Friday Links: Welcome to Vine Edition

“Were it not God’s plan for His Chosen People in the Americas, the discovery of the consecrated land now known as Vine might be referred to as an accident” – the first line of ‘Vine’

First and foremost: Lazy & Entitled’s first novel, Vine, releases today! Head over to storiesfromvine.com to read. The first six stories, our “Pentateuch plus one,” dropped today. Starting Monday, we’ll be releasing one story per day. There will be an audiobook version dropping as a podcast every week, but we are still getting that set up. Hopefully ready early next week, then regular episodes on Fridays.

Brief roundups will appear here, too, simply for ICYMI purposes. Otherwise, this column’s format will be unchanged. Except this week’s epigraph, obviously, but that’ll be a one-time thing. If I were to epigraph this week’s book, it would be from the chapter ‘Sweet Home Chicago,’ and read:

“I see the deliberateness of segregation…Communities should be uplifted without conceding to whiteness as superior, and investment should never cease in black communities.”

My own work does not supersede the joy and necessity of celebrating others’ work! Now, on to this week’s book!

What I’ve Been Reading Lately:

It is an unfortunate fact that the city I love so much—the city my brother and I both have described as “a place to finally breathe easy” after growing up in Bible Belt, Tennessee—is one of the most segregated cities in the US. This was somewhat obfuscated to me in undergrad at Loyola. Rogers Park is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the US, after all. Whiteness, though, makes it easy to not notice things. I try to be a good North Sider: explore the city as much as possible, consume Block Club and Curious City content about neighborhoods not near mine, be a since-childhood White Sox fan. Still, I was very excited to sit down and read some real scholarship on neighborhoods I’m largely only passed through. Sure enough, The South Side by Natalie Y. Moore made me want to get on a Green Line train.

Moore’s exploration of the “deliberate, ugly, and harmful” segregation in Chicago is both nuanced and direct. There’s a lot to talk about, but in the interest of brevity (LOL this week is not a week for brevity), I’m going to rant about schools. White people: send your kids to public school. Christ on a cracker, you people who flee to the suburbs the second you have kids with the only reason being “schools” are some of the lowest cowards. Yes, I acknowledge that everyone has to make the right decision for their children, but neighborhoods and communities are only what the people who live there make them. As Moore lays out in the chapter “Separate But Still Unequal,” Chicago’s attempts to integrate public schools were and are laughable, and the biggest reason for its failure was white cowardice (Moore is, uh, more polite than I am on the subject). To this day, white people balk at sending their kids to a CPS school with less than 50% white students, the exception maybe being Lane Tech. You know what improves schools, besides government funding? Community involvement. PTAs. Teachers feeling that their value is appreciated. Local businesses giving a shit. It takes buy-in from everyone to make communities work, and one race statistically views the city as place to summer fling with rather than put a ring on. One of the ways I know we can do better, Chicago, is by not being so knee-jerk afraid of bygone boogeymen “those neighborhoods” or “public school.” Let’s all try to be better neighbors.

One last note: Moore lays out early on that she is going to emphasize race over class in this exploration of Chicago’s ills, a decision I think is worthwhile for this book. Personally, I think “race or class” is a false choice. I’m a socialist, I’m married to a Black woman and father to a Black son, both realities of inequality have to be part of the equation if we’re ever going to get anywhere in the country. THAT SAID, Moore is right to emphasize race over class here. Lots of white socialists are quick to dismiss race for the sake of *mumbles something about solidarity*, and I think white socialists need to familiarize themselves with Black and Latine history more. The entire story of both American continents is racial caste systems and bottomless greed, and true equity cannot be achieved if damages caused by white supremacy are not made whole.

LINKS!

• Something to listen to while you peruse the rest of the links? This Radical Books and Activists episode featuring Cynthia Pelayo is really great. I especially loved the talk about ritual and mediation as a practice over all-gas-no-brakes hard work. I also deeply identified with Misael Juarez waking up at 3 a.m., drinking a beer, and looking at the moon while reflecting on writing. Make mine a Pepsi-and-cherry-limeade-THC-syrup and I’m right there with you, dude.