Power to Create Change
Anitra Kitts Rasmussen
June, 2001
Washington DC

Good Afternoon.

For the last week I’ve had the opportunity to be a happy tourist here in Washington DC. My two daughters are with me on this trip and in the past six days we’ve seen the Air and Space Museum, the Natural Science Museum, the American History Museum, the White House, the National Gallery of Art, the Capitol Building, Arlington Cemetary, the National Cathedral, and all of the monuments on the mall. We did all of this pretty much on foot via Metro or a bus except for one day when we rented bikes. It’s been a great week. I want you to understand something – I’m a good liberal social justice democrat and as a general rule, I don’t wrap myself in the flag – but this is a very impressive place! When I stood in the doorway to the supreme court chambers, I thought about all of the decisions that have been pronounced from that bench – decisions that impact our lives today – and I was overcome with awe. We have a lot of flaws in this country. We are not the best, most perfect shining light – but being here in Washington reminds me that there remains the possibility for great goodness in this democracy. And I don’t just see it in the architecture but its there in the people I have encountered this last week.  Y’all are very open and friendly people.

I don’t know what you think of Oregon – the state I come from – but I hope you think about some fabulous pinot noirs and pinot gris, about skiing on Mt Hood and walking the boardwalk in Seaside. I hope you think about hiking in our forests and how our land use planning process has preserved some of the most productive farmland in the world. And while Minnesota’s Governor may indeed be able to beat up our Governor, it would never come to that because our Governor would have solved the whole conflict through alternative dispute resolution much as he helped to broker landmark agreements between farmer, forester and fisher to bring Salmon runs back from extinction. I most certainly hope that whenever you think of Oregon, you are also thinking about how soon you will be driving or flying by to come see us.
What I hope you don’t think about is what I’m about to talk about – Oregon’s racist heritage.

Chances are very good that if you are not from Oregon, it has not yet occurred to you to consider if Oregon is a place where racism exists. And if you are white and from Oregon, like me, chances are actually very good that you too have not thought about Oregon as place where racism exists. But if you are of color, if you are african-american; native-american; asian-american, or Latino – there is no chance, it is a certainty that you think about racism every single day, because you experience it in Oregon.

From what I can tell, and a quick check of my skin color will tell you that I’m working on second hand information, From what I can tell, its not mean-spirited, even though we have our share of overt racists and white supremacy groups. Its more unconscious, the kind of stuff like weird service in restaurants, getting pulled over at night just because you “look suspicious”, floor doorkeepers assuming that you couldn’t possibly be an elected legislator, the kind of stuff that happens when you’re not around enough people of color to break through the images presented in our media. Because Oregon is actually very white – about 90%. Of course, that’s not exactly an accident. From the very beginning of white government, we have systematically done our very best to keep people of color – most especially those who are african-american – out of our neck of the woods.

I don’t know when it started, but I know that in 1849 the Oregon Territorial Legislature – which at the time included what eventually became the states of Washington and Idaho – passed a law explicitly banning the presence of “Negroes, mulattos, and colored persons” from the territory. As near as I can tell from reading the 1849 resolution,- this exclusion came from a place of fear - one of the worst motivators in our human emotional range. The resolution essentially reads, "we're surrounded by Indians. We let in african-americans, they're going to cause trouble, stir up the native-americans, and then we'll all be dead."

I find this statement fascinating because buried within this law is an acknowledgment that the Chinook people, the Klamath People, the Nez Pierce and all their brothers and sisters throughout the Americas might have a reason to be unhappy with the loss of their land and their way of life. So rather than apologize or even acknowledge that perhaps we have not dealt fairly with the previous inhabitants, lets just keep the lid on the occupation. But that is another day’s speech.

The white, governing class of Oregon continued to pursue legal and economic policies that deeply discouraged the presence of african americans in our state. I have heard tales of surgeries – in the 1940’s -  being performed on kitchen tables because no local hospital would allow the admittance of blacks.  I have heard many stories, and now have seen for myself how there are still two Oregons – the one I know and love as a native born daughter of european-american heritage and the one my native born brothers and sisters of color experience – and while I think they love the natural beauty as much as I do, I’ve come to see what they see - the hostility hidden behind the trees, in the pick up truck following them down the lonely highway, the verbal and bodily fluid abuse that sometimes rains down from fraternity row when a brother is walking home at night.

