Brandon Johnson’s So-Called Progressive Equity Agenda Is a Potemkin Village

Mayor Brandon Johnson is trying to rehabilitate his image with Chicago’s Black community through divisive rhetoric and actions that demonize the White community. While Whites have a right to be offended by his antics, the real tragedy is that in the end his policies are punishing the Black community, as businesses and middle-class residents of all races leave the city, eroding the tax base, which leads to higher taxes, reduced public services, and fewer job opportunities — disproportionately harming vulnerable, low-income Black residents who remain.

The mayor’s latest gambit to mobilize what he perceives to be part of his base is another in his numerous executive orders, this one limiting the awarding of city contracts to companies whose leadership reflects the diversity of the local community and requiring disclosure of ties to federal immigration enforcement.¹ Eager to check all the progressive boxes, his order aims to keep companies that also do business with agencies enforcing immigration law from winning city work. Never mind the constitutional questions the order raises or the impact it will have on the cost of city contractual services, let alone the city’s business climate.

This follows the mayor’s “reparations” gambit and the racially divisive rhetoric that has accompanied it. Is it lost on reparations advocates that the mayor waited until his last year in office to hold his public hearings on reparations — hearings that easily resembled political rallies? He is calling for reparations in a state that fought for the Union and outlawed slavery, one that sent more than 250,000 volunteers to fight to end it, with over 34,000 losing their lives² — in a city where the vast majority of residents, including White residents, are either immigrants or the children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of immigrants.

The mayor and his defenders will argue that they are all about promoting diversity and shifting investment directly into historically marginalized communities — focused on affordable housing, mental health resources, youth employment programs, and public-school funding — viewing them as essential structural changes necessary to uplift the poor, who have faced decades of neglect. However, this is a myth, and the mayor has woven a rhetorical “Potemkin Village” that hides actions and policies that are further degrading conditions in Chicago’s Black communities.