Judgmental Map Of Chicago An Equal Opportunity Offender

By Chuck Sudo in News on Apr 23, 2014 7:30PM

When it's a slow news day we love heading over to the monumental time suck Judgmental Maps but we missed this map of Chicago created by Eric Oren and Katey Selix with the tagline "clearly written by white people."

Clearly.

Either Oren and Selix tried to play up what many of us already know about Chicago like its major crime and homicide rates and hyper-segregation to the hipster status of neighborhoods like Logan Square, the faux-hipness of Wicker Park and the whitewashed blandness of Lincoln Park and Lakeview and failed, or they truly know little about the city outside of their regular haunts. West Humboldt Park is "the neighborhood where white people get called the 'N' word?" All areas below the South Loop labeled "Black" and "Crime?" Okay, so maybe they nailed it by calling Ravenswood "NPR's Target Demographic," but that kind of cleverness is lacking here.

It's one thing to send up stereotypes in the name of humor. It's another thing entirely to reinforce them. Compare Oren's and Selix's map to the Judgmental Map of New York City. The latter isn't as mean-spirited.

[h/t Curbed Chicago]