UNREAL: Chicago Won’t Name School After Obama – Wait Until You See Why!
Mayor Rahm Emmanuel thought it was a great idea to dedicate a new school to his former boss and longtime friend President Obama; however, residents disagreed, and the mayor has changed his mind.
One would think that in Chicago a school named after Obama would be a hit, and it is. It’s not that it was going to be named after the first half black president that’s the problem, it’s the fact that it was to be built in an affluent area of the city where mostly white people live. (Face-palm!)
“Over the last few months, my team has listened to questions and concerns from the community, ranging from location of the building to the naming of the school. We take that community input seriously, which is why – as we continue to look for a thoughtful way to honor President Obama – we will look for other possible names for this future school,” Emanuel said in a statement.
The community he’s speaking of is the black community, who expressed outraged that the school would be built to honor the President in a “wealthy, predominantly white part of the Near North Side,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
You thought white people were the only racists?
“What’s more, families living in the swaths of Chicago where students don’t reside near elite high schools, chafed at the fact the new school would be built little more than a mile from the top-tier Walter Payton College Preparatory High School,” the Tribune wrote.
That sounds pretty anti-white to me. Then again, maybe it’s my “white privilege” getting in the way again.
Adding to the pressure from the black community was “powerful” South Side Ald. Carrie Austin, who represents a part of the Roseland neighborhood where Obama worked as a community organizer.
“If they’re going to name a school after President Obama they should put it somewhere else,” Austin said Thursday. “Either in Roseland, where he got his start, or in the Hyde Park area, where he lived and has a home. To put it (on the near North Side), that just doesn’t look right.” (Face-palm!)
Because it’s just not “right” to dedicate a school to someone unless it’s in the neighborhood where they either grew up or worked? If that’s the standard, then a lot of cities might want to start thinking about name changes.
And of course, weighing in on the matter was a worker from Safe Passage, who said that racial demographics should be the deciding factor when choosing the location of the school.
“He was the first black president. It should be in a more or less minority community,” Elaine Jones said. “It just gets to be about the politics. For many of the people deciding, the kids really don’t matter.”
So it’s really all about race, got it.
Imagine, if you will, white conservatives showing similar outrage if someone tried to dedicate a school to George W. Bush in a minority community and saying it should be built in an affluent neighborhood. The mere suggestion will likely get me labeled as racist.
It would be funny to watch the double standard when it comes to racism and identity politics if it wasn’t so damaging to our nation. The very people who run around and scream racism at every opportunity rely on race as a determining factor in many of their decisions, just like with this school.
That, my friends, is the definition of racism.
Author’s note: I don’t particularly care if they name a school after the President or not; however, I do care about the double standard when it comes to racism in America. If we’re ever to get past the racial divide, then we must first stop allowing selective racism and hold everyone to the same standards. To say that a school shouldn’t be named after Obama in a neighborhood full of “rich, white people” is no different than those same white people saying they don’t want black children attending the school, except one train of thought is accepted and the other would get people killed.
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