The story “Dream Deferred” on the Page One of this Substance is the beginning of the latest exposé of how racial segregation is the number one problem plaguing Chicago’s public schools today. In November, a visit by Jonathan Kozol to Chicago drew more than 1,000 people to the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. There Kozol denounced the “American apartheid” he exposes in his new book “Shame of the Nation.”

We are skeptical whenever a writer or organizer from out of town comes to Chicago to talk about a national problem that is at its worst here. Some of Kozol’s Chicago friends are part of the problem of segregation, not part of the solution. Kozol did not note that Chicago is the most segregated place in the USA. Nor did he mention that his host — the University of Chicago — has promoted some of the worst segregation programs in Chicago’s long ugly racial history.

Kozol also missed the fact that some of his Chicago buddies have been helping the segregationist policies of Mayor Daley and Daley’s corporate “school reform” programs. Ignoring the real problems, they have cooked up lucrative but meaningless solutions for years. In the coming year, we’ll  report the facts of Chicago apartheid. We’ll also discuss those who made segregation — not desegregation — easier for Richard Daley and his corporate scriptwriters.