It’s no secret that the lack of equity and diversity in Oregon’s environmental movement has been an issue for decades. So we weren’t surprised that many Healthy Environment portfolio applications focused on building organizational capacity for effective diversity, equity and inclusion work. After all, every journey starts where you are.
The Healthy Environment portfolio awarded seven grants to fund technical assistance focused solely on diversity, equity and inclusion. Common activities included training staff and board, developing an equity strategy and integrating diversity, equity and inclusion into an organizational strategic plan.
Several of these grantees are in the beginning stages of equity work — a crucial moment to build capacity. We look forward to continued support for this foundational work as a precursor to implementation. For organizations that are further along in their equity journeys, we are also supporting implementation of equity priorities, which is woven into many of the projects and organizations that we funded this round, although the descriptions of these grants on our awards database doesn’t label them as being for “equity implementation.” Examples of these efforts include creating a statewide environmental justice coalition, integrating equity into climate change policy and supporting economic development with tribes and rural, low-income communities.
Developing foundational elements for diversity, equity and inclusion work creates a stronger, inclusive, resilient and more successful environmental movement. We foresee continuing to support this work in future grant cycles. We also plan to continue funding the implementation of organizational and programmatic equity priorities. Something to consider if your organization is at the beginning stage of equity work and looking to partner with Meyer: we don’t recommend applying for both capacity building and implementation of DEI at the same time. It’s difficult to predict exactly what your implementation needs are before you complete planning and other foundational work.
Overall, I am extremely grateful to work at a foundation that is both walking the equity talk and lifting up grantees in their equity journey, especially by supporting organizations committed to equity and growth over time whether they are at the beginning or advanced stage of this work. I look forward to working with Meyer’s current and future grantees in creating a flourishing and equitable Oregon.
In the most recent round of grants, the application for Housing Opportunities portfolio funding posed a new question to applicants seeking capital support: What is your goal on this project for Minority-Owned, Women-Owned or Emerging Small Business participation? We have asked the question before but not consistently or as part of an application.
The responses were surprising.
Meyer has not set any particular bar for equity in contracting. That’s partly because we understand that contracting opportunities may not look the same in Grants Pass as they do in Gearhart or Gresham. But we do ask all capital applicants to consider their contracting policies and set a project target.
The nine capital projects funded in this latest batch all reflect a commitment to use minority-owned, women-owned or emerging small businesses for between 10 percent and 50 percent of their contract dollars. And where a project needed help in navigating minority-owned, women-owned or emerging small business contracting, Meyer added technical assistance support from expert consultants, Metropolitan Contractor Improvement Partnership (MCIP).
We were especially pleased to see MCIP receive an investment from the Building Community portfolio to expand its work. This will involve analyzing barriers to hiring minority contractors; providing training to industry partners; identifying policy improvements to ensure fairness in procurement; increasing the size and visibility of minority-owned, women-owned or emerging small businesses; and providing more one-on-one mentoring and capacity building services to these firms.
Meyer is also considering sponsoring training or learning groups focused on how to start or enhance minority-owned, women-owned or emerging small business contracting in nonprofits, with a focus on housing developers. What do you think? Would you be interested in attending such a training? If so, please enter your information in this google form.
For additional information on minority-owned, women-owned or emerging small business contracting for your organization, check out these resources:
Metro’s Annual Minority-Owned, Women-Owned and Emerging Small Business Report (includes a list of best practices)
Housing issues in rural Oregon have always been central to Meyer’s Affordable Housing Initiative. Both in the initial AHI launched in 2007 and in the second phase (underway since 2013), Meyer has responded to emphatic and persuasive testimony from stakeholders around the state that rural Oregon has distinct and urgent needs around affordable housing.
In particular, our trustees were moved by the housing needs of Oregonians living in manufactured housing,* both because of their vulnerability to dislocation and because of the huge numbers of Oregonians living in older, substandard homes with few resources to address housing issues impacting their health, utility bills and basic housing stability.
