Chicago -
By Steve Rhodes
Bill Beavers is a real piece of work.
“Todd Stroger is a man,” Beavers insisted in today’s Sun-Times. “He might not have as much bass in his voice as I got, but he’s a strong man. For the first time he’ll be his own man.”
But he won’t be allowed to vote. Or to actually become a Cook County commissioner himself. He’ll just be “president.”
If Todd Stroger were a man, wouldn’t he be feeling humiliated just about now?
Posted on June 29, 2006
By Alexander Russo
The school year just ended for the Chicago public schools, and everyone who’s not doing summer school seems pretty relieved to have gotten out alive.
It was a mess of a year – full of turmoil and difficulty and tremendous amounts of uncertainty. By most accounts, there’s more turmoil to come.
Looking back at the past nine months, the only things CPS hasn’t had are a patronage scandal or high-level embezzlement. But the way things have been going it seems like either one could come along any day now.
Posted on June 27, 2006
By Kiljoong Kim
This nation’s battle with racial and ethnic tension has been well documented through political measures, from the Emancipation Proclamation to the Civil Rights Act to the Naturalization and Immigration Act. While most of us have observed and interpreted this history as a struggle, a series of tumultuous circumstances, and have seen race as a dividing force, others have explored beyond their own identity and managed to interact with people outside their own races. In fact, some even managed to marry and have children as results of their interactions. However, despite the increasing complexity of our society, we have not thought of a good way to recognize those people who do not necessarily fit into conventional categories of race.
For a long time, if a person had 1/16 of blood that was black, that person was considered black. Even today, Halle Berry was labeled as the first black actress to win the Best Actress in Oscars though her mother is white. We routinely consider Sen. Barack Obama as black though he is a product of a white mother and a black father. Prior to 2000, even the United States Census Bureau couldn’t figure out how to adequately deal with people who did not fall neatly into existing categories. The decennial census in 2000 was the first time people were allowed to identify themselves with more than one racial category.
Posted on June 25, 2006
