Oak Park talks more about diversity 
at Exchange Congress

By ERIC LINDEN

The Regional Exchange Congress in Oak Park is over and done for this
year, after a plea to continue dialogue and undertake action to improve
diversity in the village and throughout the region.

When it comes to discussing diversity, Oak Park Village President
Barbara Furlong said, "I think we're all talking, and that's the
important thing."

When it comes to discussing diversity, Village Manager Carl Swenson said
the Exchange Congress delegates should concentrate on three areas:
"investment,  intervention and involvement."

When it comes to discussing diversity, Exchange Congress co-chair Barry
Greenwald said, "It's probably more difficult" now than in prior years.

And when it comes to discussing diversity, Exchange Congress co-chair
Gloria Smith urged open and frank discussion, saying, "I think we've had
enough superficial talks."

The Exchange Congress, a discussion of diversity--racial and
otherwise--by various community leaders from Oak Park and some
Chicago-area suburbs, was held  Thursday, Sept. 21. As planned, panel
discussions about diversity in a host of municipal areas took place,
little with which Oak Park residents or others could disagree. For
instance, even in often contentious Oak Park, there will be little
public argument on the needs--as touched on by this year's Exchange
Congress--for  a greater number of African American leaders, improving
the academic achievement of students, preserving the housing stock,
attracting businesses that reflect a multicultural society, schools
emphasizing diversity, police reflecting and respecting a community's
diversity, for equality in mortgage lending, for the media to better
address diversity issues and for the arts also reflecting diversity.

But the keynote address from Larry McClellan, director of the South
Metropolitan Regional Leadership Center at Governors State University in
south suburban University Park, addressed a theme that, perhaps, Oak
Park residents and those in other communities do not necessarily buy
into: blacks have been wronged by whites for a large part of our
nation's history and whites would be well served not to forget that.

After welcomes to delegates, a healthy turnout of mostly whites in
Theatre 1 of the Lake Theater, whose owners donated the space at 1022
Lake St. in Downtown Oak Park for several sessions, McClellan said the
delegates should not ignore "issues of diversity that face the entire
society." But he spotlighted how the history of black-white interaction
in the United States has caused problems that exist today.

"It is not an accident that blacks and whites have been divided,"
McClellan said in his keynote address for the Exchange Congress, which
this year was held under the theme of "embracing change: The Vision of
Diversity Moves Forward." "That (division) has come about after practice
and policy by governments at every level."

The country's leaders have, over the years, McClellan said, encouraged
or mandated slavery of blacks, separate and unequal education,  mortgage
lending and government programs in which blacks and whites have been
treated differently and more. McClellan said neither he nor others
should ignore other aspects of diversity in the country--Hispanics,
disabled persons, the gay community among them--but the history of
black-white relations makes it a higher priority in diversity
discussions.

>From conversations and comments at many public forums over the years,
many people, Oak Park residents included, have expressed opposition to
statements like McClellan's. Many residents reject the notion that
today's residents either bear a responsibility or a need to recognize
the unfair and inconsiderate actions of their predecessors.

McClellan, who was a participant in the first Oak Park Exchange Congress
in 1977, praised leaders and officials like those attending this year's
forums for taking up the continuing issue of diversity. McClellan
acknowledged some improvements in the area of race relations, and, among
other points in his opening address, offered three ideas for further
progress in that area.

1. General vs. specific acceptance.
As McClellan put it, many white people have no difficulty with the
notion that African Americans generally deserve equal rights and
treatment and should be able to live where they choose. But too many of
those same people, he said, also reject the practice of applying those
same concepts to specific African Americans.

2. "Where the problem gets loaded." That was the phrase used by
McClellan to describe the common practice of placing blame for incidents
on those people, commonly African Americans who have been discriminated
against. Often, he said, the focus is placed on blacks who move into an
all-white community and they are blamed for causing the often-resulting
white flight.
To counter this, in part,  McClellan proposed publicizing what he called
White Isolation Index for communities where whites consciously choose to
live apart from all blacks. Wouldn't it be fascinating, he asked,
rhetorically if those whites were blamed for denying their children the
opportunities and advantages inherent in growing up in an integrated
community?

3. All people of all races, creeds, sexual orientations and the other
myriad categories need to better listen and talk deeply to each other.

McClellan's opening remarks preceded a day of traditional Exchange
Congress discussions. In the morning at the Lake and in the afternoon at
Oak Park and River Forest High School, 210 N. Scoville Ave. in Oak Park,
delegates talked and heard about the following variety of areas, with
emphasis on diversity.

* Affirmative marketing in rental housing
* Diversity and the arts
* Economic development
* Housing stock
* Media
* Minority student achievement
* Mortgage lending
* Police
* Race and the local press
* Racial composition of schools
* "Real dialogue"
* Schools
* The power of "isms"

The last session, titled "Growing Up with Diversity," featured a
discussion by young people in their 20s who grew up in racially mixed
communities. Included on the panel were Brandy Belmonte of west suburban
Hillside, Erroll Doris Jr. of west suburban LaGrange, Melissa Watson of
south suburban Park Forest and Aaron Podolner of Oak Park, who this
month started a job as a Mathematics teacher at Oak Park and River
Forest High School, his high school alma mater.

Oak Park began holding the Exchange Congress less than a decade after
village government had passed a landmark Fair Housing Ordinance and took
other measures to work toward racial diversity. Oak Park then was one of
the few majority-white communities working to be racially mixed and to
avoid so-called resegregation into an all-black community. The Exchange
Congress was designed on a nationwide basis to trade information with
those communities that also were resisting "resegregation" from white to
black. The early Exchange Congress discussions were held by Oak Park and
other Chicago communities like Maywood and Park Forest and by cities
like Teaneck, N.J., Oak Park Mich. and others that were beyond the
immediate area.

Pressures from municipal finance and for other reasons led to suspension
of the Exchange Congress, which has not been held since 1992, when it
also was held on a Chicago-regional level. Now, rather than battling
so-called white flight and "resegregation," the stated goal of the
Exchange Congress also involves better involving African American
residents of Exchange Congress communities and  addressing other aspects
of diversity--other races and other constituencies like gays and
disabled persons.

That was what happened in Oak Park at the Sept. 20 opening reception at
the Grand Ballroom of the Carleton of Oak Park Hotel, 1110 Pleasant St.,
and during Thursday's panel discussions.

Exchange Congress organizers this year had hoped to attract
representatives from about 25 Chicago suburbs and came close--drawing
attendance from municipal officials and residents from Oak Park, Forest
Park, Chicago, Evanston, LaGrange, Park Forest, Hillside, Matteson,
Streamwood, Highland Park, South Holland, Wheeling, Woodridge, Downers
Grove, Schaumburg and Skokie.

Also attending were several of the founders of the original Exchange
Congress, who are Oak Park residents and who also currently serve on the
Exchange Congress Board of Directors:
* James J. McClure, an attorney and former two-term Oak Park village
president
* John Cain, former of an art gallery in Downtown Oak Park and one-time
public relations counsel to village government
* Vernette Schultz, a former village trustee and member of the
Elementary School District 97 school board who worked with Cain on
village hall  public relations
* Bobbie Raymond Larson, former executive director and founder of the
Oak Park Regional Housing Center
* Sandra Sokol, currently village clerk and formerly a community rep in
the Community Relations Department of village hall
* Sherlynn Reid, the conference coordinator of this year's Exchange
Congress and former executive director of the Community Relations
Department.

The planners' goal is to now work toward reviving a national Exchange
Congress gathering in the year 2001.