There are many more stories I can now tell you. I can tell you about how Marion Anderson, who came to Oregon in the 1940’s to perform at a college campus in Salem, had to return to Portland – an hour and a half drive north in order to find a hotel room that would accept her. About how barber shops kept signs in the windows, No Mexicans. About how we helped to cheat japense-americans of their land and processions as we rounded up “the enemy” among us during world war II.
I can tell you this now, but I couldn’t have told you this four years ago. I didn’t know about it then. It wasn’t taught to me in my Oregon schools. No one I knew at church or in my home spoke of these things. It didn’t matter. It had no consequence or impact on anyone we knew so we didn’t bother remembering.

But you can be certain that someone was remembering. Someone had experienced some very real consequences and serious impact.

In 1998, a group of Oregonians came together and tried to talk about race. It became clear that any future focused discussion had to begin with acknowledging what had already taken place.

Now, for those of you who have studied extensively in conflict resolution, this is not rocket science. For the rest of us who are taking the CR practical application sessions of our day to day life, in our marriages, our friendships, and our workplace relationships – well, even we understand that at some intuitive level – it is difficult if not impossible to move forward in a relationship if there isn’t some way of dealing with the past. Why do we spend so much money on our therapists bemoaning our childhood? Think about the last great fight you had with your significant other? What happened that helped to bring reconciliation about? Or – if you are still nursing your anger – why? What needs to happen that hasn’t yet taken place?  I’m willing to bet at least one mint julep that you and your spouse/partner need to acknowledge the offense – weither or not it was a righteous wound or not – the emotional impact must be discussed before healing/forgiveness can take place. And what is true for human relationships is also true for communities and nations.

Joseph Montville, a former State Department officer and currently part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC has made it his personal mission to figure out what is needed to heal historic feuds such as Kosovo, the Middle East, Northern Ireland and Fuji – all the easy stuff. He says people locked in these multi-generational conflicts may have had a sense of hope and good will to each other until they themselves suffer some form of aggression or violence based simply on who they are not on anything they have done. Their sense of safety and personal control is stripped away from them – and they drop into a defensive or even offensive posture in order to prevent that violence from occurring again. Until “the aggressors or their descendants express regret or remorse for their acts” there can not be trust that violence has come to an end. Montville talks about an “acknowledgement-contrition-forgiveness transaction”.  In other words, a true lasting peace, a peace where “the victim gorup can begin to blieve that it is possible to trust the good faith of the aggressors in current negotiation as well as into the future,” Montville explains, begins – just like in our personal life – with a formal apology and request for forgiveness.

So, in Oregon, in1998, after participating in a conference on race, three white, middle aged men (god bless them), decided that Oregon needed to acknowledge our racist past. We needed to do this in a major, formal way, something of significance. They dreamed of convincing the political leadership of our state, the closest thing we’ve got in a secular society as a symbolic representative of the people of Oregon; the entity who’s responsibility and authority reaches back into that no longer existent body known as the Oregon Territorial Legislature – they dreamed of convening the House and the Senate of the Oregon Legislature where we would pass a resolution acknowledging our racist past and to call for our non-racist future.

So we did.

On the morning of April 22nd, 1999, we passed identical resolutions in the House and the Senate and then, at 4 in the afternoon, we came back together in a joint ceremony – witness by hundreds of Oregonians of all races – where The President of the Oregon Senate; the Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives, acting as the symbolic representative of these two chambers signed this document of acknowledgment. And where the governor of Oregon signed a proclamation with identical wording.

I wish you could have been there. It was an incredibly powerful moment – and I knew its power because I could see the faces of my people; my Oregonians from my seat up on dais. At the last moment, we invited the citizens of Oregon to come out and fill the empty seats on the floor of the chamber. There was a moments hesitation – and then the people of Oregon took possession of their house. Black, Asian, Native American, Latino, and white; able bodied and not; old and young, dressed in suits and T-shirt; they took procession of their chamber, their government and we sat as equals.
I will forever hold the memory of a older Japanese American man who sat in back of the room with the biggest, most joyful grin on his face. He would have been one to have spent time in the internment camps of Tulelake. I will hold the memory of pride on the face of a young african american man, pride that he was sitting on the floor of his government's chambers hearing the stories told. . I will hold the memory of my young european-american legislative colleague’s face shining with the transformational joy that erupted in that room in that hour. He too had glimpsed how it could be. It was… a moment of transformation.

We had some great speakers at this event. Snr. Mark Hatfield and Meryl Evers Williams among them. Snr. Hatfield is a statesman. A former member of the Oregon Legislature, Oregon Governor, and Senior member in the US Senate, Snr. Hatfield has sat in the hot seat for decades and he has served with dignity and wisdom that sets the bar for all of us who aspire to service in elected office.

