Growing Up on the South Side vs. Growing Up on the North Shore, As Told by an NBA Player

CHICAGO, IL - ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ is the name of a well-known Charles Dickens novel, but activists have been using it as a term to describe the obvious inequalities that exists in the different neighborhoods of major American metropolises.

There’s no better example of that in the United States than Chicago, and an NBA superstar who grew up on the dangerous end of the example pointed that out in a heartfelt, personal article for The Players’ Tribune on Monday.

Jabari Parker, a shooting guard for the Milwaukee Bucks who first rose to fame as a prep superstar at Simeon Career Academy, didn’t hold back on that subject and others in “It’s Time to Talk About Chicago,” an honest critique of the city he will always call home.

Very fortunate to share my story with you through The Players Tribune. I love my city and I… https://t.co/WyX2P6yrM3
— Jabari Parker (@JabariParker) August 15, 2016

Parker, who grew up on the South Side in one of the city’s roughest neighborhoods, remembers his days of playing AAU basketball. Many of his teammates lived on the North Shore, the suburban region north of the city that boasts some of the richest places in the country.

He’d often stay overnight at some of the teammates’ homes in places like Highland Park, Glencoe and Wilmette.

When looking at his friends’ school books, Parker said he would “pick them up and run my fingers through the new, crisp pages and over the covers that weren’t torn off… At my school, I’d open my book and inside the cover (if there even was one) I’d see my older brother’s name from eight years earlier, and even more names before his.”

Also on Patch: NBA Star Jabari Parker Has Fierce Response to Joe Walsh After the Former Rep. Called Out President Barack Obama

When playing games at schools on the North Shore, Parker also noticed the discrepancy in materials.
“I saw that they had the newest computers and software. Over on the South Side, we were using old computers from the ’90s or something — until the day we finally got Dell computers,” he remembers.

“We didn’t get as much funding for our schools, not only for textbooks and computers, but also for after-school programs and college prep. I mean, at the end of the day, who really expected us to go to college?”

But Parker did go to college. One everyone knows about. The highly-touted athlete went to Duke University in North Carolina.

“I knew I could only grow as a person by leaving the city,” he said. “I got sick of using old books. I got sick of all of the noise. I got sick of helicopters flying above my house at 2 a.m. I got sick of sirens. I got sick of junkies in the alleyway under my bedroom window. I got sick of the police putting giant spotlights on top of telephone poles to try and keep drug dealers away.”

Parker left Duke after one year to enter the NBA. But he promised his family he would graduate. He plans to begin enrolling in summer classes next year to attain that goal.

When he does, he says he wants to come back and give it all back to Chicago, which he has has gotten much worse in the few years since he’s lived here.

“I want to become a teacher after I get out of the league, and help show kids what my dad (Sonny Parker, a former NBA player who turned down coaching positions elsewhere to come back to the South Side and start the Sonny Parker Youth Foundation) and Ms. Reed (an inspiring teacher Parker mentions in the piece) showed me: There’s more out there than the gangs, than the liquor stores, than the violence.”

Read Jabari Parker’s full piece on The Players’ Tribune