What constitutes a diverse population?

Newly-elected state Rep. Anne Stava-Murray doesn’t seem overly concerned about appeasing potential voters to ensure she gets re-elected. Why else would she go about publicly labelling her home city of Naperville as white supremacist?

STAVA-MURRAY: Serious study, or self-attention?

True enough, Stava-Murray earlier this year used that label to refer to her DuPage County municipality (the fourth-largest city in Illinois) while responding to a Facebook post where somebody had described Naperville government as “the biggest bullies.”

TO ME, THE white supremacist label carries such a strong overtone that I wonder if it is too strong a label to use; one that distorts the reality of the situation.

Then again, there’s no disputing that Naperville is NOT a community where there are great numbers of African-American individuals living. For what it’s worth, an American Community Survey completed in 2016 showed more than three-quarters of the Naperville population being white – with people of Asian or Latino ethnic origins also existing in greater numbers than the 4.7 percent of those who are black.

Stava-Murray points out that many of the local public schools have next to no black students, and absolutely no black teachers.

Which might seem to be dooming any effort to get re-elected to her post come the 2020 election cycle. Then again, Stava-Murray (who has just begun her first term in office this month after being elected back in November) has already hinted she’s going to challenge Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., come the next elections.

COULD IT BE that Stava-Murray has already realized her ’18 election as a Democrat to represent a DuPage County district that historically has been Republican was a pure fluke? And that making such comments is meant to try to give her more appeal to those parts of Chicago where non-white voters are predominant?

I could see where many of those voters might think some white lady from Naperville wouldn’t know anything about them. Is this an attempt by her to show that she’s not totally clueless?

It had better work out that way. Because if it doesn’t, I could see where making such comments becomes a political “kiss of death” to any future she thinks she might have.

What should we think of Naperville community character?

Because she’s not going to make friends amongst the people she’s supposed to be representing in Springfield by implying they’re a batch of bigots. Although to be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that many of those living in Naperville are out there precisely because there aren’t a whole lot of black people amongst their neighbors.

THEN AGAIN, PERSPECTIVE on what constitutes “diversity” varies based on whom one is talking to.

I remember once covering a legislative hearing about redistricting and district boundaries where local officials from suburban Tinley Park described their hometown as a diverse community – largely because the white majorities also had significant numbers of people of Arab ethnic origins moving in, along with a growing number of Latinos.

The African-American legislators on that committee took offense to the “diverse” label being applied to the municipality, which had a black population of less than 2 percent.

They couldn’t comprehend use of the “diversity” label to a community where their numbers were so few. Still are actually, as the 2010 Census Bureau count showed Tinley with a 1.92 percent black population – and with the majority including American Indian, Asian, Pacific Islander and Latino, along with its white populace including significant tallies of people of Irish, German, Polish, Italian and Dutch ethnic origins.

THE POINT BEING that the “diverse” label being applied, or denied, to a community probably says more about the hang-ups of the person using the label – rather than the reality of the communities in question.

DURBIN: Stava-Murray likely opponent in 2020

For what it’s worth, I have a step-brother who lives out in that area, and a niece who attends high school within the Naperville district (which actually includes her home in neighboring Aurora).

While I’m not going to claim the area is most accepting to the presence of black people, it is far in character from the communities I have been in that truly do reflect a “white supremacist” attitude.

That goes even further in thinking that Stava-Murray’s use of the “white supremacist” label is most likely a campaign tactic; trying to build an image for the currently little-known legislator as she prepares for future runs for political office. Which also means we’re likely to hear similar trash talk during the next two years.

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How enamored ought we be of pseudo-celebs who set foot in Chicagoland

Every time I think that Chicago has the potential to be one of the most sophisticated cities on the face of Planet Earth, I stumble across something that reminds me of a St. Louis native I once knew who described Chicagoans as “hicks in nice suits.”

WINFREY: Sold her home she never lived in

As much as I’d like to punch him in the mouth for suggesting such a thought, I have to admit there are times he may well have hit our Midwestern populace right on the mark!

FOR I COULDN’T help but notice the names of Oprah Winfrey and Kanye West popping up in the news Friday, just one day after I saw the moniker of Michael Jordan pop up as a Chicagoan

Which anybody who has been paying attention knows really isn’t the case anymore. The one-time Chicago Bulls star has long ago broken his ties to the Second City.

As has Winfrey, the queen of daytime talk show television programming – who long ago stopped producing her show at a studio on the near West Side. She’s now a California girl – as in a part of the entertainment industry that views “the world” as not extending much beyond the greater Los Angeles area.

Any ties she had to our city streets are nothing more than history.

SO IT WASN’T a surprise to read a Chicago Tribune report about how Winfrey sold off what it calls her “final piece of Chicago-area real estate” – as in a house in suburban Elmwood Park.

WEST: Finding dining in suburban Naperville

Which she bought for $298,000 back in 2001, never actually lived in herself, and managed to sell off for a $72,000 profit over what she paid for it all those years ago.

The downtown condo where Winfrey actually lived, along with a high-rise apartment she had in the Gold Coast for awhile, were long-ago sold off. As the Tribune reports, Winfrey still has a house in Merrillville, Ind.; which technically could be regarded as a part of the greater Chicago area.

But the one-time “World’s Greatest” newspaper apparently wants to view State Line Road and the Cook/Lake, Ind. County line as an impenetrable barrier. So Oprah is history as a Chicagoan.

