THE WEEK >

Meetings

We looked. We couldn’t find any.

Stuff to do

Tuesday, Dec. 26

Kinara lighting. To celebrate Kwanzaa, Flossmoor will host a kinara lighting ceremony at 5 p.m. tonight through Jan. 1 at 5 p.m. each night in Flossmoor Park.

Winter Break Teen Reading Challenge. Homewood Public Library, 17917 Dixie Highway, will host a teen reading challenge all day from Dec. 26 through Jan. 9. Open to anyone aged 13 to 18. Participants can read during school break and log time spent. Each hour will earn students a raffle ticket for a chance to win a raffle basket. Read at least seven hours to be eligible for the $10 Barnes & Noble gift card drawing at the end of the challenge. Register here.

Wednesday, Dec. 27

Grandparents Day. The Homewood Science Center, 18022 Dixie Highway, will host a special event for grandparents and other caring adults from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Register here. There will be access to all exhibits. There is no fee for this event, but donations to the HSC end of year giving campaign will be accepted.

Saturday, Dec. 30

STEM Saturdays. Free learning and fun from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Homewood Science Center, 18022 Dixie Highway.

News & Notices

40+ Double Dutch Club documentary released. Pamela Pelt-Robinson, co-founder of the 40+ Double Dutch Club, announced on Sunday, Dec. 24, that “Beyond the Ropes: The 40+ Double Dutch Club Documentary” is streaming on Tubi. The group started in 2016 in the parking lot of Homewood-Flossmoor High School and now has more than 10,000 members in multiple countries.

Trash pickup this week. Homewood Disposal will be closed on Monday, Dec. 25. All residential and commercial service will be delayed one day the week of Christmas, so Monday pickups will occur on Tuesday, Tuesday pickups on Wednesday, Wednesday pickups on Thursday, Thursday pickups on Friday and Friday pickups on Saturday. 

Metra Christmas Day schedule. Metra will operate a Sunday/Holiday schedule on Monday, Dec. 25. Visit www.metrarail.com for details.

Save the date: Liv Well Fest. Saturday, June 8, in Irwin Park will be an opportunity to join cool activities, visit health and fitness vendors and hear fascinating talks at an event hosted by Serendipity Yoga, Bionic Content and the Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle in partnership with the Homewood-Flossmoor Park District.

Sign up for Juneteenth. You Matter 2 announced last week that sign-up is available for the 2024 Homewood-Flossmoor Juneteenth Festival on Saturday, June 15. Visit hfjuneteenthfestival.com to register as a vendor, volunteer, sponsor, parade participant or part of our entertainment lineup.

Sign up for MLK Day of Service. Flossmoor invites local businesses, non-profits, volunteer groups, neighborhood clubs and associations, friends and neighbors to help make a difference in the community by volunteering for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service on Monday, Jan. 15. This is the 10th year for the Day of Service and organizers hope to grow the number of volunteers. To see the list of projects that need volunteers or donations, visit the Day of Service web page or contact Stephanie Wright at 708-335-5472 or [email protected].

Recycle holiday lights. Anyone who finds broken holiday lights as they string up exterior holiday decorations can put the cast-offs in containers located in Homewood at the H-F Racquet & Fitness Club, 2920 183rd St., and Irwin Center, 18120 Highland Ave. or in Flossmoor at Goldberg Center, 3301 Flossmoor Road; Park Place, 2449 Flossmoor Road; and Irons Oaks, 20000 Western Ave.

< THE WEEK

• Marian Catholic High students care for the needy (Dec. 17). 
• Teen shot during attempted carjacking (Dec. 17). 
• Local rabbis fill 6th night of Hanukkah with songs, messages of hope (Dec. 18). 
• Flossmoor historical society receives first major donation (Dec. 18). 
• Seniors of all ages help Santa answer his mail (Dec. 19). 
• Flossmoor Commons to open a clothing store, an indoor playground and a new restaurant (Dec. 19). 
• Tyler, H-F hoops chasing a ring (Dec. 20). 
• H-F’s Odumosu looking for another state title (Dec. 21). 
• Homewood trustee position changes hands as Opyd appointed to replace Purcell (Dec. 22). 
• Eliott Yurman lights Flossmoor Park menorah for the final day of Hanukkah (Dec. 23).
• Homewood trustee lights menorah on night 7 of Hanukkah (Dec. 23).
• District 233 commends Coach Smith for 500 wins (Dec. 23).

DEMOCRACY WATCH

Getting residents involved. The Homewood Board of Trustees on Dec. 19 unanimously approved the appointment of Allisa Opyd to fill out the term of Lisa Purcell, who resigned on Dec. 12.

Trustee Anne Colton, who said she has known and worked with Opyd for years, was effusive in her support.

