It's become the motto of our time to watch what you say, be sensitive about what you say. The number of people and organizations that believe they are special is at an all-time high. They believe they shouldn't be criticized. Jokes shouldn't be told about them.
It's anti-American. It's anti-free speech. The issue these days is not censorship. It's courage.
- Joe Bob Briggs 3/4/91
You know how you can be looking for something and find something else. Found this letter to the Editor of the esteemed Portland Oregon alternative news weekly. Don’t know if my missive was even posted, let alone published. The latter so unlikely.
Neither do I recall some of the persons mentioned. And if I don’t remember, why should you?
Edited for clarity and brevity and to emphasize my point. Which you can guess at.
July 18, 1991
Mr. Mark L. Zusman Editor WILLAMETTE WEEK 9 NW 2nd Ave. Portland, OR 97209
Dear Mark:
WHAT’S SO SCARY ABOUT THE MIRROR?
All this media attention on Racism In Portland bodes ill for the future of the city. Color me puzzled as we hurl down this path, the low road of bigotry and division.
Recent Week. We are asked to give front-page attention to mixed marriages. Would we even know to hate bi-racial children if you didn’t teach us to? I think as long as mammals stay within the same species, there’s not too much to worry about. Also, unless all those black men are trying to marry the woman you want to wed, I wouldn’t lose any sleep.
I keep waiting for Mr. Tukufu to deny that he said it’s racism when whites hate blacks for no good reason, but it’s not racism for blacks to hate whites, ’cause they got reasons aplenty.
The Next Week. You publicly finger the bigot who hurled racial slurs at an Oregonian employee. Good for you. As noted, two lengthy eye-witness accounts by the paper’s own reporters managed to overlook Mr. White’s identity. Maybe that’s the same policy that protects rape victims.
By the way, I’ll bet that successful, heretofore respected citizen feels much the same way about, oh, punkers or even Democrats. Jews, too.
Do we expect to see all racists named in the media?
Meanwhile, the police are setting up a special purity squad. If you get the shit kicked out of you by a guy just like you, you fill out a form. If you get the shit kicked out of you by someone who looks different, they call in the S.W.A.T. The front page of The Big O warns us that riots accompanied the latest African-American feature film. Local theater owners deny that they are afraid to show black films in the ghetto. The films show only in Lake Oswego.
Local politicians ask, “What ghetto?”
Women are victims. In the Oregonian, that bastion of women’s rights, there were two HUGE articles, one about the glass ceiling phenomenon, the other about sexual harrassment. (The latter, amazingly enough, did not mention Dick “Call me Dick” Bogle, the municipality’s leading expert on the topic. Mr. Bogle is African-American and he’d be just as much a pig if he was white.)
This Week. The Japanese are the latest victims of racism in Portland, according to WW. Mitsubishi – a company worth more than this entire state, including Clark County & all minerals rights – is the victim of “rank racism” by a bunch of yahoos who didn’t sit up straight in Judge Gallagher’s courtroom. The judge – I was the jury foreman in a capital case before Gallagher – gives every appearance of being a wise man, but he brands these jurors as racists because they gave the alleged victim exactly what he asked for. And because they rolled their eyes in disbelief at Mitsubishi’s witnesses. That’s not proof. (Too bad they don’t allow video equipment in the courtroom. I’d like to see for myself.)
Especially after Mitsubishi’s lawyer launched a pre-emptive attack on the jurors’ likely racist presumptions. Now THAT’s racism. “Even before the trial began.” Well, they believed the plaintiff’s Japanese experts. The only way the jurors could escape the broad-brush-racist-paint-job was to side with Mitsubishi.
Maybe they’ve just had bad experiences with foreign cars. THE TRUTH WAS AS PLAIN AS THE COLOR OF THE SKIN ON THE NOSES ON THEIR FACES.
Lee Atwater gives us Willie Horton and The Oregonian puts the good ol’ blues guitarist on the Kids’ funny page. (Not too many weeks after featuring Sunnunu.) And, is Corporal Yo’s addition to Beetle Bailey intended to be racially inflammatory? It seems to perpetuate the same myths that Judge Gallagher warned us about. Like 900 phone numbers do.
