Opinion
Dear Candidates: Learn How to Talk to Us
W
e’re well into another
election season, and
candidates for office
have got to be asking their bright-
est staff “How do we get these
guys’ support?”
These guys of course means us.
Oregon’s Africans and African
Americans, our Asians and
islanders; our Arabs and Persians;
all our Russian- and Spanish-
speakers. Particularly it means
New Americans’ earnest contribu-
tions in volunteers and cash – the
stuff of local legend. Ask Gover-
nor
Barbara
Roberts
or
Multnomah County Commission
Chair Beverly Stein or Portland
Mayor Tom Potter.
If urban myth’s not persuasive,
these facts should be: Oregon
Asians and Latinos, alone, add up
to $12.6 billion in purchasing
power. We are 113,715 voters.
So campaign staffers: in a layout
lending itself to folding into tidy
quarters for hip pockets, here’s a
column of four fast rules for
engaging our American dreamers.
Pero hati hati (but beware) they’re
not talking points. Be advised that
non-Western communities are
acutely tuned to sincerity. Right
words without real feelings will
get you smiles and
nods. The same smiles
and nods as cruel colo-
nialists,
ferocious
occupiers, and uncar-
ing government guys,
got back home.
And there you go:
Quick Rule 1. If you
don’t mean it in your very bones,
don’t say it.
Quick Rule 2. Joy is better than
sorrow.
Not long ago, at a big annual
celebration, aides apparently for-
got to tell our state’s senior senator
that recalling how entire families
of Japanese American Portlanders
were collected then incarcerated
for the duration of the Second
World War, is not so cool.
Better, much better than bring-
ing back all these elders’ pain is
sincerely thanking them. Thank-
ing Japanese America for
resuscitating the United States
Constitution. For restoring Ameri-
can sanity. For the sake of the next
and the next ethnic minority
neighborhood our country gets
crazy about.
Rule 2 does not mean our fami-
lies have not suffered. Nor does it
propose that policy leaders should
not acknowledge how much harm
America’s wild mood swings do
here and or in our homelands. Not
at all. Taking responsibility and
expressing sorrow is what’s
expected of good leaders. Do that.
Then pause.
Then let us know how much our
stubborn loyalty to cultural
integrity, how much our ridiculous
optimism over American ideals,
means to our otherwise cynical
nation’s momentum. And mean it.
A CTIVIST
L AWYER
Ronault LS
Catalani
If however, you have not been
around our communities to really
feel it – say nothing. Smart silence
is better than overt insincerity.
Reread Rule 1.
Quick Rule 3. Don’t talk up
deeds that are your job.
Broad shouldered Americans
agreed 50 years to integrate our
several ethnic streams into our
economic mainstream. We made it
the law. The Unites States
Supreme Court affirmed again and
again that it’s our government’s
job to get it done. Candidates
already in office best not brag
about what everyone already
expects of you.
Only accomplishments taking
personal commitment can truly
move families marginalized by the
entropy of Oregon’s awfully
racialized institutions. Tell us
about deeds done at substantial
around our communities’ raucous
kitchen tables. He’s always been
in it, right up to his Smokey
Robinson eyeballs. Of course
there are other black and brown
women and men, with government
authority. Maybe four. Maybe
five, in a state of 3,871,859.
The point is, although Oregon’s
ethnic minority streams are woe-
fully under-represented in our
mainstream’s democratic process-
es, this does not mean we don’t
have tough and tender leadership
in our several side streams. On the
called.
If that’s not something you’ve
done – give me a call, name a
Southeast Portland noodle shop,
say how many hours you have for
problem solving. Ten community
heavy-lifters will meet you there.
And deal you into our critical
work. And lend you their good
names.
Thereafter, cash-in these elder
aunties’ and big uncles’ respect
every next time you need some
help. Good credit counts.
Quick Rule 1. If you don’t mean it in
your very bones, don’t say it
contrary, given our communities’
lack of access to Oregon’s robust
politics, obviously there are dili-
gent leaders at work day and night
in our energetic neighborhoods.
Keeping it together. Keeping us
together. Forgiving America’s
short span of attention. Stoking
our ridiculous optimism.
Accordingly Rule 4 says: Better
than a tidy list of
equal opportunity
activities (go to
“Good Deeds are
your Job” section) is
telling your audience
of smiling and nod-
ding black and
brown faces exactly
whose kitchen table or taqueria,
whose temple or mosque or
church basement, you’ve worked
in until your worried spouse
Ronault LS Catalani is an
activist-lawyer on America’s West
Coast and in Southeast Asia, an
essayist for The Asian Reporter,
for Oregon and Wisconsin Public
Radios, and author of Counter
Culture, Immigrant Stories from
Portland Café Counters.
Quick Rule 3. Don’t talk up
deeds that are your job
political risk. Talk about work
done not already in your position
description.
By analogy: Cops don’t talk up
cuffing a 7-Eleven robber. It’s
their job. Their public, their supe-
riors, their rank and file, all expect
good police work. Contrast that
with an officer talking down an
angry, possibly armed, teenager
— despite the officer’s legal
authority to use lethal force,
despite his pounding heart — that
kind of courage, that cool com-
mitment earns our affection. Tell
us about caring like that. About
caring you’ve done in our ethnic
streams, where the labor clocked
is not salaried and the love distrib-
uted never makes network news.
Oregon’s marginalized commu-
nities, whether it’s our mentally ill
or differently-abled, our non-het-
erosexual or our non-Anglo
enclaves, are in effect no-non-
sense breathalyzers for common
courage. For simple caring. Blow
here.
Quick Rule 4. Have we had
noodles?
Sometimes our state’s muscular
community elders and activists
are also in mainstream positions
of influence. Of public promi-
nence. Really. It happens.
Take Representative Lew Fred-
ericks. He’s busy in Oregon’s
Legislative Assembly as well as
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Notes
About the awful entropy of Ore-
gon’s racialized institutions:
—Communities of Color in
Multnomah County: An Unset-
tling Profile (2010).
On the value of Oregon Latino
and Asian entrepreneurs, con-
sumers, and voters:
—Latino Oregon’s 6,360 busi-
nesses had receipts of $1.4 billion
and employed 8,272. Asian Ore-
gonians’ 9,046 businesses had
receipts of $2.2 billion and
employed 22,714. (US Census
Bureau. 2001).
—The 2010 purchasing power
of Oregon Latinos totaled $7.5 bil-
lion. An increase of 713.8 percent
since 1990. Asian buying power
totaled $5.1 billion. An increase of
465.5 percent since 1990. (Selig
Center for Economic Growth,
University of Georgia. 2012).
—5.8 percent of registered Ore-
gon voters are naturalized citizens
or U.S.-born children of immi-
grants. That’s 113,715 voters.
(Analysis of 2008 Census Bureau
Data, American Immigration Law
Foundation).
What do you think?
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May 2, 2012 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 5