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February 5, 2020
Painful Racist Impacts
c ontinued FroM p age 3
our relationship to the past,” Port-
land State University Professor
Emeritus Dr. Darrell Millner says
in the most recent issue of the Or-
egon Historical Quarterly journal.
Millner and Portland State Uni-
versity visiting professor Dr. Car-
men Thompson were enlisted over
the course of two and a half years
by the Quaterly’s editorial staff to
draw on the lifetimes of scholar-
ship of dozens of authors and pro-
duce a nuanced investigation of
this complex and uncomfortable
aspect of our state’s history.
While the content of the focus
is grounded in the past, it was in-
spired by the June 2017 murders
of two men who were killed in a
confrontation with another man
accused of making racist taunts
on a Max light-rail train. The
Oregon Historical Quarterly’s
editorial advisory board decided
to respond to an increase in pub-
lic displays of white supremacy
by doing what our journal does
best — publishing authoritative
scholarship about our state’s his-
tory. The hope is that this special
issue will help people understand
how white supremacy, both spo-
ken and unspoken, has presented
itself in Oregon’s past and also
informs our present.
“I hope readers get a sense
that white supremacy is part of
American DNA and that it op-
erates and has operated at every
level of American life since set-
tlement,” Thompson said in an in-
terview for the Oregon Historical
Society blog, Dear Oregon. “The
phenomenon of white supremacy
is not accidental or coincidental;
our governments and institutions
have planned and proliferated it
from the beginning. I also want
readers to understand the concept
of whiteness — ongoing, daily
expectations of privilege — and
how its associated effects can be
overcome, or at least mitigated,
through open dialogue and ac-
knowledgment of the cost and
consequences of our nation’s hier-
archical racial system.”
The Winter 2019 special issue
of the Oregon Historical Quarterly
on “White Supremacy and Resis-
tance” is available for purchase
in the Oregon Historical Soci-
ety’s Museum Store for $10, and
a subscription to the magazine is
a benefit of Oregon Historical So-
ciety membership. Copies of the
special issue can also be ordered
by calling the OHS Museum Store
at 503-306-5230.
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