You’d think Arabs pulling off takeover, rather than just sharing in Chicago

I have to admit that the big difference between the Chicago I knew as a kid some four to five decades ago and the one that exists now is the presence of Arabs and, in some cases, Islam.

It doesn’t phase me anymore to see a woman walking down the aisle of the supermarket while wearing a hijab, particularly if she has a slew of kids trailing her whom she’s trying to keep from running roughshod all over the store.

JUST ABOUT LIKE any other mother who happens to include grocery shopping among her day’s errands.

And I also know enough that not every single Arab is Muslim – there are those whose families at some point in time figured that assimilation to a new country included a religious conversion. Besides, most Arabs I have known had their families come to this country to get away from the very same religious fanatics many of us express fear about.

 

Considering that I always viewed the Chicago area’s great strength as being its multi-ethnic mix of people, I can’t help but think of Arabs as just another ethnic group – and one whose cuisine definitely enhances the style of edibles we are exposed to.

Unless you’re the type of person who thinks Chinese orange chicken or Taco Bell is the extent to which you wish to be exposed to anything "foreign?"

THE SAD THING is that probably is the mentality of some people whose criticism is shouted out so loud that we presume they’re a majority. They’re the ones most likely who keep giving Donald Trump poll leads in his multiple candidate presidential campaigns – even though all the other candidates put together dwarf him.

That’s the thought we ought to remind ourselves of when we consider the latest dispute in suburban Palos Park (the community that feels like it was built out in the middle of the forest preserves) that someone wants to develop a mosque there.

The Muslim American Society bought a property that once was a First Church of Christ Scientist, but had literally been sold off. As in that church didn’t want the property any longer. Nobody forced them out.

Yet there are those who want to think that this is somehow evidence that Muslims are desecrating a Christian church and using it for their own nefarious purposes.

THE SAD PART is that this issue isn’t new. It isn’t just the crackpots being inspired by Donald Trump’s “stupid talk” about Muslims and Arabs not belonging in this country.

I remember back nearly a couple decades ago when officials wanted to build a new structure in nearly Palos Heights to provide a mosque for the growing Arab population in the southwest suburbs – only to have the issue burst into a bigoted mess.

To his credit, then-Mayor Dean Koldenhaven thwarted an effort to use tax dollars to buy out the would-be mosque developers, believing it to be motivated purely by religious prejudice. Of course, he wound up losing his re-election bid, and there are those local residents who remain convinced they did the right thing by doing so.

Such sentiments continue to exist whenever someone brings up the concept of a mosque. Some sentiments just can’t wither away, no matter how stupid.

FROM A PERSONAL perspective, perhaps this is an evolution – since it would seem that Islam is now the exotic faith that scares people, not Catholicism. Although Trump’s willingness to smack about Pope Francis makes me wonder if he wouldn’t mind anti-Catholic sentiment raising its ugly head to bolster his presidential fantasies.

And as someone of Mexican ethnic origins who also has been included as subject matter for Trump tirades, it would seem that the nativists of our society are truly willing to extend their net of hostility towards anybody they can snag.

So as for the ongoing fight over developing a mosque in Palos Park, the details are all so similar that the entire battle seems so predictable. And boring to hear about.

You’d think the xenophobes of our society would come up with something new just to keep themselves intrigued. Although I suppose so long as spewing the same nativist nonsense works time and time again, they’ll keep spewing. Until we, the true majority of our society, come to our senses and stop giving such people any mind.

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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.

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Will our legislators fall for trash talk?

Lately, I have been stumbling quite a bit on cable television channels on the film “Red Tails” – the one that came out about a year ago and told the story of the “Tuskegee Airmen” who had to prove their ability to serve as combat fighter pilots during the Second World War.

It has several scenes of white military officers who are determined to justify their opposition to black pilots based on various studies that we now realize were nothing more than cockamamie nonsense.

TOO MANY PEOPLE wanted their prejudices reinforced, so they came up with stupid-talk studies that were the alleged “proof” of the ineptitude of black men in the Army Air Force.

During this upcoming week, we’re going to hear quite a bit about an issue that could get considered by our General Assembly – that of permitting the Illinois secretary of state’s office to issue driver’s licenses to non-citizens.

The conservative ideologues of our society have always hated the idea because the driver’s license (in addition to signifying that someone passed the state driver’s test) is also the most commonly-accepted form of identification in our society.

Letting these people without a valid visa have a driver’s license grants them a certain legitimacy in our society that the ideologues are determined to have.

SO THERE WILL be opposition to this idea when it comes up both in the state Senate and (if it passes there) Illinois House of Representatives. There will also be significant amounts of rhetoric against the idea.

Will the Statehouse remain as "in the dark" on immigrant driver's licenses as it was in this century-old postcard?

And sure enough, there are signs that much of the opposition being spoken this week is going to have the potential to be as stupid-sounding as the anti-black attitudes toward fighter pilots was all those decades ago.

There’s the Illinois Insurance Association, which is saying in all earnestness that many large-scale insurance companies will not want to sell auto insurance to non-citizen drivers.

As though they can’t possibly be as qualified to operate an automobile as a U.S.-born individual who walks into a driver testing facility seeking a license. Even if they do manage to pass the same test that all other drivers have to take if they want to be able to operate an automobile legally.

ALTHOUGH I’M NOT as offended at the idea that a company such as State Farm or Allstate will turn down such business. It’s their own financial loss. Either they’ll come around to their senses, or else take a financial hit. Let them suffer if they can’t be sensible.

