Clannish is more than a city in Ireland

OK, clannish is not a city in Ireland, but it sounds like one, doesn’t it? Clannishness has a lot to do with Donald Trump’s victory because it includes race, religion, family, regionalism, resentment and distrust of outsiders. It wasn’t all about jobs.

I was raised in an Irish Catholic racist family, but I’d like to think it didn’t sink in. I’d also like to thank God, in whom I no longer believe.

My earliest memory of questioning what I was hearing at home was in fifth grade at Most Holy Redeemer School in Evergreen Park, which is still an all-white school in one of the first suburban bastions of white flight. Sister Antoine Marie, a Holy Cross nun, said “If a negro child were to come to our school, would you play with him/her on the playground? And if not, how can you call yourself a good Catholic?” Click. Bless her.

I also wondered why we made such a big deal about St. Patrick’s Day at school, when there were plenty of kids with Polish and Italian names. (I still do wonder about that.)

I mulled this over while growing up in a house where only the N-word was used and where my relatives who still lived in the city praised the pastor at Chicago’s St. Leo for telling parishioners not to rent or sell to blacks.

I went to the new public high school, but I still went to Mass almost every morning, still loving the religion, but questioning a lot of the rules. I noticed that a lot of my Catholic friends were sort of obsessed by race, while the subject hardly ever came up at the public high school. It also seemed to me that the public school kids were having sex a lot more, while the Catholic kids were into drinking and smoking which the Church ignored, probably so we’d stay away from sex.

From the time I went to high school, I knew I wanted out of the South Side, and I’ve never wanted to go back.

However, I paid attention when all hell broke loose in Mount Greenwood earlier this month. The clash of extremes was not surprising. Mount Greenwood is a South Side neighborhood adjacent to Evergreen Park, a mostly white and heavily Irish Catholic home to Chicago cops, firefighters and other city workers who are required to live within the city limits. Its crime rate was very low last month — only two violent crimes, two burglaries, and four quality-of-life crimes: criminal damage and narcotics. So a nice place to live.

I wasn’t surprised that election records show that Mount Greenwood was by far Chicago’s best neighborhood for Trump, with 13 of its 19 precincts coming in at 60 percent or more for the president-elect and one as high as 70 percent. None of the city’s other 2,050 precincts showed Trump breaking the 60 percent mark.

Many funeral processions go along Mount Greenwood’s main artery, 111th street, to Mount Hope Cemetery, a popular African-American cemetery that offers to bury gang members for a very reasonable $1,200.

These processions sometimes include erratic driving, loud music, rowdy behavior, drinking, drugs and even gunshots, unacceptable in any neighborhood. In a recent procession, some of the mourners pulled out of line and parked in a fire lane. When an off-duty policemen told them to move, they refused and all hell broke loose. Videos show a lot of screaming and a lot of gunfire, including the driver waving a gun around. He was eventually killed by police. His brother was also shot.

Time for the Church to jump in and teach? Not quite. When Father Michael Pfleger went to 111th Street, he was jeered out of the neighborhood. He and his supporters were escorted out of the neighborhood by the police. When Black Lives Matter announced a protest at Catholic Marist High School, the school closed for that day, fearful of violence from its own students.

Saturday evening St. Christina Church (with an all-white grade school) looked to start the healing process with a candlelight vigil. Father Tom Conde said, “Folks were kind of scared to come out. Afraid of what might happen. Could feel it lighten up as it went.” I always think that when a leader calls his people “folks,” he’s trying to keep the lid on, not teach or inspire change.

I like to think that Sister Antoine Marie would have waded into the funeral cortege, wimple bobbing, and said, “This is a disgrace. Everybody head to the school auditorium and we’re going to talk about what Jesus and Martin Luther King would have to say about your behavior.” 

Following the Father Pfleger incident, she would have turned to the whites and said, “Is this why you send your children to Catholic School? To scream at priests and black people who come to exercise freedom of speech? I want everyone at confession this afternoon and afterward we’ll get together with that funeral bunch, order McDonald’s, and nobody leaves until we figure out how to get along.” 

Alas, Sister Antoine Marie was a soft-spoken soul. Perhaps I’m channeling Sister Mary Kathryn, who’s feeling angry and sad and lost.