When were the...

Who decides what the next...

Who decides what the next...

Where's that story?

Why they give the look?

What is this?

It's a curious city.

Where WBEZ answers your questions about Chicago, the region, and its people.

I'm Odette Youssef, and today I'm taking

on a question about race and concentrated poverty in Chicago. Our questioner is Martha Victoria Diaz.

She's a Latina and a lawyer from Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. She says she's seen that area

change a lot since she was a kid in the 70s and 80s.

It was pretty diverse at the time. I mean, there were a lot of Latinos that lived there. There was a good chunk of white people. No African Americans. But nevertheless, it was still fairly integrated. And I know it was all working class. But since then, I really couldn't tell you for the life of me where they've all

gone. And specifically, she wondered where had all the poor white people gone. Martha knows where

Chicago's poor Latino and African American neighborhoods are. But where are the poor white neighborhoods?

She was especially puzzled because she knows that nationally, whites are the biggest group to use food stamps and Medicaid.

We liked her question so much. We invited her to our studios at WBEZ to get to the bottom of it.

And I showed her a map based on the latest estimates from the Census Bureau.

So the map that you're looking at shows different colored blocks and anyone who's listening to this on the radio can view it by visiting wbZ.org.

But you'll see that we've got one color that represents areas of concentrated poverty for African Americans, another for concentrated poverty of Latinos, and a third color for

concentrated poverty of whites. Just looking at the map, what are your impressions?

Wow. Well, I'm not surprised at all with where we're on the map, the Latino and the African American.

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