disadvantage vis-à-vis white middle class peers.
Wealthy blacks just as likely to be segregated as poor here
Crain’s Chicago Business | May 18, 2017
In Cook County, affluent black people are more likely to live near poor blacks than near white people of their income level—or any income level—according to a new study from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
All Things Unequal: Fifty years of racial inequality from the UIC’s State of Racial Justice Report
Southside Weekly | May 16, 2017
“A Tale of Three Cities: The State of Racial Justice in Chicago Report” analyzes disparities in housing, economics, education, justice, and health between Black, Latinx, and white communities in Chicago. Using robust quantitative evidence from a variety of sources, each section delves deep into the history, causes, and consequences of these racial and ethnic inequities that “remain pervasive, persistent, and consequential” in Chicago’s institutions and neighborhoods.
UIC Releases Lengthy Report on Racial Inequality in Chicago
Associated Press | May 15, 2017
A University of Illinois at Chicago report examines “pervasive” racial inequalities in the city when it comes to housing, economics, criminal justice, and health care.
City Racial Inequality ‘Pervasive, Persistent, Consequential’: UIC Report
DNA Info | May 15, 2017
A new report on race in Chicago concludes that while there has been some progress since the civil rights movement, in some cases, it has grown worse.