PASTOR COREY BROOKS: The South Side Chicago still chooses dysfunction

While I was recovering from foot surgery in Chicago, taking a break from Walk Across America gave me time to do more than think. I’ve seen a lot so far in my walks through small towns, big cities, ghettos, suburbs, open-air drug markets, upscale farmers’ markets, and even the occasional country market. Throughout all of this, I have seen Americans from many different walks of life, and they are all moving forward, driven by a sense of purpose in their work and their faith in God.

And when I returned home to Chicago’s South Side, I was struck by the silence I felt there.

It pains me to say this, but it was as if we had never left. The same problems continued. People were complaining about the same things they had complained about the year before and the year before; They were not aware of this inevitable apocalyptic order. Although my team has greatly reduced the violence in our immediate area, violence remains high on the surrounding blocks. Hordes of teenagers continue to attack the Loop, wreaking havoc and destroying what others have built.

The pattern is clear and undeniable. In my Walk Across America, I’ve seen people move towards something better, whether it’s one step a day or 20,000. They moved forward with faith in the good life and eternal reward.

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While many here on the South Side strive for something better, the tide is largely heading in the wrong direction.

My time away has revealed something I was too close to see clearly: how fiercely we guard the dysfunction around us.

The current is moving towards dysfunction, not potential. Towards dependence on government rather than self-reliance. Towards violence, not two-parent families. Towards the instant gratification of the drug trade, not the inner strength that comes from permanent training. And anyone who dares to swim against this current is mocked as an Uncle Tom.

My time away has revealed something I’ve become too close to see clearly, and that is how fiercely we guard the dysfunction around us. It has become our identity, our inner compass, our security blanket. As if we wouldn’t know who we are without it.

FROM THE ROOF OF CHICAGO TO A JOURNEY OF 3,000 MILES, THIS IS HOW I FIGHT TO RENEW THE SOUL OF AMERICA.

I have had many supporters in my efforts to establish a transformative Center for Leadership and Economic Opportunity on the South Side. But I’ve encountered a lot more criticism and I want to be content with that for a while because it breaks my heart. Criticisms about trying to get kids off the streets and into a safe environment where they can just be kids. Criticisms of introducing trades such as construction, electrical work, skilled trades, etc. to help young Americans turn their lives around. Criticism because I believe young people on my blog deserve not just sympathy but opportunity. I’m called a black conservative because of these things; as if that were an insult rather than a description of a man who believed his community deserved better than what was being offered to him.

These attacks created the exact opposite of progress.

I want to be honest about something that no politician in this city will say out loud. Contrary to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s belief, white supremacy does not rule these streets. I saw the KKK march on the streets of Kenton, Tennessee, when I was a kid, but I’ve never seen one of their marches since, and I’ve never seen one in Chicago either.

There is no outside force plotting our destruction from the shadows. If there is any racism holding us back today, it is the bland bigotry of low expectations, the quiet disdain of the voices that tell us we are permanent victims in need of government programs rather than God, family, and hard work. They sell a comforting lie: It’s not your fault, the system is rigged, just vote the right way and everything will change. And as they say this, another generation is slipping away.

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Our greatest enemy is post-1960s liberalism and our unwillingness to confront what it has done to us.

I will tell you another truth, and I beg you to hear it as I hear it; not defensively, but with the pain of a man who loved his people deeply.

During my Walk Across America, many Americans told me that they felt like everything that could be done for Black Americans had been tried. Government programs. Positive action. Protests. Movements. They have bent institutions and budgets in our direction for decades. And yet they said nothing could be fixed. I wasn’t angry at them when I heard this. I am sad. Because they’re not entirely wrong. The question that haunts me is not whether America has failed us, but whether we have failed ourselves by choosing the consolation of our grievances over the hard work of our freedom.

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We’ve wasted a lot by choosing dysfunction over progress. Since none of us were subjected to slavery and most of us never lived under legal discrimination, we valued victimhood over merit, a strange fate. But instead of moving into a future where our talents and character write our own story, we reach into the past for our identity.

If we are to join the rest of America on the path forward, we must eliminate every excuse we have. We must dismantle the excuse of systemic racism as an all-purpose response to our self-inflicted wounds. We must eliminate the excuse that past oppression permanently defines current potential. We must eliminate the excuse that this country is incurably hostile towards us and wants to enslave us again. Not because our history isn’t real – it is – but because these excuses are a mainstay, not a lifesaver. They do not protect us. They drowned us.

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I say all this as a person who gave his life for this mission. I walked this country on a broken heel for the children of the South Side. I slept in strange places, fought through pain, and kept moving when everything inside me wanted to stop. I didn’t do this because I think our community is hopeless. I did it because I knew it wasn’t like that.

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Still I’m hopeful. Deeply, doggedly, biblically hopeful. Jeremiah 29:11 tells us that God has plans for us; Their plans to enrich us, not to harm us, to give us a future. This saying does not only belong to the comfortable. And that belongs to the South Side.

If enough of us start swimming against this current, we always have a chance to reverse its course. We have no choice but to try.

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And we will be so much better for it.

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