There is going to be a revised Diversity Statement. It is going to acknowledge that systemic racism is a real and actual scourge in the village of Oak Park. Maybe it will include the phrase “systems of oppression.” Maybe not.
But the victory — and it is a victory — is going to come soon. And it is going to come because activists in Oak Park have pushed hard over the course of years especially in our schools. In that hard push, sometimes feeling pretty lonely, activists have gradually brought a lot of white people to their side. Not everybody, but enough to make a movement and to gather the votes so that strong backers of equity began to be elected to school boards and administrations began to change.
The village government, not to its credit, has been very slow to acknowledge that the manifestations of systemic racism are not limited to school test scores or unfair systems of discipline in the schools. Like any American institution, Oak Park’s village government was built with the interests of the majority in mind. That’s just real. And this government has to begin a process of conscious change now.
The Diversity Statement will be a fine first step. It is pushing for policy changes, for intensive staff training, for measures of success, for spending some money for consultants, for an actual equity policy just like the schools have created that will be the real work. That work will come easier if board members avoid vilifying each other over a diversity statement where the victory — 5-2, maybe 7-0 — is imminent.
For five weeks now, since the seating of a reconfigured village board, we have been dealing with the intensity and drama of updating a historic diversity statement to pointedly acknowledge racial equity. There’s been some confusion. There’s been some obstinance. There’s been some arrogance.
There has also been some rocky but real communication on a topic that is just hard for some people to initially understand. But headway is being made. Ten days ago, Trustee Simone Boutet withdrew her support for one revised version of the diversity statement that had been offered up in watered-down fashion by two other white trustees. Boutet, who sees herself as a social justice warrior, had, it seems to me, a genuine epiphany as equity activists described their lived experience in Oak Park to her.
On Friday in a public letter, Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb decried what he perceives to be an uncivil and Trump-like debate among trustees but more notably to me acknowledged that systemic racism exists right here, right now (see Viewpoints, page 37).
That leaves trustees Dan Moroney and Deno Andrews, the authors of the revised statement, gradually finding their way to the only right side of this issue. They’re battling White Guys Syndrome. If systemic racism is real in an institution I believe in and intuitively want to defend, then I’m being called a racist. Not nearly, fellas.
You’re being called on to open your eyes, to listen with empathy to the truth that for many black and brown residents of this village the system is still tilted against them. Might be in subtle ways as well as more overt circumstances. But it is real. And you can help fix that without taking a damned thing away from the white folks in full denial who clog up your Facebook feed.
Finally, everybody, pick your battles. Glenn Brewer is an inspired choice to chair the Community Relations Commission. Wise and deeply experienced in issues of race and open housing, this former trustee is a quiet, effective leader with the highest profile to lead what ought to once again be a powerful source for advocacy on matters of race and equity.
Simple truth: The mayor nominates people to village commissions and as chairs of those commissions. That’s one of his jobs. And in Brewer he has made a strong choice.
