[sedev]

An important part of the historical context here is that the black community in America has a lot of scar tissue around sketchy investment opportunities, and those scars go back, oh, call it 160 years (i.e. the Reconstruction era). When you have a community that is suffering from widespread generational poverty, as the black community in America broadly is, that community naturally tends to be very eager for opportunities for generating wealth — especially opportunities that present themselves as "This is it! This is your chance to buy into the American Dream, legitimately and officially, no messing around with crime, sports, or the music industry, you're going to have Investment Opportunities, you will be stockholders, this is what prudent people do to accumulate wealth and provide for their children & grandchildren."

The black community in America has been presented with many such opportunities. How many of them were legitimate? Nobody has a really solid number, for hopefully obvious reasons, but whatever the real rate of legitimate opportunities that sound like the above is, it's low enough that 160-ish years of it have left the black community in America still suffering from widespread generational poverty. Particularly there is a pattern in economic-bubble periods where members of the black community buy in near the top (because the growth of a bubble is driven by existing capital flowing into it and the black community has less capital, while whatever activity is inflating the bubble seeks out large clumps of capital first, as any growing sector does), end up as bagholders (because they bought in near the top of a bubble), and suffer disproportionately (because they had less capital, and so a given absolute loss is a bigger percentage of their capital than for wealthier communities). There have also, of course, been periods of undisguised racial violence, which have always involved theft as one form the violence takes. All of this leaves the black community in America with noteworthy long-term scars around the topic of investment opportunities particularly marketed to them — and yet, what are they supposed to do, give up on pursuing the American Dream, especially when someone promises up and down that this is it, they can leave behind the sordid stuff, this truly is the pathway to affluence, safety, and respectability?

I have never been to Chicago and I know nothing about Bally's. All I know is that while history rarely outright repeats itself, it quite often rhymes.

[quercusa]

It's kind of disconcerting to see the "black establishment" (aldermen, churches, etc.) on board with this. Do they really think this is a good idea? Is it that they received enough donations to make them think so?

[morgante]

It’s Chicago. They’re likely getting kickbacks/bribes.