Are Blacks moving to progressive states or GOP run?

Vallas is spot on (his quote below). It appears minorities want economic opportunity not government handouts or hollow rhetoric?

"While Illinois Democratic leaders sermonize, Black Americans vote with their feet. Pew Research reports that from 2010 to 2024, the largest gains in Black residents were in Texas, Florida, and Georgia."

Progressive Policies Have Left Illinois the Least Equitable State in the Country

By Paul Vallas

July 10th, 2026

Illinois politicians love the word equity. They use it as a moral shield, a budget justification, a substitute for results.

If equity is supposed to improve life for Black residents, Illinois isn’t a model — it’s an indictment, as the state consistently ranks at or near the bottom when Black-White economic disparities are examined while Illinois residents pay the residents paying the highest taxes and fees in the country. Yet this hasn’t produced any policy reassessment among the Democratic Party leadership that dominates state and Chicago government, only rhetoric and scapegoating.

Most everything in Illinois and Chicago government in recent years claims to deliver some form of “equity.” To our progressive establishment, that means greater equality in actual outcomes for the poor and other disadvantaged groups, especially racial minorities. Equity has been central to government policy since at least 2019, when Gov. JB Pritzker became governor and Lori Lightfoot became mayor, and progressives held supermajorities in the General Assembly long before that.

While Illinois Democratic leaders sermonize, Black Americans vote with their feet. Pew Research reports that from 2010 to 2024, the largest gains in Black residents were in Texas, Florida, and Georgia. Texas added over 1 million Black residents. Florida added over 745,000, drawing significant migration from the Northeast for its healthcare, education, and small business opportunities. Illinois, by contrast, was among the few places where the Black population declined, destroying the fantasy that Illinois is delivering opportunity better than states governed very differently.

Wirepoints frequently points out that a WalletHub study on racial equality ranked Illinois dead last out of all 50 states. The study measured disparities between Black and White residents across eight key metrics: poverty, homelessness, homeownership, unsheltered homeless, labor-force participation, executive positions, median income, and unemployment. The employment comparisons are especially striking (WalletHub; Illinois Policy).

Illinois historically and consistently ranks among the states with the highest — and most disproportionate — Black unemployment rates in the nation. Employment figures from the Economic Policy Institute and the Illinois Department of Employment Security present a stark and persistent racial disparity in the state’s labor force, with Black unemployment in recent years at almost three times the rate of White unemployment (Illinois Policy; Crain’s Chicago Business).

The economic picture does not improve when the subject shifts from jobs to wealth. Illinois Policy, citing WalletHub, reported that Illinois had the nation’s eighth-largest racial wealth gap, along with one of the country’s worst Black-White income gaps and one of its largest poverty-rate gaps. In plain English: in one of America’s most loudly progressive states, Black workers were getting hit with one of the worst employment gaps in the nation (Illinois Policy).

Illinois progressives have had years to govern, tax, spend, and moralize, telling voters equity was the mission. Yet on jobs, wealth, and mobility, the results remain deeply unfavorable for Black residents. This has not resulted in any reassessment by progressives of policies that for decades disrupted family structures, limited economic mobility, prioritized expanded government over economic opportunity, trapped children in failing schools, and eroded neighborhood safety.

Most glaring is their failure to connect high taxes with diminished economic opportunity, and the impact of the absence of quality school choices. The cost of government has increased dramatically under Governor JB Pritzker, who since taking office in 2019 has raised taxes and fees at least 65 times, taking a cumulative $77 billion more from taxpayers, while Illinois’ nation-leading property tax rates have risen by $8.5 billion according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

It is no coincidence that during this same period Illinois has seen less than a 1 percent increase in jobs (0.75%) compared to 5.78 percent nationally, and that Illinois business losses tripled since Pritzker took office. Florida and Texas saw job growth of 13.51 percent and 12.78 percent, respectively. Lack of overall employment growth disproportionately impacts minority communities, driving some of the highest Black-White unemployment gaps in the country (Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability; Wirepoints).

Make no mistake about the impact that the lack of new job creation has had on the Black community, while the nation’s highest property tax burden crushes middle- and low-income families. The lack of quality school choices and poor student achievement are major barriers to upward mobility. Low-income and minority students are frequently left behind in underperforming public schools, which limits their long-term economic opportunities.

Little wonder the Black exodus from Chicago has been overwhelmingly among middle-income families with children. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that since 2000, the city has lost over 250,000 Black residents — mostly middle-income families.

Children have been disproportionately affected, with the number of Black children 17 years and younger declining 49 percent, compared to a 14 percent drop in Black adults. Chicago Public Schools enrollment is now less than half of what it was in the 1999–2000 school year.

The response by progressives has not been to reexamine their policies but to blame racism for every problem inherited and every challenge unaddressed, while doubling down on failed race-based social programs.

The growing calls for reparations in a state that contributed more soldiers (256,297) and lost more residents (31,000 to 35,000) to the union cause than any other Northern state except New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and whose vast majority of White residents are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, serve to distract from the failure of progressive policies to uplift the Black community.

Illinois’ ruling class has no incentive to change. Its gerrymandered political maps have only three of seventeen US House seats held by Republicans and guarantee Democrats an almost veto-proof State House and Senate. This is buttressed by the demographic shift, which is the product of so-called progressive policies.

That shift has higher-income residents leaving, resulting in a growing percentage of those remaining and arriving from other states and through illegal migration, who are government-dependent and more likely to vote Democrat.

An accepted rule of economics holds that there is a trade-off between equity and efficiency — that sacrificing some economic growth is accepted to achieve greater equity. Illinois has shattered that rule.

Looking at equity from any angle, and from any study, shows that progressive equity efforts in Illinois and Chicago have failed miserably despite the highest cost of government of any state. Minorities and the poor who supported the progressive equity agenda have been had.

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Paul Vallas formerly ran the public school systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and the Louisiana Recovery School District. He was a candidate for Mayor of Chicago.