Fifth Third Bank, like Chase, not solution to Chicago's vast inner city wastelands

It’s a feel good story. Fifth Third Bank announced yesterday a $20 million investment in Chicago’s ravaged South and West Sides under a federal program that uses tax incentives to encourage private investment there. Fifth Third gets $20 million in good publicity, developers get tax incentives…and the South and West Sides will continue to languish. Why? That $20 million is a drop in the proverbial bucket to the many billions the federal government must invest to reclaim the shame of America’s racist history. Enlightened capitalism will never be the cure for 300 years of slavery, white supremacy following Emancipation, and institutional racism which keeps large pockets of poverty, crime and despair entrenched for hundreds of thousands on Chicago's South and West sides. A year ago, Chase Bank announced $40 million for Chicago inner city development. This amounted to under 1.5% of its $27 billion in 2018 net profits. For that Chicago’s dispossessed received 37 small business loans, preservation of 176 mixed income housing units and a college offering associate nursing degrees. We don’t know yet what Fifth Third’s half that amount will bring. But like Chase’s investment, a year later virtually nothing will change for Chicago’s pockets of despair. It was governmental policy and neglect that created the South and West Side ghettos. Only enlightened governmental policy can uplift them. If government can spend trillions on utterly senseless, murderous wars, it can spend the tens, maybe hundreds of billions to eliminate the war zones right here in our own back yard.