Racial relations not quite as positive these days as we’d like to think

The south Cook County suburbs of Homewood and Flossmoor are a pair of municipalities that like to think they’re doing something right when it comes to race relations – that somehow they’ve reached a level of peace and cooperation other places ought to try to mimic.

'National' news occurring at Kedzie and Flossmoor Rd.

But then we look at the antics this week at the high school district that covers the two suburbs – and perhaps it shows we still have a ways to go before we reach the desired levels of racial harmony.

IT WOUND UP becoming news this week about the antics of some white students at Homewood-Flossmoor High School who thought of it as fun and games to be seen out in public wearing their high school colors (the Vikings wear red and white) and faces painted in black.

Like many other young people, they felt the need to document their behavior (including a trip to the local McDonald’s) on social media outlets. Which means things became public.

Black students at the high school took offense. The issue has become a big stink. And for what it is worth, school officials called a meeting on Sunday with the parents of the students they could identify.

School officials won’t say exactly what they told those parents, or what they intend to do with the students – citing state laws that provide young people with some protections of confidentiality.

THAT IS WHAT has the black segment of the Homewood-Flossmoor student body outraged. They WANT public disclosure. They want these little white twerps to be shamed, and perhaps have some sense of stigma attached to them for their nonsense antics.

They think the high school administration is covering up for the white students, with some going so far as to tell the Daily Southtown newspaper that if a black student were to have been caught doing something equally stupid, he (or she) would have faced immediate expulsion.

That is what led to the student walkout that took place Tuesday, with many of the black-majority of the student body marching around the neighborhood surrounding the campus to express their outrage.

For what it’s worth, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that police from the two suburbs were joined by officers from Matteson, Park Forest and the Illinois State Police to patrol the area – although there wound up being no arrests, or any examples of behavior that could be construed as improper.

EXCEPT, PERHAPS, TO those people who think that the concept of free expression of ideas is somehow subversive to the American Way of life! Particularly when it’s being done by people who don’t look like themselves in the mirror.

It’s going to be interesting to see how these racial tensions linger, and if they’re capable of dying down. Although it could be argued that they were inevitable.

Personally, I didn’t attend Homewood-Flossmoor High School, although I have two nephews who did. I DID attend a high school in a nearby community, and H-F High was considered one of our athletic arch-rivals.

But back in the days some nearly four decades ago when I was in high school, Homewood and Flossmoor were overwhelmingly lily-white communities. The extent to which there was diversity was the existence of some Jewish people living in Flossmoor.

THINGS HAVE CHANGED. The most recent Census Bureau population count (of 2010) showed Homewood barely with a white majority (54.7 percent, which dropped to 50.7 percent if you subtracted those who identified ethnically as Latino or Hispanic), while Flossmoor already had developed a 56.7 percent African-American majority population. Some might want to say the communities have accepted black people.

But for what it’s worth, the news accounts (which are spreading nationally, the student walkout is turning up in news reports from around the United States) indicate the H-F High enrollment is some 69 percent African-American. That could be evidence that many kids of white people living in the communities are following the lead of Chicago city residents and sending their kids to private schools instead.

By the time the Census Bureau does the next national count (on April 1, 2020), I suspect both communities will officially be African-American majority, with a still-sizable white population that remembers the “good ol’ days.”

While the developing black people majority will feel no sense of love lost for what used to exist locally. With incidents such as the inanity of white kids thinking “black face” is funny likely to become the norm and everybody convinced that it’s “someone else’s fault” that things became the way they are now.

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Some school officials were too anxious to control student dissent at walkouts

I have a nephew who attends Homewood-Flossmoor High School in the suburbs, and he was among the participants in that school’s attempt to participate in the national walkout of high school students desiring more stringent gun laws.

Not all high schools were as photogenic in their activity as these on Walkout day. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

Although to listen to his account of the school’s activity this week, it most definitely seems that some people have no clue of what a real “walkout” consists of.

SCHOOL DISTRICT OFFICIALS did not make an effort to stop students from voicing their concerns; all students were told they could partake in such events.

But students at the south suburban high school were given various sites both inside the school building and outside on school property where they could gather to express themselves.

“Express themselves” meant conducting 17-minute moments of silence to pay tribute to the high school students who died in the Parkland, Fla., high school incident that had occurred one month earlier.

But as my nephew explained it, students had been told that while they were excused from class to participate, they were expected to do so in a respectful manner.

SOMETHING ALONG THE lines of go outside, do your moment of silence, then get back to class. Students were informed that disrespectful behavior WOULD be grounds for detention.

Downers Grove detention won't look like this

For what it’s worth, the number of students who got punished by the school for their behavior Wednesday morning wasn’t any higher than it would have been on any given school day. The school pulled off the illusion of protest without having any of the ugliness of students feeling compelled to speak out.

There certainly wasn’t any of the kind of activity of students marching through the streets of their surrounding neighborhood, yelling and screaming and demanding that our government officials take their heads out of their behinds and quit acting as those individuals in our society paranoid enough to feel the need to own an AK-47 or some other high-powered semi-automatic rifle are somehow expressing their “American-ness” in such actions.

It definitely isn’t the most controlling behavior I have heard of from school officials this week.

THAT COULD POSSIBLY go to the administrators of Downers Grove North and South high schools. There, students were told that participation in such activity would be regarded as a disruption of school and would be punishable by an hour’s detention.

The Chicago Tribune reported that some 3,900 students went to class, but another 1,100 engaged in a walkout. Perhaps we should complain about all the paper wasted due to all the detention slips written up – except that in today’s day and age, the students probably got detention e-mails informing them of their punishment.

It would be a crowded detention hall, except that school officials say they’re splitting the students up and having them serve their “time” either before, of after, school. Or even on Saturday.

As though they’re creating a real-life version of “The Breakfast Club.” Only no Molly Ringwald-like cutie hanging around, in all likelihood.

I NOTICED THE Chicago Public Schools administration put some organization into the marches that their students made so as to express themselves.

To the point where Illinois Attorney General candidate Pat Quinn felt compelled to show up at such a march – the one done by students at Benito Juarez High School.

At Benito Juarez, was it about Quinn?

Quinn even made a point of issuing a statement calling for, “common-sense solutions to end gun violence” – and a plea for donations, “if you can.” Although I suspect his real intent is less to pocket a few bucks, but to try to sway some of the Benito Juarez parents into casting votes for his political comeback dreams come Tuesday.

Making the student expression of political views nothing more than a political campaign stunt – just the type of activity that ought to warrant students rising up in protest against someone trying to steal their political voice.

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