[ardecila]

I wasn't conscious of these issues in 1990, so it's hard to say which version of events is correct.

Despite the accusations of racism that the author lobbed, I don't think the blog post makes Brazier look very good... it essentially makes him out to be an Uncle Tom who sells out the community and removes a vital lifeline in order to build his own monument. His congregants drive everywhere, they probably wouldn't be caught dead on the L, unlike the poorer residents of Woodlawn.

The arguments about white racism are not even really germane to the discussion. Daley (broadly) came to power by building a coalition of white ethnics and Latino immigrants. At least in the early days of the administration, he probably didn't understand nuances within the black community, so when an influential minister came to him with a request, he just assumed that said minister spoke for the entire community.

This is hardly unique, many white leaders rely on black middlemen (often ministers) to give them counsel about a complicated reality within the overall black community, even when those middlemen offer a skewed or limited perspective.