Since 2007, Meyer has supported a network of amazing partners focused on these issues, around two broad categories: preventing displacement by helping residents form cooperatives to buy their own parks and identifying ways to leverage a variety of resources to improve the condition of manufactured homes around the state.
Resident-owned cooperatives
Across Oregon, rising land values are putting some manufactured home parks in the cross hairs of redevelopment. Residents of investor-owned parks are vulnerable to rents rising beyond their means, even as some owners may not be keeping up with basic infrastructure repairs and other ownership responsibilities.
Oregon has become a nationally recognized leader in the resident-owned cooperative movement, largely thanks to the pioneering work of CASA of Oregon, based in Sherwood. Owners of manufactured homes in a typical privately owned park are vulnerable to losing their homes and even potentially slipping into homelessness if the owner decides to close the park or increase space rents beyond what residents can afford.
It might appear that the homeowners could simply move their homes, but in many cases that’s not a real possibility. It may cost as much as $10,000 to move and install a home in a new location — and only if one is available (and often parks won’t accept an older home even if the owner can afford to move it). It’s not surprising that homeowners often will walk away from a home if they can’t afford to move or can’t find a park that will accept it.
More than a decade ago, CASA set about developing an alternative that provides long-term stability and affordability, helping the residents of a park form a cooperative to pool resources and get help to buy their park, make necessary improvements and control costs going forward. It’s complex, difficult work and doesn’t work for every park, but when it does come together, it provides more than housing stability — it preserves often irreplaceable communities where people have lived for many years.
With support from Meyer, Network for Oregon Affordable Housing, the state of Oregon and other partners, CASA has assisted the formation of nine manufactured home co-ops around the state, covering nearly 600 mostly low-income households.
CASA has also been instrumental in important policy initiatives at the state level to help protect the interests of park residents, including legislation requiring notification one year before a park closure, relocation assistance to residents of parks being closed and even right-of-first-refusal allowing residents an opportunity to buy their park before any sale.
Another approach to helping maintain housing stability and affordability in manufactured home parks is nonprofit ownership. On this front, St. Vincent De Paul of Lane County and NeighborWorks Umpqua in Douglas County have stepped in to purchase and manage parks in their communities to help improve the physical infrastructure, stabilize rents and address other issues in parks, often after years of neglect by prior owners.
Addressing substandard manufactured housing
Although there is a definite stigma attached to manufactured homes, advances in manufacturing and federal codes regulating their production have led to dramatic improvements in the quality, durability and energy efficiency of manufactured homes.
Unfortunately, many Oregonians are living in homes built before those changes and have no choice but to tolerate leaking roofs, drafty windows and, in some cases, structural, plumbing or electrical issues that are truly unsafe. When homeowners struggle to manage the upkeep of their aging homes, they may turn to nonprofits such as NeighborWorks Umpqua, St. Vincent De Paul of Lane County and sometimes local Habitat for Humanity chapters to help with basic repairs or even replacement of older homes.
Cost-effective replacement of homes has long been a key priority for advocates working with owners of older homes. Meyer supported an effort led by NeighborWorks Umpqua on the southern Oregon coast to pilot home replacements leveraging energy savings. And under the AHI, Meyer also seeded a research project including NeighborWorks Umpqua, St. Vincent De Paul of Lane County, CASA and Network for Oregon Affordable Housing to better understand challenges and opportunities around replacement.
The challenges are formidable. A clear path to replacing older, seriously substandard homes has been obstructed by some foreseeable issues (the high total cost of replacement and a lack of dedicated subsidies for this purpose) and some less obvious ones (owners’ attachment to their homes and strong resistance to taking on debt). But there is hope on the horizon. The Rural Development branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is exploring ways to open its existing housing programs to manufactured home buyers and owners, and Energy Trust of Oregon is leading an effort to leverage the energy savings from replacing older homes, which can have shockingly high utility costs, with new, energy-efficient homes. HUD’s Oregon office has been actively engaged in manufactured home efforts around the state, and Oregon Housing and Community Services remains a committed and vitally important partner. We are happy to continue to engage with these partners and believe that solutions will be found soon that will retire many of the worst homes around the state.
