Mitchell column excerpt: The only test that matters
If my house catches on fire, I’m not going to worry about how high the firefighter scored when he or she applied for the job.
I’ll be too grateful that person had the capability to apply for the job, the character to get through the training needed to be on the job, and the courage required to do the job.
After all, when it comes to training to be a firefighter, aren’t those the things that matter the most?
Although the Chicago Fire Fighters Union is blasting the city’s latest fire exam as a “joke� because 83 percent of the people sitting for the test passed, the good news is that there will be a larger pool of applicants to draw from.
Of the 17,000 applicants who got 70 percent or better on the exam, 54 percent were white, 21 percent were African American, 20 percent were Hispanic and 3 percent were Asian and Native American. Passing candidates will now be randomly ranked.
Those rankings will determine when a candidate will be called up for interviews, background checks, agility testing and training. Thus, a candidate who got a perfect score on the written test could flunk out in any of the other four categories, while someone who got only a passing grade on the written test could perform exceptionally well in all the other areas.
Mitchell column excerpt: State lending rules just another way to box out working class
Something doesn't feel right about the anti-predatory lending rules that just went into effect. The controversial state regulation changes mortgage lending rules in 10 ZIP codes on Chicago's Southwest Side to require that prospective buyers using mortgage brokers get financial counseling if their credit scores fall below 620. Sounds like a good idea, right?
After all, there's no requirement that the buyer actually takes the advice, and he or she can go ahead and purchase the house using a subprime lender peddling a high interest rate.
But working-class home buyers have enough to deal with. They shouldn't have to unravel more red tape.
Credit counselors would probably hope a high-risk buyer returns to his or her apartment mortified by the bottom-line cost of paying for a house over a period of 30 years. They are banking on that buyer to flee, leaving behind a trail of unsigned loan documents.
Maybe that will happen in a few cases. But I wouldn't count on it happening in most of them.
As long as there are mortgage brokers who are legally able to loan money to people with poor credit, people with poor credit are going to take it. They'll worry about what could happen down the road. That's their right.
No one thinks they are going to end up divorced and responsible for paying the mortgage all by themselves. People don't plan on getting sick or on losing their jobs.
More important, why should buyers looking for homes in those 10 ZIP codes be treated any differently than people who are looking for homes elsewhere?
When white people cite race as the cause of some unfortunate situation, is it still called "playing the race card?"
September 20, 2006
BY KATHARINE WEBSTER
SALEM, N.H. -- A Maine couple accused of tying up their 19-year-old daughter, throwing her in their car and driving her out of state to get an abortion were upset because the baby's father is black, a Maine sheriff said Tuesday.
Katelyn Kampf, who is white, told Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion that her mother ''was pretty irate at the fact that the child's father was black, and she had made a number of disparaging remarks about that,'' he said.
Katelyn Kampf escaped Friday at a Salem shopping center and called police, who arrested her parents, Nicholas Kampf, 54, and Lola, 53, both real estate developers from North Yarmouth, Maine.
The Kampfs were apparently taking their daughter to New York to try to force her to get an abortion there, police said.
The parents were arraigned Monday on kidnapping charges. If convicted of kidnapping, the Kampfs face 71/2 to 15 years in prison.
Defense attorney Mark Sisti said Tuesday that a sworn statement by Salem police who interviewed both Katelyn Kampf and her parents said nothing about the father's race.
''This whole race-card thing is ridiculous and objectionable,'' said Sisti. ''There wasn't any mention in the sworn affidavit to the court about race being a factor in any way, shape or form.''
The boyfriend, 22-year-old Reme Johnson, last week began serving a 6-month sentence for theft at the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn, Maine. He is also a self-styled hip-hop artist who has gone by the name Young Merk.
What are we to make of this?
Jennifer Richeson, an associate professor of psychology at Northwestern University, won a $500,000 genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for her work documenting the psychology of racial bias.
Richeson concludes that well-meaning white people repress bigoted feelings when dealing with other races. The effort leads to "awkwardness" and "exhaustion" in social interactions, Richeson said in a recent Chicago Sun-Times interview.