Senator Hatfield talked about what it was like to grow up in racially segregated Oregon. And then he started talking about how he used the power of his office to help to change the legal barriers that created and perpetuated injustice. But the ability to create change doesn’t belong to just those who hold office. We all have the power to create healing, restoration, reconciliation, and peace in our communities.

This event happened because three men decided we, in Oregon, needed to start talking honestly about our racism. They had a vision – a huge bill signing public ceremony. They didn’t know how to make it happen, but they figured that they knew people who might know how. So they tapped into their network and held a huge meeting where they told us their dream. They used the power of Who they knew. These were ordinary, white men, with a vision.

Linda Davis is a woman of color who works for a large utility in Portland Oregon. Her job title is as a trainer, but she two years ago, she conceived a vision of a racial diversity conference for the Corporate Portland community. She worked hard, she worked with persistence, she worked through the adversity of corporate politics and one day a year ago over 500 people attended the first racial diversity conference in Portland. She used the power of her position within the utility company to make this educational event happen.

Two weeks ago I was in Louisville, Kentucky attending the 213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. I don’t know what you might know about Presbyterians but you may understand that we are an overwhelmingly “white” church. Not that we intend to be. We’re actually trying to work on that, but change doesn’t come easy. As part of that work, all 300 voting commissioners attended a mandatory racism awareness training event before any business was conducted. In the middle of this four hour event, there was a coffee break and of course many of us needed to dispose of the coffee we had already consumed before we could refill. In the bathroom I witnessed a conversation between a middle aged, white, and quite earnest woman and an older, black, and much more practical woman. The white woman was full of theoretical ideals. The black woman was attempting to explain the reality of our world, the reality of her history. I’m not sure how much the white woman was able to hear. They walked away from me still in deep conversation. But they were both using the power of the moment – to ask and answer questions that sometimes we are too afraid to look at or hear about.

And by we, I mean we who are defined as “white.” I think we have a very hard time thinking or talking about racism. Because we have to figure out our responsibility, our connection, our participation in racism. And, we’re nice people. We’re not racists.
Almost two years ago, I had a chance to visit a slave plantation and a slave dock in Richmond Virginia. I was in the company of african americans. As a white person, I did not enjoy this experience. I had to confront a part of my history as an american that I didn’t want to look at. One of the ways we teach history in America these days – especially when we visit the national park sites – is by imagining ourselves as living or doing whatever it is that is going on in this particular site. For example, I can sure see myself living in the Lee House up at Arlington. It has an incredible view and it is really a rather graciously designed home. I do wish to note, however, that the official tour didn’t take me through the slave quarters.

But the official tour that weekend in Richmond took me there. It took me along the path that men, women, and children – newly kidnapped from their homes and cruely treated in the months of the middle passage – it took me along the path that these human beings were forced to walk in the middle of the night so that the white citizens needed be offended by the sight  - it took me along this path and invited me to identify somewhere in this story. I was not happy.

There is no way I ever want to be identified with anyone who held a whip over another person; who separated families without thought; who denied humanity of another. I’ve spent time running through the whole, “not me” defense line – I’m lucky, my mother is a genealogy freak and I know my bloodlines on both sides of my family back to the 14th century in Sweden and Switzerland. To the best of my knowledge I am not descended from anyone who owned or benefited in a direct economic path from slavery. Therefore – Not Me. I didn’t do this.

But you know what – that doesn’t hold water for as long as I benefit from being white in America at the beginning of the 21st century.

I have friends who have heard this story from me and they ask, well, why not identify with the men, women, and children who wore the chains on that path? Why not say “I too was cut when you bled?” And the answer, ladies and gentlemen, is because when I look at my life today I see where I am still far too much like the one who holds the whip, not the one who feels the lash. I live in society that favors people who look like I do and I hold social and economic advantage over other persons because of that truth.
And I can not resign, I can not renounce this privilege.

I can not ask a police officer to please pull me over when I drive across town at night, simply because of my appearance. I can not ask the maitre d’ to please take an extra twenty minutes to seat me when I appear at the door. I can not ask a corporation or a congregation not to hire me, because of the color of my skin. I can not ask a landlord to suddenly “rent” a vacant apartment when I appear on the doorstep. I can not ask the teachers to treat my children as “slow” because of how they look rather than how they perform. I can not ask the polling place workers to “lose” my voter registration. I can’t get out of the game.