In the meantime, we have continued to explore cost-effective repairs of older manufactured homes, drawing on the grants described above and on a recent Meyer-commissioned study of the work of Habitat for Humanity of Benton County on repairing manufactured homes under its Home Repair Initiative. Repairing manufactured homes raises its own thicket of issues, but we’ve become convinced it’s an important tool in the affordable housing toolbox.
Although putting several thousand dollars into an older structure that probably has negative value as a financial asset may not look like a good investment, it makes sense to see this through the lens of homelessness prevention. Talking with partners around the state convinced us that repair can be a cost-effective way to help people remain in housing they can afford and prevent a slide into a much worse situation. To that end, we recently launched a new Request for Proposals for grants to support repair programs (available here — the application deadline is 5 p.m. December 5).
Equity in the manufactured home context
Not all park residents are especially low-income, but there is a strong equity dimension to this work, especially in rural parts of the state where parks may represent a large share of the existing housing affordable to very low-income people. Even if Oregon manufactured home park residents in general may be less diverse in terms of race and ethnicity than the state as a whole (NeighborWorks Umpqua and Portland State University are currently surveying park residents around the state, which will give us a clearer sense of these demographics), there are opportunities to target Meyer’s support to communities that need it most, in line with Meyer’s commitment to equity as a core value. We will continue to foreground equity in our work with partners on these issues.
Next up
Two other projects recently supported by Meyer deserve mention here: Innovative Housing Inc. (IHI), a Portland-based nonprofit, received a pre-development grant under our “Innovation in Affordable Housing Design, Finance and Construction” RFP early this year as part of our efforts to support pilots around lowering the cost of affordable housing development. IHI’s proposed innovation is really a variation on the familiar manufactured home park: in their case, brand-new homes in a community developed and managed by Innovative Housing Inc. as affordable rental housing. We look forward to seeing what lessons can be drawn from the effort to build a new park intentionally as permanently affordable housing.
And just this fall, Network for Oregon Affordable Housing was awarded a two-year Meyer grant to support a statewide steering group including all the public, private and nonprofit partners wrestling with supporting long-term affordability and housing stability in manufactured home parks. We are pleased to see them take on this important convening and coordinating role and will be interested in their progress identifying opportunities, resources and supportive policies to maintain manufactured homes as an affordable housing option for Oregonians.
Resources
What do we mean by "manufactured housing?”
Factory-built homes, commonly referred to as "mobile homes" in the past. (Corporation for Enterprise Development has a great fact sheet here).
Manufactured homes represent an important part of non-subsidized or "naturally occurring" affordable housing in Oregon, with over 65,000 homes spread across the state, both in the state’s 1,300 manufactured home parks and on privately owned land.
Marcelo Bonta, one of Meyer's three Philanthropy NW Momentum Fellows, knows a lot about the intersection of equity and environmental movements, organizations, funders and advocacy.
If you haven't checked out his latest blog for Philanthropy NW, it's worth your time.
Marcelo doesn't bury his lede:
Environmental philanthropy has a big problem.
It’s not our lack of racial diversity, especially at the executive and trustee level. It’s not the lack of funding directed towards organizations led by people of color. It’s not the lack of funding for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, despite many foundations now talking about it. It’s not the lack of investment in established leaders of color and a professional pipeline for emerging leaders of color. It’s not the underfunding of general support and capacity-building. It’s not the assumption that people of color don’t care about the environment; it’s not the lack of acknowledgement that people of color support environmental issues at higher rates than whites. It’s not the hiring of average white men instead of overqualified people of color.
