When "Racism" Trumps Justice: Chicago's Mayor and the Perils of Principled Paralysis, By Charles Taylor (Florida)
Swept in the Windy City of Chicago, where the winter winds carry more than just chill, they now blow absurdities from City Hall, Mayor Brandon Johnson has declared war on the very idea of locking up violent criminals. Speaking alongside Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker on November 25, 2025, Johnson proclaimed that America's "addiction" to incarceration is not just outdated, but "racist, immoral, and unholy." He insisted, "We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence," as if suggesting that removing predators from the streets might somehow exacerbate the problem of predation.
This isn't mere rhetoric; it's a policy prescription born from the fever swamps of progressive Leftist ideology, one that prioritises the optics of equity over the blood of the innocent. Chicago, already a national punchline for its spiralling crime rates, up 16% in aggravated assaults since 2019, with carjackings surging 60%, now risks becoming a laboratory for what happens when justice is sacrificed on the altar of anti-racism. But let's grant the mayor's premise, however unhinged, for the sake of argument. Suppose imprisoning violent criminals is racist. What then? Does that moral stain render all countermeasures moot, or can we still summon the cold calculus of utilitarianism to weigh the scales? And if principles clash, like the woke "horror" of racism versus the nightmare of unchecked savagery, what truly tips the balance?
The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Johnson's outburst isn't novel; it's the logical endpoint of a worldview that views incarceration not as a tool of public safety, but as a vestige of white supremacy. The mayor, a former teacher and self-proclaimed "Marxist," frames the prison system as a racist machine grinding up Black and Brown bodies for profit. Fair enough, America's history of over-policing minority communities is a stain that demands reckoning. But here's the rub: in a city where over 75% of homicides are committed by Black suspects against Black victims (per Chicago Police Department data), decrying jails as "racist" carries a darker implication. It whispers that certain communities are incapable of self-restraint, that violence is an inexorable cultural artifact rather than a choice by individuals who deserve the full weight of the law.
This is the soft bigotry of low expectations in its purest form: excusing barbarism because addressing it might "disproportionately" affect the perpetrators. It's not compassion; it's condescension. And it's immoral precisely because it dooms the very people it claims to protect, turning neighbourhoods into gladiatorial arenas where the innocent are collateral damage in a crusade against "systemic bias."
The Utilitarian Reckoning: When "Racism" Meets the Knife
Now, let's play the game Johnson's ideology forbids: a utilitarian calculus. Suppose we accept the racism charge at face value. Incarceration, we're told, perpetuates cycles of trauma in minority communities, lost fathers, fractured families, economic despair. Fine. But on the other side of the ledger? Repeat offenders setting strangers ablaze on public transit, stabbing elders in the throat for a smartphone, or gunning down kids at block parties. Each unincarcerated thug isn't a statistic; they're a walking apocalypse for the vulnerable.
Run the numbers: One violent criminal off the streets prevents, conservatively, dozens of future victims. In Chicago alone, a 2024 study by the University of Chicago Crime Lab found that incapacitating high-rate offenders (mostly repeat violent actors) averts up to 20 additional crimes per year per inmate. Multiply that by the city's 600+ annual homicides, and the maths screams: the "racist" sting of a few locked doors pales against the rivers of blood from open ones. Utilitarianism, maximising overall welfare, demands we balance the scales. A touch of institutional bias? Tolerable, perhaps, if it spares a mother the grief of burying her child. But Johnson's absolutism rejects this entirely, as if the moral purity of anti-racism excuses the profane reality of unchecked evil.
Push the thought experiment further: Suppose every criminal in this scenario were engaged in outright genocide, systematically exterminating entire ethnic groups, not just random muggings. Would the racism charge still trump justice? Would we hesitate to incarcerate (or worse) because the gulag's demographics skew "problematic"? Of course not. The Nuremberg trials didn't grind to a halt over Allied hypocrisy; they hanged the monsters because the alternative was civilisational suicide. At that scale, utilitarianism doesn't whisper — it roars. The body count of innocents obliterates any qualms about "equity" in punishment.
When Principles Collide: What Really Gives?
Here's the philosophical crux: What happens when two sacred cows, anti-racism and public safety, charge at each other in the public square? Modern Leftist progressivism pretends they never will, elevating the former to infallible dogma while treating the latter as a bourgeois relic. But reality doesn't bend to seminars. Principles aren't hermetically sealed; they're tools for navigation, and when they clash, we must triage.
In ethical terms, this is a classic deontological (duty-based) versus consequentialist showdown. Deontology, as Johnson invokes it, says: Incarceration is intrinsically racist, so it's non-negotiable. Full stop. But consequentialism retorts: Judge by outcomes. Does freeing the arsonist reduce "systemic harm" or ignite literal fires in underserved communities? History sides with the latter, look at the post-2020 "defund the police" experiments in Minneapolis or Portland, where homicide spikes of 50-100% followed budget cuts and lenient prosecution.
What gives? Prudence. The principle that yields isn't the weaker one; it's the one unmoored from human flourishing. Anti-racism, rightly understood, demands equal justice under law, not exemptions for the violent. When it morphs into a shield for savagery, it forfeits its moral high ground. True justice isn't colourblind by accident; it's colourblind by design, because partiality to any group (perpetrators included) erodes the whole edifice. As Martin Luther King Jr. thundered, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Letting a killer walk because his skin tone matches the victim's? That's not equity; that's iniquity.
The Lie That Poisons Everything
Johnson's declaration isn't just wrong; it's a symptom of a deeper rot, the Left's "insatiable desire to force others to believe outright lies." We've seen it before: "Defund the police" as a path to safety, "mostly peaceful" riots torching cities, biological sex as a spectrum of infinite whims. Each falsehood chips away at trust, turning policy into performance art. And the cost? Not abstract "vibes," but bodies in the streets, disproportionately Black and Brown, the very demographics Johnson claims to champion.
Republicans often surrender pre-emptively, lacking the spine to call this what it is: a craven prioritisation of ideology over innocents. But the hour is late. If even granting the racism premise leads inexorably to utilitarian horror, balancing "bigotry" against throats slit in broad daylight, then it's time to discard the premise altogether. Incarceration isn't racist; it's remedial. It's the bare minimum we owe a society fraying at the edges.
Chicago's mayor may call it "unholy," but the true profanity is preaching redemption for the irredeemable while the vulnerable pray for protection. When principles clash, let the one that saves lives prevail. Anything less is not justice — it's surrender.
Comments