Wednesday, July 8, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
By T. Lee Brown
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I should mention that she9s
Black.
Back at home, I didn9t
find anything about state-
ments and podcasts on the
Black Lives Matter and
NAACP websites. I skipped
a week9s podcast anyway,
not so much a bold show
of solidarity as a quiet
absence.
No statement was posted.
I felt I hadn9t done the deep
work adequately. Sure, I9ve
written about racism a bit,
done some activism over
the years. I9ve learned from
Black friends and bosses
and artistic collaborators.
I9ve also whitesplained,
generalized, failed to be
inclusive, and wended my
way through life in oblivi-
ous privilege. In other
words, I am racist 4 aware,
ashamed, and despairing of
it, but racist nonetheless.
What kind of statement
could I possibly make?
It feels better to do some-
thing than to remain silent
and immobile. So white
people make statements.
Pause podcasts. Stand along
Highway 20 holding signs.
Others do work that can-
not be seen. They make
donations. Talk to com-
munity leaders behind the
scenes. Do the uncomfort-
able and sometimes terrify-
ing inner work required to
comprehend privilege.
Days rolled by. White
people9s voices and actions
didn9t appear to be point-
less. White police chiefs
stepped down to make way
for Black police chiefs.
Officers marched alongside
Black Lives Matter pro-
testers or took the knee in
solidarity. Symbols of overt
racism were rejected.
A Black woman on the
radio said White participa-
tion mattered. I joined the
mostly White protesters
on the corner of Cascade
Avenue and Larch Street.
As for my statement, I
guess this is it: Black lives
definitely matter. Racism
is real. I9d like to fight it,
internally and externally.
I9m a writer. Maybe that
can be of use. If you9d like
me to write about a personal
experience regarding race in
Sisters Country, get in touch
(tiffany@plazm.com).
Beyond that, I9m unsure.
Perhaps, amid spasms of
mostly White fragility, I will
become a better ally. Work
on the ancestral trauma
in my multiracial blood-
lines. Help my son come
to terms with the genocide
that almost wiped out one
branch of his family.
But there9s a chance I9ll
bail. There9s a chance I9ll
sink back into privilege
and wring my hands at the
violence and bigotry in our
world, too horrified to make
a difference.
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Some weeks ago, a
friend invited me to check
out a statement his com-
pany had posted online. It
began <Black Lives Matter=
and went on to say earnest
things about race.
He and his business part-
ner are White men with a
successful enterprise near
Portland. The statement
looked out of place amid
photos of agricultural items
and posts about weather
conditions. I felt curious
and nonplussed.
I9ve met friends and
customers of the two own-
ers, people of various races
and ethnicities. The own-
ers experience prejudice
and discrimination; I could
imagine them responding
to injustice with sympathy.
They weren9t anti-law-
enforcement, I knew. I grew
up with one of these guys;
his dad was a cop.
I decided I liked their
statement, which was short
and sincere. Others, I feared,
might dismiss it as window
dressing, the <vacuous vir-
tue signaling= or <perfor-
mative wokeness= against
which Sisters Country likes
to stay vigilant.
In the wake of George
Floyd9s death, I wasn9t
immersed in liberal group-
think. I was on COVID
lockdown with health issues
and I9d abandoned social
media years before. I read
the news selectively, care-
fully. I wept. I felt horror,
guilt, and shame 4 for my
country, for complacency
and racism, my own and
that of others.
My email inbox began
to fill with awkward state-
ments from White people,
pledging with varying
degrees of believability to
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PINES
both create woo-woo spiri-
tual materials online. She
suggested we stop posting
to make space for Black
voices.
I thought of the handful
of listeners who appreciate
my mini-podcast, among
them a heroic hospice chap-
lain in California, a wheel-
chair-bound musician in
Wisconsin, a hard-working
environmental activist in
Sisters. I wondered how
denying them a dose of
weekly woo would benefit
Black Americans.
Folks in Sisters had
asked when I was going to
write about all this, whether
I was participating in the
BLM protests. I blamed
my health; in truth I was
stilled by ambivalence and
cynicism. I thought of the
race-related column I wrote
in The Nugget a year ago,
how the responding Letters
to the Editor suggested
denial.
Thoughts swirled in
my head as the Deschutes
eddied around rocks and tall
yellow irises. Climbing up
the hill, I ran into a young
woman I know, a person
with sparkling energy. She
showed me where to harvest
nettles.
She also thanked me for
my woo-woo podcast. I was
honored to discover that it
inspired and soothed her
during the chaos of COVID.
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In the
really do something about
that whole race thing. Every
organization and corpora-
tion, however pale its lead-
ers, whatever its business
practices, had something to
say.
I read a few, then began
to delete them unopened.
The combination of naïveté
and showiness made me
uneasy. The statements
seemed tailor-made to
invoke accusations of band-
wagon-jumping and inspire
backlash.
People hit the streets in
protest. Talking to friends, I
found that some thoughtful,
White activists didn9t con-
sider themselves racist 4 as
though they were immune
to the forces of image,
media, culture, economy,
history and neurology.
Did any of us White and
mostly White people know
a damned thing about rac-
ism and our part in it? Did
we understand the situation
well enough to be making
big statements, or were we
knee-jerk responding to a
trend? I couldn9t tell.
A long walk along the
Deschutes grounded me in
the earth, the living planet
under my feet. I breathed
and listened to birdsong. I
recognized the fortune of
being able to take such a
walk, as a mostly White
person in a mostly White
region with rising property
values and rents, the kind
of place where <BLM= usu-
ally refers to tracts of public
land.
Our fair state (double
entendre intended) was
founded on principles that
included a ban on slavery
but also a ban on Black
people settling here. One
exclusion law specified that
<any free negro or mulatto=
who failed to quit the area
in a timely fashion would
<receive upon his or her
bare back not less than
twenty nor more than thirty-
nine stripes, to be inflicted
by the constable of the
proper county.=
That9s Oregon, my home
state, the place I love.
At the river, I met up
with a friend, a White busi-
ness owner. She gently
explained that people were
posting statements because
they9d been asked to. The
only request I9d received
came from a white-appear-
ing woman like me. We
5