“I can’t think of anybody in Homewood I would pick over Allisa Opyd, so we got a great outcome,” she said.

But she offered a critique of the process used to reach the nomination decision.

“On other boards I’ve served on when there’s a vacancy, you post it. You see who wants an opportunity to do this, an opportunity to serve,” she said. “There’s probably a lot of people in our community that don’t even know this is an opportunity for them.”

She told the story of how she got into politics, and it was because of an announcement in the Homewood Star in 2005 that there was an open seat on the Homewood Public Library Board. She tossed her hat in the ring, and the library board picked it up.

“Thus began my political career,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was something I’d be good at. I think there’s people out there who feel this way. I think we’ve got a very deep bench and a very talented community. In the future, I’d like to open this up. I’d like to make this more of a community conversation.”

Mayor Rich Hofeld’s practice has been to select appointees from among the members of the village’s advisory committees.

“I prefer to get people who have experience on committees and have been involved in the town in one way or another,” he said. “I’ll continue to do that.”

He noted that serving on committees demonstrates interest and commitment.

“If they serve on a committee, I can pretty much gauge their interest in what they are doing and how they would be as a trustee,” he said. “That to me is the best way. It’s always worked well.”

Colton and Hofeld both make good points. A village government that opens its arms to residents who wish to serve is a good way for the whole community to benefit from its deep bench of talent and energy. And it builds trust. Having people demonstrate their commitment to serving the community on an advisory committee is a good way to ensure trustee positions go to people who take local government seriously.

One way to meet in the middle might be for the village to make an announcement whenever there’s a vacancy on an advisory committee. Applications can be picked up at village hall, 2020 Chestnut Road, during business hours or on Saturday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon.

Antiracism library. With Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday two weeks away, I thought it would be good to offer an MLK selection this month. “The Prophetic Tension between Race Consciousness and the Ideal of Color-Blindness” by Ronald R. Sundstrom is a chapter in “To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.” edited by Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry.

I found the chapter very timely after this summer’s Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action policies in college admissions. The opinions penned by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas echoed Roberts’ famous line from Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 in 2007: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

The comment seems to fit within the court’s and the country’s recent allegiance to the idea of color-blindness.

King is sometimes cited as a sort of check-mate move in arguments about affirmative action. His best known, most cited line from all the many speeches he delivered and articles he wrote is from the cherished “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963. 

“I have a dream that 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.” That sure sounds like a yearning for color-blindness. 

Antiracist writers have pointed out, with increasing insistency in recent years, that one line from one speech does not stand in for King’s work and actually misrepresents his views on color-blindness.

In King’s last book, “Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community” he advocates for repairing the damage of discrimination in a way that requires race consciousness. 
“A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip  him to compete on a just and equal basis.” (Italics from the original text.)

Sundstrom explores the tension between the color-blind and color conscious themes in King’s work, coming to a more nuanced conclusion. 

“King’s dream has color-blind aspects, but King most certainly did not advocate for color-blind practical politics,” Sundstrom writes. “The flaw of the ideal of color-blindness is that it prompts its proponents to focus on the implications and applications of the ideal as if it were accomplished already.

“King did not support color-blindness if one thinks of it primarily as a practical means to achieve legal and political racial equality. King repeatedly and publicly supported ‘racial consciousness’ and advocated for several explicitly color-conscious programs focused on reparative and distributive justice to achieve racial equality. … He would have emphatically disagreed with Chief Justice Roberts’s claim in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 that ‘the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,’ as if a quitting cold-turkey approach to color-blindness would work to the benefit of all in educational or residential desegregation or integration policies.”

In other words, King argued that we have to earn color-blindness not by declaration but by achieving justice. 

Color-blindness is probably not the best term for what King dreamed of. Sundstrom notes that there is only one instance of King using the term in a positive sense, and it came in a 1965 interview with Alex Haley. He doesn’t use the term in his “I Have a Dream” speech. 

“Our nonviolent direct-action program, therefore … will continue to dramatize and demonstrate against local injustices to the Negro until the last of those who impose those injustices are forced to negotiate; until, finally, the Negro wins the protections of the Constitution that have been denied to him; until society, at long last, is stricken gloriously and incurably color-blind.” 

But as Jennifer Harvey points out in “Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racial Unjust America,” color-blindness is literally impossible for people without visual impairment. 

“Color-blindness doesn’t work for the simple reason that we cannot not see race,” she said, noting that children notice racial differences within months of being born. “Noticing differences and developing prejudice are two distinct processes. Prejudice is learned.”

To me, that fits King’s view pretty well. Detecting difference is not the same thing as discrimination, and color-consciousness might be necessary to the project of defeating discrimination.