EXTRA: Just a thought

As seen in suburban Homewood. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

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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Are casino “promises” causing suburbs to hold off on serious development?

Every time I pass the northeast corner of Cicero Avenue and 175^th Street in suburban Country Club Hills (I have family that lives nearby), I can’t help but shake my head at the vast expanse of land that exists there.

Will people gamble their way into the red at this site?

That site has a large-scale strip mall that could grow into a shopping mall to its north, and Interstate 80 to the east. It is large enough that local officials say they’re saving it for the casino they want to develop.

THE ONE THAT would be the “south suburban” casino in the grand scheme of things by which Illinois state government ups the number of casinos operating in the state from 10 to 15.

Much of the attention on this issue has gone to the fact that one of the extra casinos would be placed in Chicago, and over whether a Chicago-based casino should be controlled by a city government agency (as in one whose director is picked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel) rather than the Illinois Gaming Board that oversees all other casinos in Illinois.

At times, the idea of a south suburban casino seems like an afterthought.

Yet when I think of the concept, I can’t help but notice the number of communities that are basing their economic future on the idea of something that isn’t currently permitted under state law!

IT MAKES ME wonder how many legitimate development opportunities are being passed on (or not even being contemplated) because everyone is banking their future on the idea of getting a casino.

Made worse by the fact that, at best, ONE community will get the dream. While some half-dozen proposals (at least, more may develop as time passes) are being considered.

There are going to be a lot of losers.

What happens to those communities who, years from now, have nothing to show for their casino dreams other than vacant land plots? Such as that one on Cicero Avenue?

PERSONALLY, I DON’T think much of the whole casino concept. I always thought of them as being for communities that were incapable of getting anything else to locate within their boundaries.

Which makes me wonder if places like Country Club Hills or Homewood (my father and step-mother, who enjoy the casino atmosphere and live just a few minutes from the proposed sites on Cicero Avenue or Halsted Street), or others like Ford Heights, Calumet City or Lynwood (which would like to put a casino right on the Illinois/Indiana border) have any kind of back-up plan?

I have heard from various municipal officials whose complaints about casinos focus on state government for taking so ridiculously long (how many years has it been now?) to make a decision.

Because they feel it puts them on hold. They can’t possibly contemplate real economic development – something that creates jobs better than being a coat-room clerk or a valet parking attendant.

AS FOR THOSE who want to argue the merits of being a black-jack dealer, I don’t really want to hear it. There are higher aspirations in life than dealing cards, and I always wonder about a community that is willing to settle for less.

Because that’s what the whole casino campaign amounts to – communities putting bets on their future in hopes that they’ll strike it rich. When anybody with sense knows that the “house” always wins! As in the casino itself.

Everybody else ultimately comes out the loser. Sometimes, I think these suburban mayors would be better off buying a Mega Millions lottery game ticket.

With all the technicalities and legalese and complications in the process of the state creating a casino, I wonder if the odds are better that they’ll win the big jackpot – as opposed to someday getting a casino.

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Starbuck's closes its way into racial squabble w/ Chicago-area closing

I’ll give the people with Starbuck’s a little bit of credit – I don’t think the Seattle-based gourmet coffee retailer intended to provoke a race war when they picked which of their Chicago-area stores would be among the 600 nationwide to be closed.

But that is what they have managed to provoke with their choice.

WHEN STARBUCK’S RELEASED their list of coffee shops across the country that will be shuttered due to rising costs and declining profit margins, only one was a franchise located in Cook County.

Hence, only the people of Country Club Hills, a southern suburb, will lose their ability to purchase coffee in the various exotic blends and funky-sounding sizes that the retailer has used to create their corporate personality.

Now as it turns out, I have parents living in the towns both to the west (Tinley Park) and east (Homewood) of Country Club Hills. Both of those towns each have two Starbuck’s franchises in their boundaries.

So one can make a legitimate argument that the Starbuck’s store that was part of the strip mall at 167th Street and Crawford Avenue (in the city, we call it Pulaski Road) will not be missed. There are other Starbuck’s stores within a 10 to 15 minute drive of the soon-to-be-defunct location.

AND FOR THOSE who would argue that people without cars will not easily be able to get to the other locations, I’d argue that the strip mall in Country Club Hills was at a location distant from residential areas. No one from a nearby neighborhood with any sense was walking to the store in question.