All those are simply the byproducts of the big problem: White privilege.
Meyer is excited to have three of the first class of Philanthropy NW's Momentum Fellows.
Sharon Wade Ellis works as a fellow on the Housing Opportunities portfolio. She blogged about by her passions for philanthropy and housing, which ultimately brought her to Meyer.
Here's how she began her essay:
When I was a kid, I spent summers with my grandparents in their old and drafty home on Chicago's South Side. I recall going to the candy store next door, falling asleep on the enclosed back porch with the hot Midwestern summer sapping all my energy, listening to the roar of the trains rattling by. I remember navigating the rickety wooden stairs down the dirt alley to a shared garden patch where we'd pick greens and onions, and crossing the gravel parking lot to visit my great-grandmother nearby.
My grandmother would often share her own memories of that home and say, “Those were good times," and I remember thinking, "It's just an old, dilapidated house.” With each passing year, however, I grew to understand my grandmother’s feeling. There was always laughter, especially around the kitchen table. Even when hard times hit, there was a sense of security permeating every nook and cranny of that old home — and laughter wasn’t far behind.
Read all of Sharon's essay, and check out essays and blogs by other Momentum Fellows, here.
Earlier this year, Meyer Memorial Trust surveyed Oregonians to share their experiences with and concerns about public education in this state. The response was overwhelming. Over 900 people shared enthusiastic, innovative visions for education and sobering stories about its challenges. Their feedback will help to shape Meyer’s new Equitable Education portfolio.
From educators to nonprofit leaders, from parents to lawmakers, their insights reflect a deeply committed, thoughtful community.
We found a similarly invested community during five listening sessions this summer, in Hermiston, Medford, Redmond, Salem and Portland. Our hosts were gracious and kind, sparking incisive, compelling dialogues about the state of education in Oregon.
Our primary takeaway from the discussions: Oregonians want their voices to be heard on education. They reminded us that too many communities, particularly those that are underserved and experience the greatest disparities, have been absent from statewide conversations on education. People we surveyed asked Meyer to play a unique role in partnering with community organizations to activate, amplify and elevate these voices into unified action toward meaningful and equitable education.
Respondents pressed Meyer to center our efforts on those communities that experience the greatest disparities in both access and opportunity. Reducing equity-related barriers in school and district policies, practices and culture emerged as most in need of improvement.
A vision for a statewide, youth-centered education system also emerged. We heard real passion for students to be able to successfully navigate through school, with full access to tools and supports they need. And there was consensus on the notion that students deserved to leave the education system with positive self-identities intact, ready to flourish and contribute to Oregon’s future.
Getting there will take work.
Participants highlighted a lack of wraparound services to support vulnerable students and families. Although schools are often seen as natural community centers, the absence of supporting services — from housing to mental health and from culturally specific enrichment to education transition — was widely seen as a missed opportunity to minimize barriers and increase overall well-being.
People told us they hope Meyer’s investments in equitable education result in youths building stronger connections to educators and finding relevance in their education experience. And they made clear their expectations of improved outcomes, such as smaller achievement gaps and increased graduation rates.
For many Oregonians, college preparation and access are crucial. For others, readiness to enter the workforce, via apprenticeship or certification programs, is essential to securing a family-wage job. We heard that both paths are necessary for Oregon to flourish, and both require innovative approaches focused on equity and inclusion.
We listened to understand. And what we learned made us thankful to serve a state so deeply committed to its future.
Meyer is grateful for the time and thoughtful insights we heard from survey and listening session participants. I’ve shared just a small portion of what we discovered: Every challenge and opportunity offered up has become another step toward our new, shared vision for equitable education in Oregon. As we work toward launching our Equitable Education portfolio in early 2017, we plan to keep listening and fine-tuning our collective vision.
