Barack Obama's birthday – will we celebrate, or use as excuse to bash him?

I can already sense the outrage that is going to occur with regards to a pair of bills pending this spring in the Illinois General Assembly.
 

Will we someday wish Obama birthday?

Legislators from Chicago in both chambers have it in their heads that Aug. 4 ought to be a holiday noted by people across the state. For that is the date in 1961 in which Barack Obama was born in Honolulu.

THERE ARE THOSE who want Obama to be regarded as an equal to Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Jr. Or at the very least, Casimir Pulaski.

Those are other officials for whom their birthday anniversaries have warranted a holiday in their honor. With Lincoln and King, government even shuts down for the day.

They think that Obama is worthy of the same recognition. Probably nationally, but most definitely in Illinois. For Obama did live the bulk of his adult life in Chicago and began his public life in the Illinois Senate, before moving up to the Illinois delegation of the U.S. Senate.

But let’s be honest. This is going to be an issue that will cause outrage in so many places. There will be those who will despise the very notion of giving Obama any form of recognition.

MANY OF THEM are among the 46 percent who chose to back Donald J. Trump for president, in large part because they saw a Hillary Clinton presidency as being sympathetic to the Obama legacy.

 

Does Obama get Honest Abe treatment?

The kind of people who boo’ed and hissed back in 2008 when John McCain made his concession speech for president to Obama never did get around to accepting Barack as the nation’s leader. Which is why I find it ironic that McCain, the senator from Arizona, is now being regarded as a potential leader of Republican Trump opposition.

They’re the ones who are realizing the problems that can be caused by those who now are focused on using a Trump presidency to eradicate every trace that Obama was ever in control.

Would Barack equal MLK?

It won’t just be the Affordable Care Act, a measure to provide health insurance to the masses whose major flaw is that it gives Obama a historic accomplishment to go on his political record.

JUST AS THERE are those individuals who got so worked up with Trump’s constant “Lock Her Up!” rant that they’re still determined to want her charged, convicted and incarcerated, there will be others who will want every trace of Obama erased.

WWRD (What would Rauner Do?)

They won’t be willing to accept that some parts of our society don’t share their contempt for the man who never was close to being the socialist tyrant they always claimed he was and whose biggest flaw may well be that he tried to compromise on many issues (immigration reform being the biggest) when he should have taken a more hard line attitude!

I can already envision the outrage that will be dumped all over Illinois, particularly Chicago, at the thought that our legislature would even consider making Barack Obama’s birthday a holiday of any type!

Is McCain now head of the GOP old guard?

My question at this point is, “How many days will it be before an Obama holiday becomes the subject matter of the latest Trump rant against Chicago?”

ALTHOUGH I COULD also envision opposition from Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, not so much because he’d want to join in the Obama bashing, but that he doesn’t want to provoke the nitwits who already want to penalize us for matters such as sanctuary cities.

So it will be interesting to see what happens with these bills. The concept came up last year, but didn’t pass in part because people didn’t want to give a holiday to a sitting president.

How long 'til Trump bashes holiday concept?

They’re hoping that the fact Obama is now a former president could cause some people to ease their opposition, although I wonder if the issue is one that is bound to accentuate our regional differences and become something only a Chicagoan could support.

Or could it also be that the Illinois Legislature goes ahead and passes the idea of an Obama birthday holiday out of spite; a way of showing the redder parts of the nation that we don’t see our blueness as anything to be ashamed of!

  -30-

What would we have thought some half century ago with building lit for MLK?

I happened to be in downtown Chicago on Friday night, along Michigan Avenue to be exact, when I noticed the downtown buildings that like to light themselves up for special occasions were at it again.

Celebrating King memory similar to a sports victory. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

For amongst the many colors intended to give the city skyline a touch of whimsy was the Blue Cross/Blue Shield building at 300 E. Randolph St., which was lit up in blue and white with giant several-stories high letters spelling out “MLK.”

SURE ENOUGH, IT was the beginning of the weekend in which we commemorate Monday the birthday anniversary of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who come April of next year will have been gone from our midst for half a century.

King is one of those names that has ceased to be a living, breathing human being. He’s just an image that people use for whatever purpose they choose – rather than for anything King may have said or done during his lifetime. I encountered one news story published this weekend whose point was to say that King as a child was an ordinary person, and something of a prankster.

