June 7, 2017
Page 7
Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the
Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and
story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com.
O PINION
Same Divisive Ideals Make Us Less Safe
Word choice
doesn’t change
Trump message
d ina e l -r ifai
All right, Ameri-
ca. We need to have
a talk.
The president re-
cently returned from
Saudi Arabia, where
he gave his Muslim hosts a speech
about the threats of “radical Isla-
mist terrorism.”
Because Trump steered slight-
ly clear of his usual vitriol to-
ward Muslims — he’s repeatedly
claimed in the past that “Islam hates
us,” and never misses a chance to
complain about “Radical Islamic
Terror” — some folks in the media
credited Trump for not saying any-
by
thing “overtly” Islamophobic.
Even liberal-leaning outlets like
The Atlantic and Vox judged the
speech “politically correct” and
“uncharacteristically inoffensive,”
respectively.
They seem to have missed the
fact that Trump’s language, while
perhaps less direct than what he
says to crowds of his support-
ers in the United States, was still
drenched in the demonization of
Muslims. And worse, the speech
pointed to an escalation of milita-
rism and violence against Muslim
communities.
In other words, some folks are
missing the forest for the tele-
prompter. Trump may have sound-
ed more polite, but he advanced
the same divisive ideas that make
all of us less safe.
Right-wing extremists are in-
creasingly visible in the U.S. —
from Dylann Roof in South Car-
olina to the man in Portland who
recently stabbed three people for
defending Muslims on a train. Yet
Trump’s speech still characterized
violence and extremism as an ex-
clusively Muslim phenomenon.
Indeed, Trump seemed to cast
the Middle East as the home and
source of all terrorism, calling
whole groups of people there
“barbaric criminals” and “foot
soldiers of evil.” For this reason
he insisted that “Muslim nations
must be willing to take on the bur-
den to defeat terrorism and send
its wicked ideology to oblivion.”
But since when is bombing
people into peace a thing?
After all, the U.S. dropped
20,000-plus bombs on Mus-
lim-majority countries just in the
past year, and has terrorized and
killed millions in the name of a
war on terror. This country runs
torture camps like Guantanamo
and strips people of their civil and
human rights. Who are we to de-
fine good and evil?
Yet once again, the world’s 1.7
billion Muslims are being divided
into “good Muslims” and “bad
Muslims.” The “good Muslims,”
according to this idea, support
those “war on terror” policies that
result in the expansion of violence
against mostly innocent people.
The “bad ones” don’t — and so
we’re called terrorists.
But Trump went a step further
by defining good Muslims as the
wealthy ones in business with the
United States (or himself). Trump
valorized those who will profit
off the violence that he calls for,
including through a $110 billion
arms deal for Saudi Arabia to buy
American weapons.
Those weapons will be used in
Yemen, where a Saudi-led bomb-
ing campaign has killed more than
10,000 people and left 7 million
civilians facing starvation.
So in his supposedly more
polite and presidential speech,
Trump defined whole groups of
people as barbarians, and those
who profit off the destruction and
death of those people as civilized
beacons of peace and goodness.
This isn’t some new, miracu-
lously un-Islamophobic Trump.
Just because his speechwriters
know how to modify his word
choice doesn’t change the hateful,
violent, dangerous, anti-Muslim
message that calls for the destruc-
tion of entire communities.
Dina El-Rifai is a Policy Fel-
low at the American Friends Ser-
vice Committee. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.
Whitest and Arguably One of the Most Racist:
The tale of two
Portlands
t ai h arden -M oore , Jd
Portland, Oregon, known for
its rainy weather, award-win-
ning restaurants, hipsters, and
all things Pacific Northwest,
hides a very dark secret in plain
sight – Portland, Oregon, is the
whitest, and arguably, one of the
most racist cities in America.
Growing up in Seattle, Portland
has always been a second home to
me. I first moved to Portland for
college, and I have bounced be-
tween living in Portland and other
cities over the last 20 years. Due
to neighborhood gentrification,
the systematic displacement of
African-Americans in North and
Northeast Portland, and a severe
lack of affordable housing options,
when my family and I decided to
move back to Oregon in 2015, we
by
settled approximately 40 minutes
outside of the city, in a small town
with rent we could actu-
ally afford. It was clear
that the Portland I knew
had changed…a lot.
On Friday, March 26,
2017, an American ter-
rorist, killed two men
and injured one, as they inter-
vened to stop his hateful verbal
attack on two teenage girls, one
wearing a hijab.
While many in our community
were shocked by what happened,
some were not - for some Port-
landers, specifically communities
of color, prejudice, bias, racism,
microagressions, and verbal and
physical assaults are nothing new
in the city that prides itself on its
“progression.”
Portland has a deep history of
racism, from 1859 legislation for-
bidding Blacks from living in the
state, to urban renewal plans that
led to thousands of African Amer- racist feel emboldened to express Portland-based writer and advo-
icans losing their homes, to the their hatred like never before.
cate. She graduated from Florida
enormous wage and homeowner-
Tai Harden-Moore, JD is a A&M University College of Law.
ship gaps that continue to grow,
Portland, Oregon has always been
a place where people of color have
been marginalized, and in some
cases victimized, by the acts and
decisions of white Portland.
While most racist encounters
are not as overt as the tragedy
that took place on that Friday af-
ternoon, racism is still very much
alive in Portland, hiding in plain
sight largely as racially discrimi-
natory policies and practices.
Portland, a city that promotes
itself as progressive and inclusive,
has allowed itself to endorse pol-
icies that have systematically op-
pressed communities of color and
bolstered white supremacy for
American Red Cross Portland Blood Donation Center
generations. The only difference
3131 N. Vancouver Ave.
now is that the disparate treatment
and oppression of people of color
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Discussion Panel
is no longer hidden in Portland, as
Guest Speaker: Marcia Taylor, Executive Director,
Dr. Charles Drew Blood Drive
Saturday, June 17th, 2017
7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Sickle Cell Foundation of Oregon
Living With Sickle Cell: The Lamberth Family
Free T-Shirt, $10 Gift Card and a 50 percent off
Adidas Coupon for all presenting donors
Join Sistahs4Life at 9:30 AM in the Atrium
for Soulful Line Dance Exercise
For an appointment, visit redcrossblood.org
or call 1-800 RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767)