Our speaker this week was Lisa Wilkerson who spoke to us about systematic racism.  Ms. Wilkerson is a pharmacist, who is originally from New Orleans, but who has lived in the Chicago area for the last thirty years.  She currently resides in Vernon Hills, and as a Black professional she has had to face a significant amount of racism in her life.  Her talk centered on a couple of her personal experiences, which she believes highlight the problem.

 

Our speaker has an eighteen year old son who is an excellent student and athlete, and who was a participant in the arts program in his high school.  Every time he leaves the house though, she worries, because she knows that statistically as a young Black male he has a one in a thousand chance of being killed by the police.

Ms. Wilkerson spoke of a recent evening, on which her son had gone out with friends, and she had called him to find out why he had not yet returned.  He then informed her that he had lost his wallet, and he was trying to retrace his steps along the street in an effort to find it.  She immediately panicked and told him to return home, and when the young man realized what she was referring to, he agreed.  While as the parent of a white son I never would have considered this to be a situation to worry about, she knew that for a young Black man walking through a residential neighborhood it was a different proposition.  By searching for a lost item at night with a flashlight, he could have easily inspired one of the neighbors to call the police, and if the police did not accept his explanation of why he was there, he could end up in serious trouble. 

 

The next day someone turned the wallet into the police, who called her and said that one of them could pick up the lost item.  Ms. Wilkerson was grateful for the honesty of whoever turned in the lost property, but she felt she could not allow her son to retrieve the item himself.  She was afraid of what might happen to a Black teenager who went alone into a police station, and so she picked up the wallet herself.   

 

Our speaker mentioned another recent incident, when her nine year old niece was playing down the block, and she could see that an older White boy was pestering the girl.  She subsequently went to the boy’s house to talk to his parents, and when the boy said they were not home, she announced that she would be returning to see them later.  When she thought about this decision afterwards though, she was afraid to go back.  She figured that her warning would give the boy a chance to first give his parents his side of the story, and they might well believe him.  Furthermore, if the police were to then become involved, she knew that they were far more likely to accept the version from the white parents of what had happened than the narrative offered by the Black parent, even though she had been an eye witness to the occurrence.  

 

Ms. Wilkerson realizes that as a reasonably successful professional, she does not usually have to endure the full blunt of racism that many poorer members of the Black community have to live with on a daily basis.  She does not condone the vandalism that occurred earlier this week in Chicago, but she did think in some ways that the violence was more of a clash between the rich and the deprived members of society than a matter of racial strife.  

 

This week we had $21.00 in the weekly pot, and a $952.00 grand prize with 17 cards remaining in the deck.  There was no big winner and the progressive pot continues to roll.

 

Fun & Frolics – Larry Neal

 

Greeter and Prayer- Richard Babjak

 

Mahatma Gandhi