I once heard an activist say that King had become nothing more than a marketing image. It wouldn’t shock this activist to someday see someone try to sell blue jeans with the King image.

Truly gaudy. But not out of line with the way some marketing campaigns for various products have gone.

SO WHAT SHOULD it mean to us that Monday is King Day across this nation – even though in some Southern states they try to rebrand it as Great Americans Day with people like Robert E. Lee being included in that list?

 

KING: More than just a hedshot

It’s not a surprise that some people would feel that way. Just look at our recent presidential election that some amongst us will never get over or accept.

For some, that idea of “Make America Great Again” may very well include the idea of downplaying this day because they’d rather not recall the images of half a century ago when King felt compelled to challenge the segregated way of life that existed in part of the country – and that many in the rest of the country was more than willing to accept as just the way things were.

We in Chicago can’t really claim to have been any better. We were, after all, the place where King, himself, got hit in the head with a brick (the Marquette Park rallies).

King drawing a crowd to Soldier Field for a 1966 housing rally. Photograph provided by Richard J. Daley collection at University of Illinois-Chicago.

AND WHERE MANY of us have parents and/or grandparents who fondly remember the image of then-Mayor Richard J. Daley standing up to King and his demands for equal housing for all. As though King's political defeat in Chicago was something to be proud of.

Unpleasant images. We’d rather not have to be reminded, if at all possible. And it’s definitely not something that many of us want to be called out on.

Just like many of those who a couple of months ago cast their votes for Donald J. Trump’s presidential bid. They either support the racial hang-ups of the most extreme Trump-ites, or they’re willing to be on the same side as those people and certainly don’t want anyone criticizing them for it.

This King Day is one coming at a time when some people might have fantasies about turning back the clock to an era when certain types of people were supposed to know their place (which was secondary).

NOT THAT I think we’re going back that far. But it is something that ought to be contemplated by all of us. Lest we wind up forgetting the significance of what happened some 51 years ago when King himself spoke in Grant Park – located just south of the building now lit up with his initials.

 

A tragic day for many

I can’t help but wonder what King himself would have thought of the image of one of the giant Chicago skyscrapers that overlook where he spoke bearing a tribute to himself.

But then again, keep in mind those same buildings light themselves up for just about any occasion – most recently back in November when the Chicago Cubs managed to win the World Series.

I also don’t doubt that for some people, the Cubs’ victory (the first in 108 years) was something far more significant than anything King ever said or did. It’s no wonder Trump won!

  -30-

EXTRA: Will they let it go? Or, Ouch! Does it still hurt all these years later?

Yes, I'm too cheap to send out individual King Day greeting cards. Although they do exist. Image provided by Greeting Card Universe.

I should point out with regards to the reference I made about the pastor at a King Day celebration who previously was outspoken in his opposition to gay marriage in Illinois that he wound up speaking about the need for African-American people to honor King’s memory by striving to make the most they can of their lives.

He didn’t bring up gay marriage. Although I did notice several of his supporters wearing yellow buttons that read, “Marriage = 1 Man + 1 Woman.” Some people just can’t let certain issues go.

ALTHOUGH IT ALSO was amusing, in a warped sort of way, to hear his reference to King’s time in Chicago – particularly that rally through the Marquette Park neighborhood back in 1966.

What other city on Planet Earth greets a Nobel Peace Prize winner by hitting him in the head with a brick?

And how ridiculous does this make Chicago appear to be, even if it was nearly some 48 years ago?

  -30-

Nobody silences Jeremiah Wright! Particularly those who try hardest

I couldn’t help but be amused when I learned Wednesday that the Chicago Teachers Union has thrown its lot in with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – the man whose rhetoric has offended ideologue America because he’s willing to call them out on their past sins against black people, rather than just let the past be the past.

WRIGHT: Obama's "kill" list??!?

The people who now go about accusing Wright of “reverse racism” are probably the grandchildren of those who would have referred to him as “uppity” in decades past for his oft-harsh rhetoric.

WHICH HE GAVE samples of on Wednesday.

For the teachers union held an event in the Roseland neighborhood meant to jump-start their political efforts concerning proposed changes in laws for special education class sizes. To help get the crowd aroused, they brought in Wright.

