Bias plaintiffs ask Portland not to appeal suit

Diversity - The City Council votes to challenge the judgment despite the pleas of two women

Thursday, September 14, 2006RYAN FRANK

The Oregonian

Two city of Portland employees who recently won a racial discrimination suit against the city pleaded their case again Wednesday. This time, before the City Council.

Lisa Washington and Roxie Granville, both African Americans, asked the council to ignore the city attorney’s advice to appeal. Staring back at them were the five white men of Portland’s City Council.

The contrast was too great to go unmentioned.

“It is an uncomfortable issue,” said Mayor Tom Potter, who’s made improved city diversity a core part of his first term. “I recognize that we are five white males. And I cannot begin to understand all the issues that confront people of color, women, gays and lesbians every day.”

But Potter, along with Commissioners Sam Adams, Randy Leonard and Dan Saltzman, approved the appeal. The vote came after city attorneys said the judgment included court errors that could set bad legal precedent.

Washington and Granville’s lawsuit dates to a 1997 incident inside the Bureau of Development Services, where both women work.

The lawsuit claims that supervisors told the women they were “seen together walking down the street” and that it appeared they “were not working.” The supervisors also were concerned they might be going into the field together without a manager’s permission. A supervisor told the women that co-workers thought the women were “being seen together too much” and “there is a policy against this.” But the women say no such policy existed at the time, according to the lawsuit.

At a staff meeting in 2001, a supervisor said the bureau would begin requiring all employees to notify a supervisor before they go into the field. But after the meeting, the policy was enforced only against Granville and Washington, the lawsuit says.

The city says the supervisors didn’t discriminate. In court filings, the city says supervisors talked with Granville and Washington about their job performance but deny it was about the women being seen together too much. The city also denied applying policies only to Granville and Washington.

A jury in June sided with the women, and the judge awarded both $50,000 in damages, plus possible back pay.

The appeal passed the council 4-0 with Commissioner Erik Sten sitting it out, citing a conflict because he’s known Washington since childhood.

Leonard, who runs the bureau, said he wanted to let the verdict stand, but city attorneys persuaded him to support the appeal. “It goes against my grain to appeal,” Leonard said. ” . . . It wasn’t done lightly. But I’m comfortable.”

Granville called the city’s case “lies. Pure lies. Why is that they can’t realize that racism exists here in Portland?

“For the council who is all white males to say it is a technical legal issue . . . it’s insulting.”

Washington said the council had been “bamboozled by the city attorney’s office.”

A few minutes before Wednesday’s vote, the council recognized Portland as a dog town USA. Sheila Walker, who also works in the Bureau of Development Services, said, “It’s really sad to hear someone get up and talk about how wonderful Portland is when it comes to a place for a dog to live. But is it a good place for minorities to live? Is ‘diversity’ just a word on a piece of paper or is it something that the city is really trying to live by?

“Lubangakene” is the name my Ugandan sister, Sarah bestowed upon me. I wish I could convey the warm accent with which she spoke.

‘Lubangakene means that God alone knows who you are.’

It is not possible to know, the blood of too many - in me - has left me confused, mixed up, shaken, yet decidely unstirred.

In the wonderful book, “Meeting of the Waters” by Kim McLarin, a character notes that in Brazil there are two rivers that converge and yet do not mix. From World Travels.Com:

The Meeting of the Waters

Where the dark waters of the Rio Negro join the lighter muddy waters of the Rio Solimoes a natural phenomenon is caused: the separate shades of water run side by side for a length of more than four miles (6km) without mixing. The separation is apparently caused by the difference in temperature, density and flow rate of the waters from each river.

Run side by side without mixing.

God alone knows

The four of us - three Americans, one white male and female, both Jewish, one African of Ugandan origin and me.  We decided to splurge as the team we’re supporting in the Homeless World Cup (check out ‘katalystatlarge.com for details) had one an amazing victory over
Estonia.

CampBay is right on the Atlantic and has a wonderful strip of restaurants and bars that we were told would be hopping on a Sunday.  We arrived at the ‘Tuscany Bay,’ mounting the stairs.  It would be other stares that ruled the roost.