Of course, The Editorial Board at The Oregonian endorsed President Bush’s appointment of Clarence Thomas. The black Dan Quayle. I heard espoused the idea that Justice Thomas is actually a white man. Close your eyes and listen to his words. Read his writings, and you just know he’s a cracker who took one look at the reverse discrimination emerging in the Sixties and jumped aboard. Then he pulled a double-cross. He’s been deep, way way deep undercover since Edgar Hoover planted him with a sharecropper’s grandson. If it’s not true, it’s a movie.
Anxious as always to get to the truth, The Oregonian asks for eyewitness accounts of racist incidents. And I quote:
“Skinheads rally in downtown Portland. Racist graffiti is scrawled in public places. Non-white Oregonians wonder which neighborhoods welcome them, and whether perceived slights are real ones – and the result of their color, not what they’ve done or said.
“Asian-American students at Cleveland High School complain that administrators are insensitive to their needs, resist their efforts to hold cultural events, accuse them of being in gangs and look for opportunities to expel them. Across the Columbia River, at Evergreen School District’s Wy’East Junior High School, students rally against racism, protesting problems with Skinheads, lack of minority teachers and what they say is unfair punishment for minority students. Drive under a Vancouver underpass and you might find it covered with swastikas.
“Racist incidents such as the beating death of an Ethiopian man in Southeast Portland in 1988 are well-known.”
Write Race relations. Deadline July 15.
This is supposed to help? Do what? Sell newspapers. Take our minds off the real issues which threaten the city. Pit the impoverished and impotent against one another.
Imagine what could be done in this city if the ARENA TASK FORCE – after giving the boy billionaire whatever he wants – immediately moved on to its next project. Fixing the ghetto. I shiver just thinking about it. The city and Metro working together with all those bankers – who redlined the neighborhood to begin with – to make the city a better place to live for ALL of its citizens. I’d buy a ticket.
Maybe they could do something about the homeless, too. Ought to be some empty rooms available in Northeast.
The problem in this city is not racism. It’s fear. We’re afraid of people who are different than we are. ALL potential board members who are excluded in this town are excluded because they aren’t like the current board members.
Men with long hair face bigotry. As do Californians and gays with pierced nipples. They’re not like us, so we’re not supposed to trust them. Fear. Loggers. It’s everywhere in Portland. Cruisers. How much money have we spent chasing noisy teens away from the Heathman?
A breakfast omlette costs $9.50 at the Heathman and we’re having gunfights at the beach.
Fear. Money. Power. There’s a lot of people in this town without money who fear they’re never going to get any. There’s people with money who have the power to keep it and to use it to get more money and more power. The Haves are afraid the Havenots might want some of the goodies. Nobody’s givin’ up nothin’ without a fight.
Racism is the symptom, it’s not the disease. Racism is the smoke, it’s not the fire. Racism is the easy excuse, it’s the wedge that divides us, the blindfold which masks our eyes to the true dangers. Every cover story on racism feeds the fear.
We need to start pointing the finger at the money and the power. At the greed. At the real villains.
It always astounds me to see wealthy white men in power fuel the flames of bigotry. Saddens me. We have so much more in common with our class than with our color. We’re told this is a classless society filled with racism. Yet the U.S.A. seems as tightly classbound as the caste system which is so blatant in Japan. As for racism, it pales in comparison with many nations. (Yeah, it’s terrible still.)
In rushing to protect the downtrodden, we must keep our eye on the prize. It’s not enough that we protect minorities and majorities from abuse, we must fight for real equality. Share The Power. Share the wealth. Feed the children. Teach them. Shelter them.
Finally, as a tall white middle-aged Anglo-Saxon male with a college education, I don’t expect much sympathy. A little consideration would be nice. We’re not all racists. We’re not all sexists. We’re not all members of boards. Or snooty clubs. We’re not all wealthy business executives.
All of us are not running the country. (I wouldn’t want the job.)
Just because one is a white man, well, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Because generations of misguided white men have screwed up this country, that’s no reason to stampede over the rights of the normal guys who are just trying to keep their heads low and do the right thing. We’re victims, too.
I’m sure Mr. White wouldn’t like my kind either.
Thanks for listening.
Sincerely,
Jack D. Welch
11/03/91
Portland protests: How a ‘hyper-liberal’ city’s racist past is resurfacing
3 September 2020 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53996159