Whom the bulk of us remember as the pastor of the black-oriented church that Barack Obama and family attended when he was still a lowly state legislator and nowhere near a national political figure.

“God Damn America!,” is the phrase that the ideologues always want to stuff into Wright’s mouth. He did say it. But when you consider some of the things that have been done to black people throughout our nation’s history, it’s a wonder he didn’t say something even more harsh.

ON WEDNESDAY, HE told the union gathering (which also had many pastors of South Side black-oriented churches) that he wants to see a rejection of the “three-headed demon” of “racism, militarism and capitalism<’ which is what he thinks Western society has become about.

He even accused Obama (the man whose wedding to first lady Michelle he presided over) of planning peoples’ deaths. “Every Tuesday morning, there’s a kill list that the president decides who they’re going to kill this week,” said Wright, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. How much of a headache did the president have Wednesday night after learning about that line?

OBAMA: Reaching for aspirin bottle?

That part amused me because the notification I was sent by the teachers union (with instructions about where and when I needed to be in place if I wanted to cover the event) specifically said Wright’s speech was off-limits.

But someone as outspoken as Wright is just too loud to be ignored. What he has to say will come out. And what he still is – even though he’s now technically retired and the Trinity United Church of Christ is now being run by others – is someone who views our establishment critically.

AND FOR GOOD reason!

KING: Hated just as much in his own time

Personally, I find the rhetoric that we often get from the far right of our political spectrum to be more subversive in nature than anything Wright has ever said.

It also doesn’t help the ideologues attempts to sway me in that I have heard many black preachers speak throughout the years. There is a certain cadence to it, and a certain rhetorical flourish.

The trick to comprehending it is to realize how much of it is actually of substance, and now the bulk of it is for show – to ensure that the message sticks in the minds of the parishioners or other people in the audience.

GO SO OVER the top, and some of it might actually be remembered. The larger message might get through.

So personally, I’m not about to condemn the Chicago Teachers Union for associating with Rev. Wright. I’m sure there are some people who will do exactly that (I’ve already read some of their comments – anonymous, of course – on various Internet sites).

But then again, none of those people were ever going to vote for anything in line with what an organized labor union wanted. Heck, these are the people who probably think of the teachers’ union as being led by a loud-enough mouth herself in the form of Karen Lewis.

Of course, all of this was timed to coincide with the birthday anniversary of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (which is Wednesday, even though the officially-designated government holiday won’t come until Monday).

WHICH MAY HAVE some people try to claim that King was about peace and equality while Wright is about stirring up hatred and resentment.

Then again, I suspect the people saying this now were the same ones who, back when they were younger, were the ones who used “Communist agitator” as their label of choice to describe King.

That is, when they weren’t using their preferred slur for King, Wright, Obama and just about anyone else whose melanin level is more intense than their own.

  -30-

Mandela is evidence of our change

How far has our society changed with regards to race relations? My own barometer for that issue is our perception of Nelson Mandela.

 

The one-time leader of South Africa whose election as president after decades of incarceration as a radical subversive element to their society died this week – reaching the age of 95.

HE TRULY DID so much with his life at the end that it becomes very easy to forget the nearly 30 years that he spent in prison. In fact, I’m sure there are people who are now desperately trying to rewrite their own memories to erase that incarceration.

Because it is a blot that is uncomfortable to deal with. How could someone so worthy have ever been considered a criminal?

Yet I’m old enough to vividly remember when the only perception of Mandela was that of a criminal. Mandela was often the issue of concern during my college years when people felt the need to protest for social justice -- usually in protests meant to pressure U.S. companies to divest themselves of South African investments.

I remember being at an apartheid protest march (covering it for a college student newspaper) at Illinois State University in Normal when an outside group tried to cut into the event with their chants that Mandela was a “Communist” and otherwise un-American.

I ALSO CAN remember when going to some sort of public event invariably would attract a few people passing out literature while chanting “Free Nelson Mandela!,” whom most people had either never heard of – or were more than willing to believe the official party line that he was a criminal; or perhaps a "terrorist."

Invariably, those people in this country backing Mandela’s release from prison were also selling copies of various Communist Party publications.

