A recent survey commissioned by WGN News revealed that most Chicagoans don’t have a problem with the order proposed by South Side Alderman David Moore for rename Lake Shore Drive for the founder of the black city Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable. 58.5 percent of those polled said they either support the proposal or have no opinion on it.

However, responses to the WGN survey showed that views on DuSable Drive are strongly divided by race. Among Chicago voters with an opinion on the issue, 55 percent of Latinos, 57 percent of people of Asian-American / Pacific Islander origin, and 61 percent of African-Americans are in favor of the name change. However, 66% of their white counterparts oppose it.

This racial divide reflects the distribution of public figures who have expressed support or opposition to Moore’s proposal. Besides Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who proposed a $ 40 million package tributes to the black pioneer (park, renaming of the promenade, annual festival, three monuments) as an alternative to the renaming of the highway, estimated at over $ 853,500, here is the current breakdown.

Supporters

Adversaries

Needless to say, there is nothing inherently racist about opposing the name change, but there are various possible explanations for the lack of support for the proposal from most white Chicagoans. Residents of color may be more likely to see value in creating a city-wide tribute to the black man whose key role in founding the city was ignored or minimized by local leaders until the middle of the 20th century. Whites may place a higher priority on maintaining the name of Lake Shore Drive, seeing it as an important local tradition.

Another likely factor is that most of the people who live in high rise buildings with Lake Shore Drive addresses are white. These people may fear that DuSable Drive means they would suffer the inconvenience of a change of address. However, given that the interior lanes of Lake Shore Drive will retain the name, and almost all residential buildings on the route are on the interior lanes (more on this in a minute), this concern is unfounded in almost all cases. .

Unsurprisingly, downtown aldermen Brian Hopkins and Brendan Reilly, whose neighborhoods include many LSD skyscrapers, lead the opposition at DuSable Drive. In 2015, their pupils were around 69 percent and 77 percent white, respectively.

Last month, Hopkins, along with Northwest Side Alderman Ariel Reboyras, helped the mayor block a city council vote on Moore’s order. Moore will likely attempt to call for a vote at the next council meeting on Wednesday, June 23 at 10 a.m.

Reilly’s opposition to DuSable Drive is rather ironic, as he co-sponsored a few years an ordinance with the Alderman of Near South Sophia King that renamed Congress Parkway for another black hero, journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells .

Unlike Reilly’s previous plea, he and Hopkins are so determined against DuSable Drive that they spent $ 12,000 of their own campaign money on another investigation, trying to prove that most residents are against the name change. Instead, the Chicago Voter Poll did the opposite, reaffirming the WGN’s findings that most residents have no problem with Moore’s Order, with an almost identical figure of 59% for the percentage. total of supporters and respondents without an opinion. (without surprise, Reilly and Hopkins take a half-empty view data as showing that most Chicago voters “do not support the renaming of Lake Shore Drive”.

Additionally, the new poll confirmed the racial divide in favor of DuSable Drive. While only 25% of white respondents said they were in favor, Latinos were 28% more likely to be in favor and African Americans 98% more likely.

Poll results released by Reilly and Hopkins also indicated that most black residents with an opinion on the issue support the name change. (Unlike the WGN report on its poll, the Aldermen did not provide a support / opposition / no opinion breakdown by race, and they ignored multiple requests for this data.)

In other words, Reilly and Hopkins paid $ 12,000 for a poll that once again showed most Chicagoans don’t have a problem with DuSable Drive, and reaffirmed that those who do are mostly white people like those who make up the vast majority of the districts of the aldermen. It is something a clean.

In fairness to those Council officials, Hopkins recently explained this mostly legitimate logistical concern about the name change, though it ultimately shouldn’t be a big deal.

“400 North Lake Shore Drive” is not much of a problem, as this address is currently a giant hole in the ground which, assuming Moore’s ordinance passes, will eventually be replaced by a building with the address 400 North DuSable Drive.

However, with the other buildings that Hopkins mentioned, as well as the iconic clover-shaped Lake Power Tower, 505 N. Lake Shore Drive, he’s right. (These are all in Reilly’s department, but Hopkins was the one who made noise about this.) Since they’re not on Lake Shore Drive (although they also aren’t accessible directly from of LSD), if the highway is renamed, they will either have to change their addresses to DuSable Drive, or keep their LSD addresses while actually being located on DuSable.

If the buildings follow the old route, the city could subsidize spending with some of the tens of millions of dollars that will be saved by not implementing Lightfoot’s entire $ 40 million anti-DuSable Drive plan.

But if they choose to keep their LSD addresses, contrary to what Hopkins claims, it won’t create mass confusion. “To say that they are not affected by the loss of the roadway named after their address is simply nonsense. ” he recently told WBEZ. “It affects deliveries. It affects GPS directions, it affects telling people where you live and how to get to your house. It would have a profound impact if your mailing address does not reflect the road you live on. “

His argument would have more weight if it weren’t already for several examples of Chicago buildings that have vanity addresses. For example, there are a few buildings in the West Loop on the West Bank of the Chicago River that would normally have Canal Street addresses, but instead would have the Riverfront Plaza vanity address.

In the 1990s, when I was a bicycle courier, before the advent of smartphones, it was a bit confusing at first, but I quickly memorized these and other addresses. In the age of Google Maps, locating them wouldn’t be a problem.

Likewise, in practice, anyone with a smart device, including pretty much any delivery staff, would have no trouble finding these six potential Lake Shore Drive vanity addresses, even if the buildings are located on DuSable Drive. Of course, every once in a while someone who doesn’t have one may have a bit of a hard time finding them, so residents will want to give them directions ahead of time. But, well, right now those six buildings aren’t very easy to find anyway, and that sort of thing helps keep life in a big city interesting.