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July 7, 2021
C LASSIFIEDS /B IDS Portland Man Basks in Pulitzer Prize
C ontinued froM P age 2
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her new puppy and driving more
than an hour to Savannah to buy
a Build-A-Bear and a gold, heart-
shaped promise ring for his girl-
friend Shenice Johnson, who said
he was always a perfect gentle-
man.
“When I was with him, I didn’t
have to worry about anything,”
she said.
Jackson’s detailed description
of Arbery’s life reveals a person-
able and caring young man with
a lot of love for his family and
friends. Jackson’s narrative about
the murder is both chilling in its
brutality and heart breaking, that
such a promising and hopeful
young man was slaughtered be-
cause of the color of his skin.
Jackson was certainly aware
of racism while growing up in
north and northeast Portland, “the
whitest city in America,” but he
doesn’t think things have gotten
much better.
“I realized how segregated we
were then, but I didn’t understand
the mechanisms, like redlining,”
he said in an interview with the
Portland Observer.
Violence in last year’s Black
Lives Matter protests overshad-
owed the violence that Black
lives face every day from police,
and Jackson lamented that white
groups, though they had good
intentions, took over some of the
demonstrations when they should
have let Black voices lead.
“They were not wrong, but
they seemed to overshadow the
violence that actually happened
against Black people and people
of color,” he said. “Maybe one
thing to learn in Portland is that
allyship doesn’t have to be so loud
– let them lead.”
But whites, if they will, can
help combat racism, he said, by
examining their own vanities and
motives and doing what they can
to even the racial playing field.
“If you see something (that is
racist), say something,” he said.
“That’s what white people should
be doing all the time.”
Jackson also wrote about the
history of jogging, which was
started in the U.S. by Bill Bow-
erman, former track coach and
co-founder of Nike, but he said it’s
still a white man’s sport.
“Ahmaud Arbery, by all ac-
counts, loved to run but didn’t call
himself a runner. That is a short-
coming of the culture of running,”
Jackson wrote. “That Maud’s jog-
ging made him the target of he-
gemonic white forces is a certain
failure of America…Blacks ain’t
never owned the same freedom of
movement as whites…”
And education, of course, is
another way to combat racism, by
teaching children the truth about
our racist past.
“I think it’s necessary,” he said.
“It’s been politicized but it doesn’t
have anything to do with poli-
tics…I’m not buying into that it’s
making white kids racist to teach
about racism in America. It’s not
making little white kids racist or
feel guilty, and if they do, that’s
healthy.”
Jackson said racism is an insid-
ious problem here and it’s easy for
Black people to feel defeated. He
knows what he’s talking about. He
got into trouble as a teen and spent
16 months in the Santiam Correc-
tional Facility in Salem. But he
turned himself around and earned
a bachelor’s in speech commu-
nication and master’s in writing
from Portland State University
followed by a master’s in fine arts
in creative writing from New York
University. You just can’t give up
hope, he said.
“I think it’s almost about learn-
ing about your circumstances but
don’t feel submerged in them,
which is easy to do, with people
getting shot every day, living in
Section 8, it’s real easy to feel
defeated,” he said. “But if you in-
vestigate and interrogate, to have
a better perspective and also find
people who will give you aid and
perspective — and stay hopeful —
that’s what it’s all about.”
Arbery’s killing, along with
those of Breonna Taylor, George
Floyd and other Black Americans,
contributed to a wave of protests
last summer in the movement
against systemic racism and police
brutality, which Jackson addressed
in an interview with the Universi-
ty of Chicago News, where until
recently he was a faculty member
teaching creative writing. He’ll be
starting a new position, also teach-
ing creative writing, in the English
department at the University of
Arizona this fall.
“Oftentimes victims of police
brutality or misconduct … are just
seen as a victim,” Jackson said.
“It was really important to me to
show how Arbery lived, which is
why I named the piece ‘Twelve
Minutes and a Life,’ because his
life was just as important as the 12
minutes when he was hunted.”
He succeeded, according to
the Pulitzer Prize Board, which
recognized Jackson “for a deeply
affecting account of the killing”
of Arbery that “combined vivid
writing, thorough reporting and
personal experience to shed light
on systemic racism in America.”
Jackson is the author of mul-
tiple works of fiction and nonfic-
tion, according to the University
newspaper, including his mem-
oir “Survival Math,” about his
experiences growing up Black
in Portland, and the novel “The
Residue Years.” He is the recip-
ient of a Guggenheim Fellow-
ship, a Creative Capital Grant,
a PEN/Hemingway debut fiction
award and numerous other writ-
ing honors.
“Mitchell S. Jackson’s special
brilliance, announced in his mem-
oir, ‘Survival Math,’ lies in pre-
senting individual Black men with
respect, honesty and love, track-
ing with detailed research and
in powerful prose how each has
found ways to survive in a hos-
tile world,” said John Wilkinson,
chair of the University of Chica-
go’s creative writing program.