I’m not exaggerating on that last point. I remember once in the summer of ’85 being at the University of Illinois-Chicago campus and engaging in an hour-long conversation with a woman peddling The Daily Worker.

In short, backing Mandela wasn’t a mainstream thought.

OF COURSE, WE were also back in the days of Ronald Reagan as president. Those people who put Bonzo’s one-time co-star in the White House were more than willing to go along with the idea that South Africa should be allowed to decide its own affairs.

If that meant being willing to look the other way when the concept of apartheid (the official policy by which South Africa’s white minority population kept the overwhelming black majority penned into certain, substandard parts of the country) was discussed.

For that was what Mandela and his African National Congress were so opposed to when he was arrested in 1961 for leading a three-day national workers strike. He first got a five-year prison term, then in 1963 was sentenced to life in prison along with other ANC members for allegedly subversive activities.

He ultimately served 27 years in prison, which puts the amount of time that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was detained in assorted jails into proper perspective.

I CAN RECALL the otherwise-sensible people who would dismiss Mandela as a “cause” because of that prison time. Too many people willing to believe that law enforcement authority was automatically correct, even though it wasn’t our system (which has mechanisms in place to catch its errors and correct them, to the best of its ability).

Of course, things changed when Mandela eventually got his release (his continued incarceration became just too much of an embarrassment for the South African government).

It also helped that Mandela, upon release, worked with officials to dismantle the segregationist ways of South Africa – for which he and former President F.W. de Klerk received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Only the most hard-core of ideological nitwits would continue to rant about Mandela after that. Although considering how much they whine about 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama, it’s clear we’re not completely over the old hang-ups – and probably never will be completely!

NOW, I’M NOT nominating Mandela for sainthood. I have no doubt the man has his flaws. All human beings have them (mine are being way too ill-tempered and grouchy at times to be around).

But the fact that we’re no longer hearing “Communist” rants about Mandela – and the fact that his death compelled just about everybody of any significance (I don’t know that I needed to know what Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis thought) to issue a statement expressing their condolences – shows we’ve undergone some sort of shift in thought patterns.

Shifts long overdue, in my own humble opinion.

  -30-

EXTRA: What goes through peoples’ minds about King Day these days?

There are times I wonder just how much have we managed to trivialize the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. – all in an attempt to make him more acceptable for society as a whole.

KING: Have we lost the 'real' man?

As we participate in ceremonies all across the country on Monday to pay homage to King’s memory – just what “memory” are we remembering?

BECAUSE MUCH OF what we hear these days – some 44 years after the man’s death – makes him sound like an African-American version of a “peacenik” or “hippie;” images which themselves have been tampered with by the conservative ideologues to try to trivialize their significance.

I can’t help but wonder just how many people of an older generation are gnashing their teeth and silently seething at the very thought of an official holiday (and now, even an official memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C.) to pay tribute to the man whom they once lambasted as an “agitator” and a “Communist” – to use a couple of the nicer epithets that used to get tossed out with regards to King.

I’d like to think the fact that the only people who still use those terms to describe King are Ku Klux Klan members (and even then, only when they’re looking to provoke a brawl) would be evidence of our society having changed to the point where we now realize how thoroughly stupid we ever were for thinking such a thing.

But I can’t be that naïve. Younger generations won’t ever fully appreciate the contempt level once felt for King – which is both good AND bad.

GOOD THAT THEY don’t get the hate first-hand, but bad that they might not appreciate the degree to which King and his followers had to overcome. Because what they sought is really so obvious that only the biggest of nitwits were opposed to him.

Unfortunately, too many of the rest of us who don’t want to be called on our trash-talk of the past were more than willing to sit back and let the ideologues rant and defer to them so as to avoid a confrontation.

It strikes me as so similar to the debate taking place these days whenever immigration reform and the growing Latino population comes up that it makes me think we really haven’t learned much of anything.

What made this thought boil over in my brain was a King Day celebration I attended Monday in south suburban South Holland, where the Rev. Reginald Williams, Jr., of First Baptist Church in University Park (all the way down at the southernmost edge of the Chicago area) gave his own assessment of King’s image – which he calls, “a man taken sorely out of context.”

BECAUSE TOO MANY people reduce King to a few lines of “peace” rhetoric without placing it in the context of just how opposed some segments of our society were to such “peace.”