I’ve been thinking a lot about leaders lately. Not just because of what’s happening on the national stage but because Meyer has released new funding opportunities, two Requests for Proposals, focused on leadership development and capacity builders aligned with our equity goals.
What makes a leader? Personality? Technical skills? Others who are willing to follow? I suspect that many people who are considered leaders feel like “accidental” leaders. That’s particularly true for leaders from communities that are underrepresented in positions of leadership (think of CEOs, elected officials or executive directors).
So what can Meyer do to facilitate the development of leaders? Companies and nonprofit organizations have been working on this for a long time. Funders like the Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Ford Family Foundation have already partnered with many organizations over the years to support leaders. So has Meyer. There are many good programs and many good answers to “What makes a leader?” Now, as Meyer integrates equity throughout our work, we have the opportunity to consider what is needed to create a unique sort of leadership, one with equity in mind.
I’ve talked with many traditional and nontraditional leaders, reviewed the literature, including an important read, Leadership for Large Scale Change, and considered my own experience. Here’s what I’ve found:
Accessing leadership development support focused on “hard” or technical skills, such as financial management or fund development, is generally easier to find than programs that teach the “soft skills” like relationship building, personal development and trust building.
Leaders of color and rural leaders place a higher priority than other leaders on interpersonal communication, conflict management, self-identity and giving and receiving feedback.
There is a desire to move away from programs that focus on individual leaders and to develop or use nontraditional definitions of leadership, including leaders who may not be in high-level positions but have lived the community experience and are trusted by the community.
The pathway to leadership for leaders of color and people with disabilities is not smoothly paved and, in some cases, not even accessible.
Many leaders are eager for developmental relationship support, such as peer circles, mentorship and informal networking opportunities.
Organizations, particularly those that are small and not as well-funded, need more capacity to allow time and space for leaders to build their skills. This capacity could come in the form of additional staffing or operating support for core operations while leaders are accessing capacity building or leadership support.
To address complex social issues, and particularly to address inequities, there is a need for more collective community, cross-sector and networked approaches.
Networked and community-level leadership require nuanced and longer-term evaluative approaches, and results are harder to measure but may have more large-scale impact.
Meyer, through our Building Community portfolio, is excited to partner with leadership development programs in Oregon in the next year by providing grants for programming and for participation in peer learning.
We don’t have all the answers, and in true shared leadership fashion, we seek to learn from and alongside our grantees and partners. Our goal is to meet programs where they are and work together to fashion a future program that leverages all the wisdom of leaders leading leaders.
Say that three times fast!
For more information about our just released Requests for Proposals, please contact questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org).
Meyer's goal is to meet programs where they are and work together to fashion a future program that leverages all the wisdom of leaders leading leaders.
I keep pondering the grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting 18-year-old Michael Brown last August in Ferguson, Missouri.
The teen’s family continues to mourn. Seventeen hundred miles away, I share their confusion and anger. Protests, which quickly broadened beyond an isolated police shooting to shine light on inequities endured by African Americans in suburban St. Louis and across the country, are spreading. Communities are divided, both here in Oregon and on social media, by a gulf of misunderstanding between those who see what happened to Brown in the continuum of race in this divided country and those who identify instead with the plight of the white police officer.
Since Michael Brown’s death, there have been repeated reminders that white privilege does not exist in a vacuum: New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s excellent series addresses head on the lingering barriers blacks face in America. "One element of white privilege today," Kristof wrote on a recent Sunday, "is obliviousness to privilege, including a blithe disregard of the way past subjugation shapes present disadvantage." NYT columnist Charles M. Blow wrote eloquently of the inherent advantages in America, “the false dichotomy that chokes to death any real accountability and honesty. Systemic anti-black bias doesn’t dictate personal behavior, but it can certainly influence and inform it. And personal behavior can reinforce people’s belief that their biases are justified. So goes the cycle.”
