June 2015: Last month, the Urban League of Portland released the State of Black Oregon 2015, the second iteration in its series of reports released roughly every five years. Through data, case studies, essays, profiles and portraits, these studies detail the economic and social realities of life for black Oregonians.
The latest report tells the stories of several organizations and individuals working hard to advance racial equality in Oregon. However, the numbers show that since the first report, in 2009, many economic and social conditions have not improved for black Oregonians, and some areas, such as unemployment racial disparity, have actually gotten worse.
New Urban League of Portland President and CEO Nkenge Harmon Johnson and policy director Katie Sawicki, the executive editor of the new State of Black Oregon, hosted Street Roots at the Urban League’s headquarters in North Portland to talk about the new report and its potential to facilitate race equity across Oregon.
Ann-Derrick Gaillot: What has the initial response among the bigwigs been (to the State of Black Oregon)?
Nkenge Harmon Johnson: Really good. People have been excited about the report. They have been curious about it. I’ve had a few different meetings where before I arrived to meet the new “bigwig,” they had already reviewed the report, either the hard copy because they had shown up somewhere where we were selling it before we sold out or they’ve gone online to download it. We launched the report over a month ago, and there continues to be excitement around it. New folks encounter it every day.
A.G.: There is so much in the report, and the Urban League obviously has limited capacity, so how do you prioritize what needs to be accomplished first?
N.H.J.: So here’s the good thing about the report. There are action steps at the end of every chapter, there are things that we can jump on and get to work on right now. It is not the work plan for the Urban League. It is the work plan for all those people who understand that this work is important for our community and for our state.
Katie Sawicki: One of our hopes when we put these reports out is to be a convener of a lot of these different components. So while we won’t be doing all the work, we see one of our roles as creating a vision for what equity looks like in the state of Oregon and saying, hey there has been so much work done around this. We’re gonna put it in one place so we can all see what we’ve done so far and where we can go. So that we’re not all starting from scratch each time.
A.G.: There’s so much data in the report, but there’s not as much data for black immigrants and black LGBTQ people.
N.H.J.: That’s one of the reasons that the team took pains to talk to people. Because in cases where there isn’t pre-existing data, at the very least you have to have stories. And that can inform our work a great deal, especially as you start to hear the same story in different places. It opens a window to the idea that there’s a need to collect data about these different communities, where before people may have been able to deny these communities even existed. The fact that the Urban League included in the report stories and some information about these groups means that in the future when other folks start to do this work, they have to include these groups so that eventually there will be data.
K.S.: It’s about creating that visibility and saying we know that you are here, and now everyone else does too. And I think that is, to me, 50 percent of why this report is so important and why all the photographs in the report are all real black Oregonians. There’s not a single stock photo in there, and that was because we wanted people to not just read that there are black people in Ashland but to see that. A lot of times, that’s the most powerful thing.
A.G.: You both know a lot about the lowercase state of black Oregon, but in the State of Black Oregon was there anything that surprised you?
N.H.J.: That there are so many issues that we found, some of the shocking data relevant to black folks in Oregon that is on point for white people who live in rural communities in our state.
A.G.: What do you mean by that?
N.H.J.: Jobs, the high unemployment rate in the African-American community. Unemployment, the rate has gone down all across our state, especially in Portland and Multnomah County. But it still turns out that black folks have higher rates of unemployment than everybody else. The same thing is true in other parts of the state in rural communities where they hear about all of the wonderful things that are happening in our economy and all the businesses that are coming to our state, all the jobs that are being grown here and there, but none of that is happening in their communities.
Health care: You can use the same example. A reason that a woman in North Portland doesn’t seek early prenatal care, doesn’t receive early prenatal care is the same reason that a woman in Umatilla County may not seek prenatal care early enough in her pregnancy. Transportation is standing in her way. Same issues, very different places. So, for me, the similarities between black Oregon and rural Oregon were most surprising.
K.S.: One of the things that really stuck out at me, and I wasn’t a believer in until this report was done, was how powerful all of the social and economic and health benefits (are) that come from community, from a solid community that has everything it needs to thrive. And on the flipside, what displacement and gentrification have done. Before, it was just a housing issue, and now I think we really are starting to understand that there are so many social and economic things that are affected when communities are broken up. I think all of those things when we kind of added them all up, you kind of realize it just takes a few policies that aren’t well-coordinated to break up something that was built up over generations. And then we spend all our time trying to come up with these kind of unnatural solutions to something that was so natural before. That’s why it’s so important to preserve the communities that we have still, and the new ones that are being formed; make sure that everything that we need is there.
A.G.: One thing that I read in the report is black voter turnout is much less than white voter turnout. It seems like a Catch-22 with trying to increase black voter turnout since people’s faith in the system can’t really be re-earned until something in policy changes, but that can’t happen without votes. How can you interrupt that loop?
K.S.: Your interactions with the police are going to affect whether you want to vote or not because they affect the trust that you have in the people that are supposed to be either representing you or protecting you. So I think for us, it’s really important that, for example, we work on policing and the relationship between the police department and communities, whether it’s an adversarial one or one in partnership. That’s one area where you can actually affect civic engagement. When people feel a sense of safety and they feel good about the people who are protecting them, it’s gonna increase civic engagement and voter turnout.
A.G.: There’s been a lot of violence in the city this past month, and in response to that, Mayor Charlie Hales just said something that kind of speaks to what you’re talking about. He said, “Right now, this summer, tonight, we need to make sure they’re being watched carefully and that it’s OK for police officers to stop and question people in the street, and everyone needs to understand that that’s part of them doing their job. It’s not about profiling; it’s about doing our job.” What do you think about that and how it affects what you’re trying to do to improve this relationship?
N.H.J.: I’ve had conversations with Mayor Hales in the past, and I know that he’s thoughtful on some of the issues we care about. In fact, he was at the launch of the State of Black Oregon. Part of me as the president of the Urban League and part of me as an attorney is concerned with what I just heard in that quote, so let’s take the comment at face value. The types of activities that can be spawned by comments such as that are those that will lead to further diminution of the relationship between African-Americans, between Latinos, between Asians, between whoever the “they” in the quote is and the police, because even when there’s a spike in violence in a particular area, most of the people who live in that area are not in fact violent. And to be treated as though they are, it’s a problem. It’s also been shown again and again — New York and “Stop and Frisk,” for example — it doesn’t work. So my guess is that the mayor is aware of that; my guess is that our police chief is aware of that and that that is not what he was referring to in his comments.
K.S.: And I would just add that even the best-intentioned people still profile and there are reasons behind it. That’s why we’re trying to work with the police department, work with the city, to start to get at what are some of the other factors playing into why that happens and how can we stop it. It’s not as easy as, “Stop profiling.” And then everyone’s gonna stop doing it. We have to understand why it happens, how it happens and what’s the history behind it.
You can download a copy of the complete State of Black Oregon 2015 report at the Urban League of Portland’s website, https://ulpdx.org/