JORDAN: Still trying to sell suburban home

AS IS, ONE could argue, Michael Jordan, whose one-time home in suburban Highland Park was included in a story I recently saw about luxury homes that celebrities own – which clearly identified Jordan as a Chicago resident.

Even though he has been trying to sell that mini-mansion of his for more than five years now. It seems the kind of people who could afford such a garish structure want something built to custom for their own desires – not something that was meant to cater to the whims of Jordan when he was the world’s biggest celebrity professional athlete.

Yet there are those who continue to cling to the images of Winfrey and Jordan as though they’re ordinary people who we run into every time we go to the neighborhood supermarket, or pump gas into our cars.

Perhaps we fantasize that Oprah came up a couple of bucks short while grocery shopping, and we just happened to be the ones who were there who could give her some cash to fulfill her tab.

OR MAYBE WE want to think of Kanye West, who was in the news last week to meet with President Donald Trump about public policy issues, then managed to catch the attention of the Naperville Sun newspaper when they found out he was at a Pepe’s Mexican restaurant in suburban Naperville on Thursday.

TRUMP: Thank goodness he doesn't come here

For the record, Kanye ordered chicken tacos for dinner, then went to the pool table set up in the restaurant, and shot some billiards, while also signing autographs and generally playing the role of celebrity for the restaurant patrons.

It’s good that there are people out there who had a pleasant time. But really, I would think interrupting someone when they’re trying to dine is boorish behavior. It’s downright rude.

It’s the kind of thing I’d expect in Indianapolis. Then again, perhaps even people in “Nap-town” would conduct themselves better than that. After all, if West really thinks Pepe’s is decent Mexican food, he has bigger issues in life than his nonsensical babbling with the president in the Oval Office.

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Only a Grinch sees a "war" between Christmas and other holidays

On the surface, it seems like a gesture of respect and equal time -- the giant menorah erected in Daley Plaza just a few dozen feet from the city's official Christmas tree.

For eight days, anyone passing through Chicago's unofficial public square can share in spirit of celebrating the Maccabees, who through a miracle of sorts managed to have their lamps with enough oilk for one night burn brightly for eight days.

IT'S NOT JUST Chicago that gives this conciliatory gesture to Jewish people.

Just this week, officials with the park district in Naperville approved the erection of a giant menorah next to the Santa House that is a local tradition. Park district officials gave in to the menorah even though their attorneys (according to the Daily Herald newspaper of Arlington Heights) were telling them there was some legal grounds for keeping the Santa House grounds Christmas-only.

So it won't just be downtown Chicago wehre people can share in the concept of Hanukkah. Others will be abel to watch in confusion or in anger as the various lights on top of the "candles" light up each night.

I suspect many people will be engaged in the hustle and bustle of the commercial aspects of the holiday season to pay these public menorahs much attention. Except for the few people who will perceive them as a "War on Christmas" because they'd rather everybody be forced to pay exclusive attention to the Christmas holiday.

THEY'RE THE ONES who probably remember fondly the episode of "The Simpsons" where Krusty the Klown's non-denominational winter holiday special told us to have a "Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Crazy Kwanzaa, Solemn and Dignified Ramadan and a Tip-Top Tet."

Yet I can't help but wonder about these giant menorahs and what point they really serve, other than to force certain political people to accept the fact that not everyone in this nation is of a Christian religious denomination.

I still remember a discussion I had a couple of decades ago with a co-worker who was Jewish. She told me she found the whole concept of a giant public menorah to be somewhat gaudy.

After all, the whole point of the menorah and the lighting of the candles on each of the eight days of the holiday (which this year began at sundown Friday and continues through the end of next week) is to create a moment in a Jewish household when everybody engages in the requisite prayers in Hebrew (even though for some Jewish people, those prayers are the only Hebrew they know) and pays a few moments tribute to the thought of the Maccabees of thousands of years ago who struggled to survive under odds that would have wiped out anyone else.

PUTTING UP THE large-scale versions of a menorah does border on crass. It's almost as tacky as some of those Santa Claus holiday displays erected in the name of Christmas -- in mid-October.

Does this mean that the true point of a public menorah is that some Jewish groups are showing us they can celebrate their holiday in as tacky a manner as some Christians do with Christmas?

I'd hate to think that is the case. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

So as much as I can appreciate the concept of "equal time" and also enjoy the rage that some of these "War on Christmas" types express when they get all worked up over not having their "holiday" reign supreme at this time of year, I'm not sure I see the point.

SO THIS IS what will be going through my mind this weekend, as I'm likely to spend some time with my father and step-mother, who is Jewish. That also means the bulk of my nieces and nephews are being raised Jewish (and are likely to make out this weekend with presents as much as any Christian kid the morning of Dec. 25).

In my own way, I'll even be partaking in Hanukkah (we're gathering Sunday for a holiday party that will include the moment of truth at the menorah). The rest of the week will consist of just a few moments of reflection by my stepmother and whichever of her grandchildren happen to be on hand -- as she tries to pass along the custom to the next generation.

It seems to be to be a more dignified act than anything involving a trip to a public place to look at a giant menorah at the exact moment that another "candle" is lit.

And come Christmas Day, I'm likely to spend a good portion of the day with my mother and other family in holiday celebration.

SO IF FOR me it seems like the whole idea of dueling holidays is just a tad absurd, you'd be correct. There's no reason that there has to be a holiday conflict this time of year. Unless you happen to be the disagreeable type who is looking for a reason to be upset.

In which case, you're just a Grinch.

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