Furthermore, I am, more often then I want to admit, a full participant in this system.
Six years ago, the women of Oregon wanted to celebrate the 75th anniversary of when women got the right to vote. As an elected state official at the time, I was one of five helping to carry the banner leading our celebratory march through downtown Portland. It was a beautiful late spring morning and I turned to the woman on my left, a member of the Oregon House of Representatives – and searching for small talk – said, “Isn’t this wonderful? Seventy-five years ago women got the right to vote!” She kept her eyes focused toward the direction we were walking together and in a quiet and matter of fact tone of voice replied, “Some women.”

Startled, I asked quickly, “Some women?” Yet, even in the asking, I already knew the answer. My friend is African-American. And she knew, when I did not know, that men and women identified as African-American, Asian-American, Latino, and Native-American did not get the vote 75 years ago that spring day. They had to wait another fifteen years or so before they gained that particular privilege. They still had to wait to own property, to spend the night in most any small town in Oregon, to undergo surgery in an antiseptic operating room rather than atop a kitchen table, or to shop in the local grocery store.

We were having a glorious march that day – all of us white women. We were proud, we were sisters, and we were racist – not intentionally and if you had asked any one of us if we were racist – we would have adamantly denied the charge because we were good liberal women. And we would have been wrong. Just as we were wrong that day when we marched proclaiming our history as everyone’s history. We were wrong because we said, once again, that your history doesn’t count. It is not even worth remembering.

That morning I discovered I was cut off from the rest of my history. The history where people who looked like me kept people who looked like my friend and colleague from voting. As a result, I was also cut off from what was going on around me. I thought everything was fine. I thought racism was over in 1969. That was the morning I discovered I wasn’t paying attention. And by not paying attention, I was causing harm.
I wish I could tell you that I’m not part of the problem any longer.

I wish I could tell you that I totally get it, and that I commit no further sins of omission or commission.

But I can’t.

Because I live in sin.

I live in and receive benefit from a society that is biased for people who look like me.
When I look at that whip, I am horrified to see my own finger prints on the handle.
Three years ago, I stood within a prison cell on Robbins Island outside of Cape Town South Africa. I was part of a tour group, a random group of tourists from all over the world who had bought tickets for the boat ride that Sunday morning. Robbins Island is the jail that held the leadership of the South African Liberation Movements, including Nelson Mandela. The man who managed the gift shop and sold us our tickets was the former superintendent of that prison. He had attended Mandela’s wedding after Mandela’s release. The man who lead us on this tour was a former prisoner. He told us his story. He invited us to imagine our selves as prisoners in that lonely, cold, forsaken place. I was transformed in that story. I was awakened. I started to “get” what was going on around me.. and I knew I could no longer stay silent. I too needed to start talking. Two months later I was invited to help move forward the Day of Acknowledgement resolution and I did so because I knew it was time to start telling our stories.

It is time for all of us to start telling our stories. To start talking about what we know and what we don’t know. We need to understand each other better. We need to invite each other into our history. We need to take advantage of whatever power we have and use it to start talking. I know of a supreme court justice who has used his office to create task forces and conferences to study – to highlight – just how Justice in Oregon treats people of color. The facts have become undeniable and they don’t go away. If you know whats going on – then please speak out.

And if you don’t – then go find out! A year ago this August, I flew next to someone who was the head of his community’s chamber of commerce. It was a town somewhere in Missouri, and he was a middle aged, white male. When he learned I was flying to speak on racism, he told me there wasn’t any problems with racism in his town. I asked him how many people of color lived there. “Well, one, but he’s just one of us. I’m sure we’re not racist.” I asked him – and I ask you – if you think there isn’t any problems with racism. If you think it was over in 1969, then I ask you to sit down with someone of color and start asking questions.

And if you are of color, well, I hesitate to ask this of you but I will anyway. Please keep talking to us. Please, keep inviting us into your history. All of it, including what happened yesterday.

Because we can only acknowledge what we know.

We can change when we acknowledge.

And we can change.

I believe we are called to create change whenever and wherever we can. I believe each one of us has the power to do so. It’s the reason why I get goosebumps when I stand in front of the supreme court or on the steps of the Lincoln memorial.

When I stood there three days ago, mid way up those steps, looking out across that great sweep of open space, I remember that What is doesn’t have to be.

Please come to Oregon. Please enjoy our wine, our natural beauty. And please, use your power to create change.

(c) 2001, all rights reserved - Anitra Kitts