As Williams put it, “they made him a wimp who held a utopian dream.”

He cited, as an example, the famed “I Have a Dream” speech made from Washington, D.C., where everybody remembers the line about, “My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

But we then ignore the line in the same speech in which King said that “Negroes” were in the nation’s capital that day to “cash a check” for freedom and unalienable rights, except that, “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’.”

REMEMBERING THE REAL King and his struggles might very well stir up the old resentments. Yet trying to ignore the resentments as though they never existed merely trivializes the whole matter – which is something we should never want to do.

Because then, King’s memory becomes just another holiday – perhaps a black version of President’s Day. One in which some people get some time off without really understanding why, and some businesses concoct special sales to try to get those people to use their days off to shop some more.

It may bolster the economy a bit, yet I can’t help but think that Williams was on to something on Monday when he said, “Corporate America has created an image to use King to sell anything from bedsheets to chicken wings.”

Somehow, I doubt that King – when he wrote his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’—had in mind trying to bolster the bottom line for Shark’s Fish & Chicken!

  -30-

What constitutes “history?”

It is somewhat interesting to know that U.S. officials on Monday cooperated with officials in Montreal have decided to erect a bilingual plaque at an apartment where Jackie Robinson lived during the one year he played minor league baseball – prior to joining the Brookyn Dodgers in 1947 and ending the concept that pro ball was for “white” people only.

Some may have their qualms about U.S. officials designating a historic site in Canada, although that doesn’t bother me so much as the idea that we’re honoring an apartment – one that is at least six decades old – or that they waited until the absolute last day of Black History Month to do this.

WITH THE EXCEPTION of that one summer of 1946 when Robinson was with the Montreal Royals of the International League and lived there with his new wife, Rachel, I doubt there is anything about this particular place that is different from any other apartment building still standing from that era.

Or from any apartment building still standing in Chicago, or any other city in this country or on the North American continent.

The one-time student of history in me fears that by going out of our way to designate every single bit of minutia related to Robinson’s life, we’re taking steps toward trivializing it.

The “great” things that Robinson did were accomplished because of his activity on the ball field (where local officials long ago placed a plaque marking the spot of the old Delorimer Stadium to honor Robinson and the Royals), not after work when he ate and slept. Do we really learn much from a bilingual plaque whose contents can be summarized as “Jackie (once) slept here.”

WHICH IS WHY a part of me was always glad to see that city officials have never tried to turn 1550 S. Hamlin Ave. into anything resembling a historic site.

For those of you too young (or too absent-minded) to remember, that was the address of an apartment building where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., lived for one year of his life – at $90 per month for rent. It was the summer of 1966 (I was not quite one year old back then) that King was going to make the country realize that racial segregation wasn’t just a Southern problem.

While the Northern states never had the blatant “Jim Crow” policies written into the law, the separation of the races and tensions between them could be just as bad. And King chose our very own Chicago as the first place to demonstrate it.

Of course, we lived up (or is it “down”) to King’s expectations by being the city where he got hit in the head with a brick during a local protest march. Places like Marquette Park, Gage Park and Cicero (the suburb, not the avenue) are where King made his presence felt locally.

I’M NOT SAYING we place a plaque on the spot where King stood when that brick came crashing upon him. But it would be more intriguing to know how many of the locals have a clue what once happened in their midst, rather than seeing the place where the reverend ate breakfast,.

Of course, the building is long gone. It wasn’t much to begin with, and after the urban riots that followed King’s assassination in 1968, much of the North Lawndale neighborhood was reduced to vacant lots that no real estate developer would even dream of touching.

Which is why we have had for decades the joke about Dr. King living in a vacant lot. In fact, one website devoted to Chicago tourism goes so far as to include an entry for the empty lot, and telling us that one of the highlights of this particular attraction is “free admission,” while also telling us that we should also check out the church at 3413 W. Douglas Blvd. – where a church at which King once spoke still stands.

That might be a better sight to see than the one-time apartment lot, which actually is finally being “filled in,” instead of being the equivalent of a cavity in the teeth of urban planning.

CONSTRUCTION BEGAN LAST year on a proposal for the “Dr. King Legacy Apartments,” which would include 45 units of housing and some retail space, which is something the neighborhood could use more than just a plaque that way too many tourists would be too scared to come see anyway.

