2007
Week 17
April 28, 2007

Hi

Cathy Jesus, a staff member at Creighton University, joined my table for dinner this week. Her parking sign at work says “Reserved for Jesus” and states her hours. I assume that in a Jesuit institution that sign may not get a second look from devoted souls. Though I do wonder which environment-friendly vehicle Jesus might drive. Hopefully some traditional Christians are led to think about the feminine side of Jesus if they know Cathy.

The major donors initiative I celebrated last week was more comprehensive than my quick highlight of the major piece of it. Leaders plan to provide in Omaha, with much collaboration:

1. High quality child care, training and incentives for providers;
2. Career counseling, attention to struggling learners;
3. After school mentoring and tutoring;
4. Reduced truancy, with sharing among monitoring agencies;
5. Mental health and substance abuse services;
6. Scholarships for low-income graduates in the two Metro counties.

Also this week, The African-American Empowerment Network announced a broad coalition of Black leaders who will initiate new discussions on jobs, housing and education for their people, especially young people. A powerful group.

The Omaha Chamber of Commerce had its first public meeting to plan the redevelopment of northside Omaha, up to the south edge of our district. Complete with close to a million dollars of money pledged for staff to help it happen.

Plus, the new Nebraska Teacher of the Year has organized a group of educators to lean on the Feds to bring “No Child Left Behind” up to a mode which will truly help educate our kids.

Four major initiatives! I thought I was dreaming. However, I have not had dreams that went that far. Between them, this is assuredly a new beginning. I lived long enough to witness it!

All of these relate to my reflections about current discussions on racism. A few race comments are relevant to current reality, but most are hopelessly out of date. A few Blacks make statements that are straight out of the rhetoric by angry African-American activists in the sixties. I was there. I was an activist. I remember the rhetoric. It was powerful, and together we moved out of the sixties.

There is no implication in this strongly felt frustration that we are better off. A good question, but I am not speaking to it. We have moved on and the landscape is quite different. The talk and the listening has to change or we will never get out of this swamp.

As a part-time historian I often ask us to recall the history that led us to our present situation on race issues. A columnist in the Omaha paper stirred quite a flap this week by forcing us to remember that J. Sterling Morton of Arbor Day fame was also a hard core racist. That is well documented, including a short item in my Nebraska territory history, “Omaha: the Prairie Blossoms” (page 31): “The hot spot for slave-issue friction was in the territorial legislature. J. Sterling Morton, strongly pro-slavery, and Andrew J. Hanscom, noisily antislavery, had little respect for each other's views and both were especially clever in devising political tricks.”

Nebraska was in the middle of the slave fight and Morton chose his side and pressed it. Slaves were owned in Nebraska. The slavery issue for Hanscom was human: slaves are people. For Morton it was economics: they are property.

Later, when the Irish came, attacks were by race. Irish was a race in Great Britain, and by extension, here. When descendants of slaves began a migration to Omaha in 1900, the Irish felt competition as well as compassion because they were being replaced. In their home country Irish emotionally identified with Blacks. When they migrated to United States they had to be carefully taught how to “become white” in the new country. They did that by acting like Blacks were the opposition. However Jews, because of their experiences, held views similar to the slave descendants in Omaha and established close friendships. These examples greatly oversimplify thousands of experiences. However, such diverse attitudes helped form who we are. They obviously no longer hold.

Today, a prominent example is Obama, who is representive of the thinking of current younger black leadership. He lived in poverty, but did not experience the hatred of the sixties, does not remember the Irish, has not lived segregation. He knows well what some think of skin color, but that is not his experience and it does not organize his daily thoughts. He will never use violent racist rhetoric because it is not his world and it is no longer relevant.

My frustration is not the result of academic insight. It rises when, in the same week, I hear Senator Chambers repeat word for word his fiery rhetoric from when he was an angry young man in the sixties, and then I join the circle of the African-American Achievement Council where Black leaders, with equivalent passion, speak to our current situation. Two related but different worlds.

I frankly long for the brilliant mind and flashing fluency of Ernie Chambers to be applied to the current divisions and to be a voice in these powerful new planning circles of a dawning day. It will not happen, but what a terribly sad loss.

The rest of us, all races, are left to do the translation from past realities to future promises. I am excited to see exceptional leadership in the Black and Hispanic communities beginning a substantial dialog with exceptional leaders in the business, corporate and educational communities.

Cheers

Lowen