Angel Reese made a misstep in what she called her new city on social media.
On May 8, Reese wrote on X, “ahhhhaaa today is media day!!! the pretty girls in the RAQ bout to eat downnnnn🤭”.
This post might seem harmless on the surface. Yet, Chicago residents have been coming at Reese in the post’s replies for the nickname she used.
“Angel we don’t claim “The Raq” we only call it The Chi . That’s out of love and respect for the city Only people everybody hates calls it The Raq or Chi Raq. We don’t claim that name or them people lol” one X user wrote.
X user Subria Whitaker responded with, “Ohhh no sis. Please don’t call it that and unintentionally glorify gun violence lol.”
“The RAQ” nickname Reese used is a shortened version of “Chiraq”. This refers to the Iraq War, which the United States was embroiled in from 2003-2011.
In February 2023, the National Criminal Justice Association (NCJA) wrote, “For more than a decade, some people have used the term “Chiraq” — a mashup of Chicago and Iraq — to describe a city whose violence makes some neighborhoods feel like battle zones.”
The NCJA article references a study in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, which found, “The risk of a man 18 to 29 years old dying in a shooting in the most violent ZIP code in Chicago — 60624, a swath of the West Side that includes Garfield Park — was higher than the death rate for U.S. soldiers in the Afghanistan war or for soldiers in an Army combat brigade that fought in Iraq”.
Chicago residents clearly aren’t proud of these rates, and would prefer their newest star not use a nickname with such a negative connotation.
*This post is being updated with further context.”
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