Last Friday, Chicago’s City Council overwhelmingly voted to rename Lake Shore Drive after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the Black trading post operator who, along with his Potawatomi wife Kitihawa, established the first recorded permanent settlement in the area in the late 1700s, which eventually grew into our current metropolis. I had previously advocated for the change.

Media commentary showed a similar, if somewhat less pronounced, racial divide. Black journalists Laura Washington and Mary Mitchell from the Sun-Times, and Michael Romain from the Wednesday Journal wrote in favor of the name change. “It’s time for the Black Father of Chicago to get his due,” Washington argued.

Another survey of local voters was bankrolled by the two most outspoken anti-DuSable Drive aldermen, Brian Hopkins (2nd) and Brendan Reilly (42nd), both of whom oversee well-to-do, overwhelmingly white downtown wards, with $12,000 in campaign funds. The poll confirmed the racial divide, finding that Latinos were 28 percent more likely to be in favor of renaming Lake Shore than whites, and African Americans were nearly twice as likely.

“Does the fact that Italian-Americans support Columbus Day in larger percentages than other populations make the anti-Columbus Day position anti-Italian?” Zorn said in response. “Or is [the DuSable Drive opposition] maybe not about ethnicity at all?”

Reilly had put a negative spin on the results from the survey he paid for, telling Hinz in Crain’s, “nearly 7 out of 10 Chicago voters currently do not support renaming Lake Shore Drive,” which could easily give one the impression that people of all races were against the plan. But it was also true that almost six out of ten voters weren’t opposed.

Of the 15 naysaying aldermen, as reported by Block Club Chicago, none were Black, and 12 were white, representing two-thirds of the city’s white aldermen. One thing all of those 15 wards have in common is significant white populations, in most cases white majorities, based on 2015 data. The districts include downtown; the near and mid-north lakefront; West Ridge; the far northwest side; and parts of the far southwest side. The latter three regions are home to most of Chicago’s Trump supporters. Here’s a list of the no votes.