Now in the current economic climate, I’m not sure how quickly the housing will go. While there is a need, there also is a chance that developers could get too greedy and price themselves out of what the market would bear.

It also is what makes me reluctant to think much of the talk in recent years of the MLK Historic District – meant to turn the entire area around 16^th and Hamlin into a destination of sorts.

But at least someone is trying to think of the neighborhood’s future. If it were to work, it would do more for its surroundings than that plaque being erected at Jackie Robinson’s old apartment ever would.

  -30-

King Day? Mayoral election will tell us more about state of our race relations

Monday is the day we officially pay tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., who if he were still alive today would have turned 82 on Saturday. There will be much blather about how far we as a society have advanced in terms of race relations.

There also will be some people who will pipe down, gritting their teeth in disgust at the thought of paying tribute to King but also not wanting to say something stupid even though it reflects their true feelings.

IF ANYTHING, IT is those people who interest me more than anyone who comes up with some sort of rhetoric praising King’s memory, his work to strive for equal rights for all (at a time when many people seriously thought that segregation was a part of the American Way of life).

They keep quiet, but then take some subtle action meant to maintain some sense of the old way of doing things.

It is those people who most have me wondering about the upcoming mayoral elections. Because I think they are the ones who will impact the outcome.

I honestly believe that the significance of this particular election cycle is that we will learn just how far we have advanced in race relations in the past few decades.

IT HASN’T BEEN that much of a factor thus far, because we’re at the point where there are so many candidates that the individual campaigns can focus on themselves and pretend everybody else doesn’t exist.

In fact, there really have been two significant storylines taking place during this election cycle, with the followers of each story pretty much ignoring the other.



Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday holiday gives us one day a year to assess the status of our race relations, when we ought to be concerned about that topic year-round. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.



One cycle has centered around Rahm Emanuel and his attempt to build up a campaign structure so overwhelming that his election on April 5 will be inevitable. Let all the local candidates with their neighborhood bases of support (and the opposition of everybody who can’t stand their particular neighborhood) dump all over each other, while Emanuel gets the business community’s backing and becomes the new chief executive of Chicago city government.

The other cycle has focused on the attempt by African-American activists to narrow down their field to a lone candidate, in hopes that all the non-black candidates dump all over each other – clearing the way for a black person to become mayor of Chicago. I realize there are actually three African-American people out of the six mayoral candidates, but I’m not convinced that William “Dock” Walls or Patricia Van Pelt-Watkins can gain enough support (even though personally, there are times when I think Watkins is the only one of the six candidates worth taking seriously).

BUT ONCE WE get past the Feb. 22 election that will narrow the six down to two, we’re going to see how enlightened we truly are.

I don’t think we’ll get the blunt rhetoric like we saw back in ’83. No watermelon jokes or campaign ads about voting against the black guy, “before it’s too late.” But it will be the more subtle type of hostility – which can be just as negative as the most blunt-spoken nitwit wearing a Klan hood.

The cynic in me wonders how many of the people who are now screaming they will vote for Anybody But Rahm will manage to overcome that politically partisan hang-up if the “anybody” turns out to be an African-American person – most likely in the form of former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun.

Or what happens if Moseley-Braun’s political hang-ups wind up dragging her into third place – and out of the running for a run-off election? Will a large segment of the city population (the African-American part) suddenly pout and whine about being excluded if the election becomes one of Rahm Emanuel versus Gery Chico?

THE DEGREE TO which either of these scenarios occurs will be the evidence of how far we have come in race relations.

Because for all the people who claim they don’t want race or ethnicity to be factors in the mayoral campaign, all too often their rhetoric indicates they only see this as a problem if a non-white candidate gains voter support due to it.

Did anyone think that that famed political science professor Milton Rakove was being irrelevant when, in his two classic books about Chicago politics (“We Don’t Want Nobody Nobody Sent” and “Don’t Make No Waves, Don’t Back No Losers”), he went out of his way to identify the ethnic backgrounds of every single political person he wrote about?

Considering the degree to which ethnicity and ethnic ties have been a part of Chicago political alliances throughout the decades, I can’t help but wonder if this is just part of the city’s multi-ethnic texture – and that African-American interest in such factors merely means they’re fitting in with everybody else.