Last night, as protests turned violent in Missouri and police in riot gear responded with tear gas, Rev. Chuck Currie tweeted about what we can do close to home to own our history and begin righting inequities. “There is an ongoing need for Oregonians to address racism just as much as there is a need for those in Missouri to address racism. #Ferguson.”
Throughout a sleepless night, my friend Andrew Mason, executive director of Open Meadow, an alternative school in Portland, was doing just that. He shared his musings with me. As I was struggling to put my thoughts in writing, Andrew’s comments reflected my own fears and frustrations. I applaud his instinct to add his voice as an ally of those outraged by history but determined not to repeat it. Here’s how the grand jury decision in Ferguson haunts Andrew:
Here’s what makes me afraid:
I am afraid my 10 year-old son will grow old in world where killing unarmed black men continues to be sanctioned by the law, just as it was 350 years ago.
I am afraid that my son will grow old in a world where young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than white men.
I am afraid of the confusion. Confusion about the justice system, confusion about my right to second-guess this system.
I am afraid of the anger, the rage. Will I alienate friends, colleagues and neighbors?
I am afraid of the silence. Will white folks let this stand? Again? Will there be no outcry? Is the silence because you don’t care, because you’re afraid to care, because you don’t know how to care, or something else? Will confusion keep us quiet?
I am afraid of the resignation, the voice of devalued black lives – “I am not surprised,” “I am used to it,” “I was expecting it.”
I am afraid of the pain and cruelty of overt racism – “Why don’t they get over it?,” “#pantsupdontloot.”
I am afraid of the isolation. Saying nothing, I am alone. Saying something, I will alienate, frighten, offend. I am afraid of the continued inability for American communities – my community, our community – to have a healthy and productive dialogue about the disparities that have resulted from a 350-year history of violence by white folks against black folks.
I am afraid of being misunderstood. Afraid,even when I can’t figure out how anyone could be understood – how anyone could make sense of this, how this could happen?
Here’s what I’m not afraid of: When I wake up tomorrow morning and my white son goes to school, I’m not afraid of him being shot by the police, by the authorities sworn to protect him. I’ve never been afraid of that. — Andrew Mason
I’ll be joining him Tuesday, Nov. 25 at 4 p.m. at the Albina Ministerial Alliance Protest in front of the Justice Center at Southwest 3rd Avenue and Madison Street in downtown Portland. I also encourage people to attend the community dialogue at Open Meadow Middle School on Saturday, November 29.
This week we announced that Meyer's trustees approved 109 grants, totaling $4.3 million.
That batch includes the last of the Grassroots Grants that Meyer Memorial Trust will award. Since 2007, the Grassroots Grants program has opened Meyer to nonprofits in every county and corner of Oregon. More than 960 grants, totaling nearly $20 million, were awarded through the program, building relationships that have helped shape the Trust and projects that have improved the lives of our neighbors.
As you've probably heard, Meyer is in the midst of a big change, a shift in focus to make a more significant impact in areas Oregonians have indicated deep interest and concern: education, the environment, affordable housing and maintaining the social sector safety net. Meyer is not alone in taking a hard look at its work and realigning its focus: Ford Foundation recently announced plans to direct its considerable influence and wealth toward curbing financial, racial, gender, and other inequities, and to offer its partners significant general operating support.
As we refine what we do, we are asking our nonprofit partners for help in shaping what our grantmaking will look like when we launch our new grant programs later this year. Already, hundreds of affordable housing experts across the nonprofit landscape have taken part in a survey to help define our Safe + Stable Housing portfolio. A new survey aimed at determining the parameters of our Resilient Social Sector portfolio was announced last week. Stay tuned for additional opportunities to ensure that our changes reflect and respect the nonprofits in our wider Oregon community, from its rural towns to its urban centers.
We look forward to keeping you advised on our developments, our ongoing grantmaking activities and the shaping of our new funding programs.
There’s been hardly a week over the past year that has not offered fresh urgency for Americans to get and stay engaged in national conversations about race.
