Portland observer., January 11, 2017, SPECIAL EDITION, Page Page 18, Image 18

Page 18
M artin L uther K ing J r .
2017 special edition
January 11, 2017
Margaret Jacobsen brings people together in safe spaces to
achieve deep-level understanding of racial issues.
Racial Progress
c onTinued froM P age 7
tling internal prejudices, which
may go unnoticed.
“I want us to build a campaign
together, a campaign that is for our
city, but is also something that can
include people from all over,” Ja-
cobson told the Portland Observ-
er. “I want to encourage people
to commit to showing up, making
changes and standing up for the
people around them. Let’s contin-
ue to be uncomfortable together.
Remember, we are a community.
We have a lot of work to do.”
Growing up in Southern Cali-
fornia, Jacobsen describes a bub-
ble of ignorance personally expe-
rienced on racial issues.
“In random points in my life,
where I had encountered racism,
I didn’t know it, because I didn’t
have a context. My context was
‘Oh, they used to lynch people
and they were slaves. Then Martin
Luther King Jr. came and all was
better. Malcolm X led people to be
violent.’ It was a weird narrative,”
Jacobsen said.
Today the race discussion fa-
cilitator has learned how bias and
prejudice still exists on so many
levels, “People don’t even know
that they’re being racist. They
think they are genuinely not, be-
cause we were all taught the same
story in school.”
Starting a family as a young
millennial, Jacobsen began to
think of how racism would im-
pact the children and what kind
of culture and community would
give future generations of African
Americans strength and a healthy
sense of identity.
Jacobsen began writing for
national publications to explore
the narrative of black history and
what realities young parents and
their kids face.
“I love my friends in Portland,
but I work really hard to surround
myself with women of color,” Ja-
cobsen said. “I think that’s really
important for them (my children)
to see. They’ve (women of color)
have carried so much. They’ve
always laid their bodies down.
They use their bodies to carry oth-
er bodies. I’m so of proud of all
of the black women I come from.
The ancestry, the resilience, the
power, but also the softness.”
In a recent writing, Jacobsen
gives a voice to the struggles of
young parents and a diverse com-
munity of color and gender, “As
a Black nonbinary person who is
female bodied, I have raised two
brown children in an America that
has always been Trump America
to me and my Black family. This
isn’t to play down the pain that so
many are feeling right now. That
is valid, it is real. But it’s not a
pain that resonates with people
of color and queer folks. We were
already existing in a continuous
loop of pain and frustration. We
were already on the defense, gasp-
ing for air.”
The same sense of honest di-
alogue is the foundation of Let’s
Talk.
As our history books are re-
written to amplify the voices of
important civil rights figures such
as Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer
and Audre Lord, Jacobsen takes a
new place at the table. With Let’s
Talk, its clear more voices in the
struggle for equality and civil
rights are being heard. Jacobsen’s
activism is resonating with a large
number of people.