In other words if you're a non-white person and get stressed out when you are confronted by what you consider to be racist behavior, you can take comfort in knowing that a lot of whites apparently get just as stressed out trying not to be a bigot. That goes to show you, if we are ever going to improve race relations in our lifetime, many more of us will have to want to work through our barriers.
Congrats to Richeson for delving into this controversial subject.
Now that you've seen the first episode of Survivors, what do you think ?
The Chicago Sun-Times TV critic, Doug Elfman, had an interesting perspective.
Predictably, "The Caucasians" talked about race almost none of the time, a sure sign they live as members of a comfortable majority, Elfman noted.
I had good intentions, but I missed the first episode.
I was in the audience at the Symphony Center cheering on Sun-Times Society Editor, Lisa Lenoir. Formerly a fashion writer, Lisa made her debute as a model in the annual fashion bash put on by the Women's Board of the Rush University Medical Center. Being invited to participate is seen as a great honor. Frankly, I was disappointed that so few blacks, Asians and Latinos were on the stage.
The glaring lack of minorities in this 80-year-old Chicago tradition made me appreciate of the "Survivor" experiment even more. At least Mark Burnett is giving viewers some diversity.
Organized labor got a lashing from Mayor Daley yesterday as he announced his first-ever veto.
The mayor suggested that race was at the root of the union's effort to force Wal-Mart to pay its employees above the minimum wage. Is he off-base, or is he exposing organized labor's discriminatory treatment toward blacks?
"Not one mayor or alderman has ever been threatened in the suburban area...Only on the West Side. Only on the South Side..."It was all right for the North and Southwest sides [of Chicago] to get big boxes before this..."
If Daley is wrong about the union's motives, then why wasn't this an issue when so-called big box stores went up in predominantly white areas of the city?
Lisa de Moraes, TV critic for the Washington Post, wanted to share her Aug. 24th column, "Sagging Survivor Plays the Race Card.
de Moraes ridiculed CBS's new edition of "Survivor" which debutes next month. The upcoming season will separate contestants into four tribes based on race.
Ken Parish Perkins, who writes a weekly media column for the Chicago Defender, also weighed in on the issue. Perkins claims white supremacists websites "are buzzing with possibilities. "
"Anything that pits the races in a tug-o-war, that creates a reason to rally behind a person just because of the color of their skin, whether it's the less-spoken kind, like a tennis match or Family Feud, falls right into their ideology of racial superiority," Perkins wrote in his column published Sept. 8.
Still, it isn't like many of us haven't rooted for a team or two because of race. For instance, when the Williams Sisters first came on the scene, didn't many blacks want to see them win simply because they were black? Yes, they were outstanding players from the start. But they were also the first black women to dominate the sport since Althea Gibson.
And didn't a lot of white people understand where Larry Bird was coming from a couple of years ago when he said "If you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get white America a little excited."
Hmmm.
Survivor--and it's creator, Mark Burnett, won't be breaking any taboos. They'll be keeping it real.
Just like some whites feel they can't say anything negative about a black person without being called a racist, well, it is extremely uncomfortable for me to say anything negative about Israel's policies in the Middle East.
I think it's my religious background. I'm Baptist, and our preachers and teachers have pounded home the message that Israel is the chosen people of God. No matter what, as Christians, we must always side with Israel. That makes sense in Sunday school.
But the never-ending conflict between the Arab Nations and the Jewish State is forcing me to examine that teaching.
During my visit to Israel, I got a chance to tour the Kiriatshmoma area, a town of about 24,000 people. Kiriatshmoma sustained some damage during Israel's 34-day war with Lebanon, Our guide, a woman who once lived in Jersey City, proudly pointed out that about 4,500 of the residents were new immigrants from Russia.
The families inhabiting the neat three-story residences were described as being "hard-working" and "doing well."
But when I asked her why thousands of Palestinians are still living in refugee camps--I'm talking about tents set up on barren rocks--she described them as "not wanting to work" and "not wanting to do anything."
I practically had to bite my tongue to hold my peace.
But how do you criticize Israel's policies without being branded an anti-Semite?
The fear of being misunderstood has kept many of us from expressing our views on the Middle East conflict. Because we are silent, the Middle East--one of the most beautiful places on earth--is also among the scariest.