From the deaths of unarmed black people at the hands of law enforcement officers, to the massacre of nine black parishioners in South Carolina at the hands of a man who wrote of wanting to start a race war, to the burning of black churches in the South, there have been ample and urgent opportunities to talk about the “Uncomfortable Subject."
The immediacy of these horrific events has caused many to stop and focus on the moment — to pay our respects. But I’m not satisfied with asking myself, “isn’t it tragic? Isn’t that sad?” My heart breaks and I am trying to figure out what more I can do.
I’ve mentioned before, I am working on, and learning about, being a more effective white ally. What that means to me is that I do what I can in the longer term work of breaking down inequities borne out of institutional and structural racism, and I work to overturn the inequities racism creates in education, housing, the workplace and the larger U.S. culture.
Becoming a white ally began with some incontrovertible personal truths: I have never had to fear being profiled when I walked into a store, or being pulled over when I drive a nice car, redlining when I wanted to buy a home, or rejection when I needed a loan or a job. I know that isn’t the reality for brown and black people. I believe racism exists. I’ve seen it denied, minimized, justified but I do not doubt the links between racism, economic disparities, classism, sexism, gender discrimination, and other forms of injustice. I learn about, and from, people who have worked for racial justice. I support the leadership of people of color. And, especially in this moment, I am reminded that I am not alone on this journey.
At the funeral eulogizing South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney, President Barack Obama called for Americans to pay more attention to less apparent forms of racism. When he said, "maybe we now realize the way a racial bias can infect us even when we don't realize it so that we're guarding against not just racial slurs, but we're also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal," it resonated for me. I thought of the important equity work we are doing here at Meyer, as well as my peers in the D5 Coalition who helping push philanthropy to reflect the diverse country we share.
When a recent Wall Street Journal editorial opined that “the system and philosophy of institutionalized racism identified by Dr. King no longer exists,” another white ally, Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, denounced the editorial board’s denial on Twitter. “Pretending it doesn't exist is, cognitively, really hard work. And it is dishonest and unfair and cruel work too. It's its own violence,” he tweeted. “Acknowledging that we still have a very, very long way to go is literally the least anyone could do.” That’s a white ally stepping onto the field, inspiring honest dialogue.
Another white ally comes from a family steeped in white privilege and generations of political power, Senator Paul Thurmond, the son of segregationist Strom Thurmond, addressed the matter of the Confederate flag, still flying above South Carolina’s state capitol after the killings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Where other lawmakers testified the flag was about Southern heritage, Thurmond countered that the flag was deeply rooted in oppressive story of slavery. It was the truth. We have to begin with truth.
Time and time again, Oregonians hold as their number one value their quality of life. True quality of life for all requires each of us reach our full potential, a significant challenge when we don’t have a line of stepping stones laid out neatly from the moment we are born.
It’s not easy. When I get into conversations about race with people of color, I can at times feel my heart rate go up or I get anxious. I can’t experience firsthand the emotions or level of anger or frustration at being judged by the color of my skin. I’m not always sure what is the right thing or the wrong thing to say. It can feel like wandering into uncharted territory, but it is so important to do it. Otherwise, we’re really not working toward change if all we say when nine people lose their lives is, “isn’t that sad?”
It is sad. How do you handle that?
Me, I’m going to commit to continuing to educate myself and others about racism. To raise issues around racism and discrimination in public and private. I plan to personally learn and engage more around the work of our local organizations working to dismantle racism. But I am going to do more than that. Meyer has made many inroads in diversity and equity but our field hasn’t diversified much; nor has my social circle broadened as I would like. There’s work to do there. I like how my immediate professional world has changed. I’m better for it. More important, the Meyer Trust is better for it.
How about you? Tell me about the steps you’re taking to help make this place, our Oregon, flourish for everyone. Reach out to me in the comment section below, or on Twitter @dougastamm. I look forward to your insights.
