Trustee's poor word choice still carries hurt

Like many of you, I've been following the political drama that's been going down in Carpentersville these days.

And when I got a phone call Saturday night from our Carpentersville reporter alerting me that police issued Trustee Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski a $75 citation for calling her neighbors' black children monkeys, I exclaimed, "What?"

I was assigned to cover the story on Sunday, but when I drove up to her house to talk to her, she and her husband shooed me away.

So I began talking to the offended neighbors outside and I was over there for quite some time. I noticed Ramirez-Sliwinski was watching.

As I talked to the neighbors, a child came out of Ramirez-Sliwinski's house and put a Barack Obama campaign sign in the front yard. The neighbors thought this was funny.

Finally, Ramirez-Sliwinski, who was an Obama delegate for the Democratic Convention, asked if she could talk to her neighbors and they said they had nothing to say to her.

I asked if she was ready to talk to me and she said she was.

The neighbors say the trustee made a racist remark when she said their kids were "a bunch of monkeys" and ordered them out of the tree.

The neighbors said they don't get along with Ramirez-Sliwinski in general and this comment pushed them over the edge and drove them to get the police involved.

Ramirez-Sliwinski says she told the kids it was not a tree for them to be "climbing in like monkeys," because she didn't want them to get hurt and added that she calls her own grandchildren monkeys.

It was a poor choice of words at best, utter racism at worst, and I'll explain why.

White people have been calling black people monkeys and other insidious names for centuries as a way to dehumanize us and to justify our enslavement, segregation and poor treatment.

Other ethnic groups don't share that experience, so calling a white person a monkey doesn't carry the meaning.

Some people just don't understand that.

During our interview, Ramirez-Sliwinski, a Latino, was crying and very upset anyone would ever call her racist because she's experienced discrimination.

I don't doubt that.

She, as well as Village President Bill Sarto, has also been vocal about supporting the village's illegal immigrant population.

Last week, the two of them tried to oust Trustee Paul Humpfer, an illegal immigration opponent who was just convicted of domestic battery.

She told me she fully expects the chickens will come home to roost at the next village board meeting.

Still, I watched her try to make amends with her black neighbors, but they rebuffed those efforts and told their children to stay away from her.

I told her that I don't know what's in her heart, so I don't know if she meant to be racist or if she truly didn't understand what she was saying.

But I also told her that comparing black people to monkeys is something you just don't do.

When you're a public official representing a diverse population, this is something that should be inherent.

But unfortunately for Ramirez-Sliwinski, she learned this the hard way and consequently, she's saying that this term will likely be her last.