Writing in the June 22 issue of The Ukrainian Weekly, Andrij Semotiuk suggested Ukrainians support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. I respect your sincerity, Andriy, but I can’t support your idea. Color me “unwoke.”
I do not want our police to be defunded. I do want police unions to stop protecting bad cops.
I do not support the desecration of monuments of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other great Americans.
I condemn the spray painting of St. Patrick Cathedral in New York City and the Ukrainian Instituite of Modern Art in Chicago.
I refuse to apologize for my “whiteness.”
I’ve seen this movie before. It rarely ends well. A Black person is murdered – Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968; Trayvon Martin in 2012; Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014; George Floyd in 2020. Mayhem ensues – rioting, looting. Hard-working people flee the cities, depleting the tax base. Nothing changes for the better.
I have been involved with Black lives since I was a teenager working for my dad at his Standard Oil filling station in a Black neighborhood. Tato employed Blacks. The first time I saw Chicago Cubs play was when a Black employee convinced Tato to let him take me to a game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was the first time Jackie Robinson was playing at Wrigley Field.
I spent 15 years working as a teacher, assistant principal and principal in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), all in the inner-city where all of my students were Black. Many students did well.
Despite the best efforts of hundreds of dedicated educators, the system failed to meet the needs of all inner-city children. The Rev. Jesse Jackson declared that the reason was racism. Only Black teachers could teach Black kids, he said. When scores of white teachers fled to the suburbs, they were replaced by substitute Black teachers educated in the South who, through no fault of their own, could not pass the teachers exam required for certification. The exams were racist, proclaimed the Rev. Jackson. The exams were scrapped. The same was true of the principal’s exam. In time, most of the administrators, including the general superintendent were Black. It was about this time that Bill Bennett, the U.S. secretary of education, suggested that Chicago schools were “the worst in the nation.”
When Dr. King was killed in 1968, I was an assistant principal at Marshall Upper Grade Center located at Monroe and Kedzie streets. An entire block went up in flames on Madison Avenue, a block from our school. Not knowing what would happen, the principal requested Black teachers to drive us home. I was home for four days. When I returned, a National Guard armored vehicle was parked by the front entrance.
Later, I was involved with the War on Poverty as the Great Lakes regional director of ACTION, a federal agency that established and administered anti-poverty programs such as VISTA, Senior Corps of Retired Executives (Score), Foster Grandparents, Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), University Year for ACTION (UYA) and Project Senior Ethnic Find (PSEF), a program that I conceived and introduced in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Gary.
My work in the White House under President Gerald Ford led me to organize three White House conferences, the most important of which was devoted to neighborhood renewal. “Urban dwellers identify more with their neighborhoods than with their cities,” argued Msgr. Geno Baroni, the principal speaker. “Our federal urban policies need a new focus.” It didn’t happen.
Once Lesia and I moved to DeKalb, Ill., I began teaching education courses at Northern Illinois University (NIU). One summer, NIU assigned me to teach a class at Richard J. Daley College on south Western Avenue, not far from the Ukrainian Village section of Chicago. Most of the students were Black non-commissioned officers in the U.S. Army studying for their master’s degrees. They were bright, focused and ambitious.
My emphasis in the class was on the principle of subsidiarity – the idea that matters ought to be handled by the smallest competent authority. This meant the family, church, community, ethnic group and voluntary association, mediating structures that stand between the individual and the larger society and contribute to his sense of identity.
One of the required texts was “Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait,” edited by Melvin G. Holli and Peter d’A Jones. Students were obliged to present an oral report reflecting an interview he/she had with a Chicago ethnic, other than their own. I provided a list of questions to be addressed. Another possibility was a report on a visit to one of Chicago’s ethnic museums.
Much time was spent on Black Chicago history. Blacks living in early Chicago created churches, community organizations, important businesses, music and literature, all prior to the civil rights movement. The culminating activity for the course was a field trip to the Ukrainian Village, just a few blocks north on Western Avenue.
Thus, my professional experience combined with my reading and reflecting on the Black experience in America have shaped my present thinking.
I believe the Black Lives Matter movement, aided and abetted by its cousin Antifa, is part of an updated nihilist playbook first practiced on a grand scale during the French Revolution. The Jacobins wanted a new civilization so they decided to destroy the old one and begin anew. A similar inspiration emerged during the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks too were determined to annihilate the old civilization in order to create a bright new future. Ukrainians are still suffering from the effects of Sovietization in their country. Corruption was rampant in the USSR; it’s still a major problem in new Ukraine. “Cancel culture” follows that age-old pattern. We should all be wary.
I pray that Americans and their leaders come to understand quickly that Black Lives Matter is not just a slogan but the rallying cry for an insidious domestic enemy.
Myron Kuropas’s e-mail address is [email protected].