So on paper, the corporate decision makes sense. But facts and figures on paper do not always take into account the raw emotions that exist. In this case, those emotions are racial, and they are behind the differing perceptions of the motivations behind the corporate action.

Country Club Hills (in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau) is a town of 16,169 people, of whom 81.9 percent are African American.

The two surrounding towns that each will continue to have two Starbuck’s franchises are majority white. Homewood is 78.1 percent Anglo, although a black population was at 17.5 percent in 2000, and evidence exists to show it has grown in the past eight years.

BUT IT IS the other town that has the black activist in everybody upset. Tinley Park is a Chicago suburb of 93.2 percent white people (only 1.9 percent African American). And officials note that at a time when the chain is closing stores (and putting on hold plans to build stores in places such as the nearby suburb of Lansing), they went ahead and opened a second Tinley Park franchise – located directly across the street from the existing store.

These particular dueling Starbuck’s stores are about a five-minute drive from where my mother lives, and I can personally attest that Starbuck’s is not lying when they say that the existing location is in a strip mall with a set layout.

There was no way to amend the structure, particularly not if the goal was to have a drive-up window for people who need their gourmet coffee fix but are too lazy to get off their duffs and out of the car to make their purchase.

The new location on the east side of Harlem Avenue is a new structure, so the drive-up window was included in the design. Corporate officials won’t say so, but it would appear obvious that the old location will eventually be closed once its lease expires (which local newspapers report is in about two years).

SO FOR THE time being, Tinley Park, Ill., will go from being the home of the Bettenhausen family of auto racing fame to being the place where Starbuck’s fights a “civil war” of sorts for the loyalties of the area’s coffee drinkers.

Seriously, the SouthtownStar newspaper published a story Wednesday quoting locals who insist they will remain loyal to the old store, and don’t like the idea of having to walk across the street.

But to the people in neighboring Country Club Hills (the two towns are separated by Interstate 57, which is generally considered the demarcation point between the south and southwest suburbs), they see it as an issue of their predominantly black town losing a franchise so that their white neighbor can have two stores.

Even those black people willing to look at the issue somewhat rationally find it sad that their town’s economic demographics were considered unacceptable by corporate officials in Seattle to maintain the Starbuck’s store.

DOES THIS SOUND ridiculous?

To some, they will want to complain that Country Club Hills officials are guilty of “playing the race card” in being critical of Starbuck’s.

But I see the whole incident (which got significant amounts of airtime in a story broadcast Wednesday by ABC-owned WLS-TV) as more evidence of the way black and white people can perceive the same circumstances so differently.

In a way, it is no different than the poll commissioned by the New York Times, which on Wednesday reported on the differing perceptions of the presidential campaign of Democrat Barack Obama – based on the race of the person being questioned.

WHEN ASKED, “WHO has a better chance of getting ahead in today’s society?,” 53 percent of white people questioned said they think the two races are equal, with 35 percent saying white people have a better chance of succeeding in our society.

When it came to black people, 64 percent think white people have better chances of success, with only 30 percent thinking the two races have equal chances.

There also was the question of whether race relations in this country were “generally good or bad?” Fifty-nine percent of black people picked “bad” while 55 percent of white people picked “good.”

As much as I’d like to say these statistics sadden me, I have to admit they do not surprise me. I still remember how naïve I thought it was when the Wall Street Journal ran a lengthy story last November entitled "Whites' Great Hope?" about the Obama presidential campaign having the potential to be one that forevermore puts aside race as an issue.

HOW CAN WE be expected to put aside race when it comes to something significant like a presidential election?

We’re in a situation in this country where the closing of a coffee shop (particularly one as generic as a Starbuck’s franchise) can be cause for a racial debate. They might not be as blatantly offensive as they were a half century ago, but we’re nowhere near resolving the racial tensions of this country.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: It lasted for barely over one year, but the Starbuck’s franchise in the predominantly African-American suburb of Country Club Hills (http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6269041) is history.

Tinley Park’s “War of the Starbuck’s” is a case (http://www.southtownstar.com/news/1058004,071608starbucks.article) of misplaced consumer loyalty.

We the people of this country can’t even agree on whether racial overtones exist with the closing of a coffee franchise. Why should we be expected to agree on the racial (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/us/politics/16poll.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) perceptions involved in the presidential campaign?