But I have to admit that the insurance industry’s hesitation is downright mild compared to the ideologues, who have put together their own video advertisement urging people to pressure their legislators to vote “no.”

I don’t know that they have the money to put this advertisement on television. Although they may just try to get similar ideologues to view it on YouTube and consider it a “success” that they spread their “message.”

Which is that they don’t want these “foreigners” being able to drive, or do much of anything else in this country.

THEY’RE GOING TO be the people who will show up at the Statehouse in Springfield and hold a rally in the rotunda to try to scare legislators into voting against the idea – which is one that really makes sense in that it further encourages those people now living here without a valid visa to come of society’s shadows and live openly.

The fact that these people are going out of their way to remind us of a 1994 automobile accident near Milwaukee involving a Mexican ethnic truck driver that killed six children helps further undermine their case. It also reinforces my belief that the ideologues real resentment of George Ryan (who was secretary of state at the time this driver got his license) was politically partisan – rather than any concern for public safety.

If anything, granting such licenses to qualified drivers is going to encourage more safe behavior in so many ways – including behind the steering wheel of an automobile.

Giving in to the ideological harangues of those whose view of our society has the stink of nativism to it is what ultimately will hold us back – and give us roads that are less safe with unqualified drivers out and about on them.

HERE’S HOPING OUR senators and representatives have enough sense to realize that basic truth and don’t fall for the trash talk they’re going to be exposed to this week.

Although betting on a legislator (or any political person) to show signs of intelligence is never a safe bet!

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The REAL threat to our society from a decade ago was letting our fear run amok

A lot of people are spending this weekend resurrecting their memories of what they did a decade ago Sunday, looking for some anecdote that feels to them like it ought to have great significance.

For me, however, the moment I still recall was one that occurred about five days (maybe it was six) after the hijacked jets hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

I HAPPENED TO be listening to a radio station that was accepting calls from listeners. I can’t remember the exact station or much in details because I was flipping around the dial. It wasn’t some radio program that I regularly listened to.

But what caught my attention was a woman who (if she was being honest, and I have no reason to think she lied) was in her late-60s back then. Which meant she was a young girl during the years that the United States was involved in the Second World War.

Many people were quick  to compare the attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in 1941 with the idea of Islamic fanatics wanting to commit a violent act against the western world – and thinking that it was time the United States and New York (instead of London, Paris or Tel Aviv) took a hit.

We still hear people who, in all earnestness, compare Dec. 7, 1941 to Sept. 11, 2001

THIS WOMAN, HOWEVER, took the comparison to a new level – one that still scares me whenever I recall it. Because it is frightening that anyone who could think of themselves as a rational human being could make this leap of logic.

She said that we should now be fully appreciative of the mood of the country back in 1942 when our federal government did one of its more shameful acts – approved the plan by which people of Japanese ethnicity were put away in internment camps and had the lives they had built for themselves in this country seized away.

A touching moment,in a pathetic situation 



She said the fear that she believed we all now felt toward Arabs (as though all Arabs, and only Arabs, are Muslim) was the same as was felt toward people whose families came from Japan.

She didn’t quite come out in favor of internment camps for Arabs in this country. But she did say that she expected NEVER AGAIN to hear people criticize the United States for what happened to Japanese ethnics – then living mostly on the West Coast.

AS THOUGH WE’RE now supposed to realize such treatment was acceptable. Maybe she had delusions of reparations payments being returned by those people and their descendants to the U.S. government?

Sound ridiculous?

The radio host thought so. He quickly told this woman what should have appeared to be the truth to anyone who thinks rationally – that what was done some seven decades ago was reprehensible and what we ought to learn from history is not to act so irrationally once again.

No singling out Arabs for abuse or mistrust. Especially since most of the Arabs I have ever known personally were either Christian or specifically came to this country to get away from those crazy fanatics who could seriously rationalize in their minds that Allah would take it as a gesture of religious faith to cause explosions that kill nearly 3,000 people in just a few hours.

WE OUGHT TO want more people like that living in this country. Not that the woman was swayed.

She became offended, and I seem to recall that she abruptly hung up the telephone – at which point I flipped around to another radio station.

My guess is that if she was still alive a few years ago when filmmaker Ken Burns did his documentary series on World War II, she hated it because he devoted significant amounts of airtime to the stories of Japanese ethnics who were mistreated – and yet still felt the need to fight on behalf of this country.

What sticks in my mind is that it was around this point that I realized we had to be very careful about what we did – or else the conservative ideologues of our society were going to run amok and scare a whole lot of people into keeping quiet about their concerns for freedom and liberty in our society – which is what our troops subsequently were sent into combat in Afghanistan and Iraq to protect.

IT WAS AT that moment that I realized the idea that our society was coming together as one was just a short-term myth. Fear is never a force that brings people together.

I only wish I could say this sentiment had somehow died down during the past decade. Yet it was just on Friday that I read a commentary on the Illinois Review website – one that criticizes Gov. Pat Quinn for some of his appointments of Islamic organization leaders to a state council on Muslim concerns.

The right-leaning website reminds us that both the Islamic Society of North America and the Council of American Islamic Relations were named as unindicted co-conspirators in a federal criminal case conducted in Texas.

A jury never found anyone guilty. But as the website tells us, “the suspicion surrounding ISNA and CAIR affiliation(s) remains in federal records.”

SO MUCH FOR the all-American concept of “innocent until proven guilty.” Perhaps some six decades from now, someone who is now a teenager will try to justify some future harassment by claiming our current mistrust of Arabs supports it.

We truly are doomed to repeat history!

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