THE FACT IS that race and ethnicity are factors in our society. Sometimes they help us rise to higher levels, while other times they drag us down into the muck.

So while some people are going to use Monday as the day by which they judge where we as a society are and how far we have advanced in terms of race relations, I honestly believe that April 5 will be the better date to judge us here in Chicago.

At the very least, I hope we have advanced significantly since that August day in 1966 when King protested in the Marquette Park neighborhood – also the day that we became the city where King himself got hit in the head with a brick.

  -30-

What a difference seven days make

Even if President Barack Obama had unanimous political support across the nation, there’s no way he could have done anything in his first nine months as president that would legitimately make him worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The award that he learned Friday will be bestowed upon him is a political statement, just like Obama’s detractors will spend the next few years claiming.

YET I’M NOT so sure that makes it a bad thing.

The people who bestowed the prize want to ensure that the direction in which Obama would like the United States to move in terms of its relations with the world and with the Middle East will some how prevail.

And if in the process, if means that we are forced to look a little more bluntly at Obama’s political opponents and see their actions as the crass opportunism that they truly are, then maybe this political statement is about viewing the issue a little more honestly than we have been in recent months.

Part of it is the fact that some of us are so determined to believe that “both sides” have equal legitimacy that we don’t want to acknowledge the crass factor that is at work here.

IF ANYTHING, THE safe thing for the Nobel people would have been for them to wait a few years, see what actions Obama took, then give him the prize in 2012.

Of course, Obama’s political detractors would have denounced that act as being an attempt by “foreign” elements to influence a presidential election (that is the year, after all, that he likely will run for re-election).

Who would have the nerve to vote against a fresh Nobel Prize winner, rather than whichever conservative ideologue winds up winning the Republican Party’s nomination for president in the next federal elections?

Instead, they’re awarding the promise of what could be from an Obama administration – in hopes that enough people will be inspired by the award. Instant credibility could bolster his political strength in the future, or at least that’s what the Nobel people probably are hoping for.

NOW I HAVE read some “instant” commentary from people who say that if Obama were truly the noble creature that the Nobel people claim him to be, he would refuse to accept the award, while also making some sort of self-deprecating statement claiming himself to be “not worthy.”

Which is why I noticed the statement Obama sent to his supporters by e-mail that almost goes in that direction, although he says he will accept the honor when it is formally presented to him in spring 2010.

“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize – men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace,” he said, in his statement.

“But I also know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement, it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes,” he said.

I CAN’T HELP but note the recipient of the peace prize for 1964. That would be the year that Martin Luther King Jr. received the award for his pacifist protests on behalf of civil rights for all.

Technically, his activity that was awarded by the Nobel committee was considered criminal activity in certain parts of the United States, and mere evidence in other parts of the country of his “communist” tendencies.

Yet it was that Nobel that gave him a jolt of credibility that forced many of his contemporaries to regard King as more legitimate than just some rabble-rousing protester. And it was the start of the process that, throughout the years, has made us realize how ridiculous those people who several decades ago were so eager to label King a “commie” were being.

Could it be that the people who today are bashing the Nobel people for awarding Obama are upset because they fully appreciate how much of a credibility jolt he has received (despite their attempts to marginalize him and his supporters in our society)?

I WONDER IF the people complaining today about Obama receiving the award are the ideological grandchildren (if not the literal ones) of the people who thought it a disgrace that King got the honor?

Obviously, we’re going to have to wait a few decades to see how events pan out and whether King and Obama deserve to be regarded in any sense as equals.

But a part of me can’t help but note that the people who are most irritated by the actions of Friday are the ones whose views are most offensive to those of us who want our nation to move forward into the 21st Century – rather than take a few steps back into the first third of the 20th.

So it won’t bother me too much to see them upset.

OF COURSE, IT could also be that what really bothers them is that we went from last Friday with the pundits trying to blame Obama for the failure of the International Olympic Committee to award the 2016 summer Olympiad to Chicago, to this Friday with Obama getting the Nobel.

Any political fallout he would have suffered (and I’m convinced it would have been minimal) from the Olympics will be far overshadowed in the history books by the Nobel.

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