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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (July 14, 2016)
COMMUNITY MEMBERS IN DALLAS CONTRIBUTED TO A MEMORIAL TO THE OFFICERS SHOT AT A JULY 7 RALLY DETECTIVE IRA CARTER HOLDS A ROSE GIVEN TO HIM BY A SUPPORTER PHOTOS BY TODD COOPER MATTER tory minimum sentencing. In Eugene, according to the most recent 2013 police use of force review by the police auditor, “We found no pattern among individu- al officers using force against minorities.” Some look at such statistics and erroneous- ly argue that blacks are more likely to commit crimes. However, according to a real-time data- base launched by The Washington Post last year to track police shootings in the United States from the beginning of 2015 to now: “U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people: 50 each. But because the white population is approximately five times larger than the black population, that means unarmed black Americans were five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer.” Five times more likely to be shot and killed. So how does white Eugene show that we un- derstand black lives matter? Kristi Wallace, a long-time Eugene resident who now lives in Bend, tells of a recent visit to her doctor. “Hey, you’re my only black patient,” he said to her, referring to the recent killings of Sterling, Castile and five Dallas police officers. “How has it been for you?” “Weeping,” she says, “I told him the truth.” Wallace says, “I told him that cops killing blacks is just part of the story for me. That for me and mine, pervasive, ugly racism exists far beyond the sound bites and cell phone play- And so does Oregon’s history of racism BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN back. I looked him in the eye. Told him about how I, and every one of the people in my black family, have had whites — police and civilians — act out rage and racism all over us, repeatedly, in more than one country, in more than one lan- guage, over my entire lived life. I told him that I am tired.” Wallace says, “I’m not an activist.” She told her white doctor she is “just one black Ameri- can who is disgusted by the violence directed toward my people. And now all people are my people. I want the slaughter to stop. It doesn’t matter who is holding the gun. It only matters that it stops. Now.” “I’m so brokenhearted,” she told him. “Me too,” her doctor said, and then, Wallace says, he wept. eugeneweekly.com • July 14, 2016 15