We hit the door and heads swiveled in our direction. Eyes became locked on us, not eyes of greeting, but eyes judgemental, interrogatory.  Eyes fearful.  These were the looks of complete insecurity, seeking to project their brittle psyche onto the transgressive Other, in spite of their smart clothes and expensive baubles.  A masquerade ball of self-loathing disguised as contempt.

I had to go inside of myself to process what I was seeing.  After I’d decoded (I hope accurately) the situation, I decided to pay careful attention to everything else that occured.

A table of four or five women, seated after us received their menus and drinks before us.  Our waiter had to be summoned to bring menus.  My second drink order, lemonade, never arrived, though the drink orders of my two white friends - both one and two - made it without fuss. 

When I got up to use the bathroom, a man, probably late 50’s did a doubletake, then looked at me hard.  I looked back harder, cocking my head to look deeply into his fat mug; his gaze wilted.  I laughed.  I peed, came out of the bathroom and decided to strut through the dining room, past his table, the bar.  I wanted to show these devils that I was more than willing to take up my space. 

Of all of the diners, there was only one black man and one ‘Imitation of Life’ colored woman seated with a table of meat inspectors; the kitchen staff, bien sur, had a healthy coat of melanin. Camp Bay is what I’d call an all white neighborhood with a little pepper in the mix.  Integration is minimal, throughout the city; adjoining tables might contain different hues, but rarely a white and black African mix much in this incredibly diverse place…

It is what it is…

Still, Cape Town is amazing.  Its like a combination of Rio only better San Francisco.  The blight are the townships, the tin cans that house too many Africans.  How can this be allowed?  How can people who created these dwellings live with themselves?  (By consuming more and more and blaming the victim?)   

We left the restaurant, the waiter never thanking us for coming, ignoring my direct thanks for his “service.”  It rolled off me like water.

We crossed the two-lane, curvaceous, hilly street, descended a short rocky embankment and walked to the
Atlantic via a white sandy beach.  I jogged out toward the water then rushed backwards at its approach.  It was past ten.  The stars shown over the ocean.  Behind the row of eateries, jutting up behind the neatly built homes were the rocky hills of Table Mountain.The most powerful images from this day were the Ugandan team, the most beautiful Auma, the black granite gorgeous, Sarah,  whose last name means “to run,” her pregnant (with her) mother, chased from their village by a rebel army.  There is handsome, charismatic, talkative Dennis Ochen, the philospher-journalist who fills journal after journal, as well as your ear, with his inner workings.  There is the lovely American Jew, Anna, wise beyond her years, who has lived with the ladies of “Girls Kick It” for the last three months.  Its a mutual lovefest for Anna and her girls.

I’ll remember the tears I suppressed as our players, most of whom had never flown on an airplane, beat down Team
Estonia.  The pride, the joy.  I’ll remember the African people, the ones who stop ME on the street, ‘are you Ugandan?’  ‘How are you?’  ’Where are you from?’  The smiles of the children.  The hips moving.  The kindness of people  you’d think wouldn’t be so kind; the nastiness, the reserve, the fear of a thievish people with EVERYTHING, except an inner peace.

I leave tomorrow, unless my boss answers my plea and let’s me stay until the end. 

I want to go to
Uganda

I arrived in Cape Town this morning. 

I didn’t breakdown in tears or kiss the airport tarmac.  I haven’t been overwhelmed with a sense that these are MY people, though they are.  Perhaps, jetlag is moderating my response. 

Beautiful city, incredible vistas, the Atlantic, Table Mountain. Spectacular.  The people, the black people are incredibly friendly - those that I’ve met.  I’ve caught glimpses of dwellings not fit for human habitation on the ride from the airport, right next to modernity and shameless wealth. 

If any black people on earth have a right to be enraged, it is these.  So far, I’ve been greeted with smiles and cordiality that I have rarely seen at “home.”  As my first mentor in AA used to say, ‘time takes time.’  We’ll see in the days to come.

I’m thinking about chu

“Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.”

Duke Ellington

“Sometimes you have to play for a long time to be able to play like yourself.”

Miles Dewey Davis, Jr.

“Art is self expression. If you are expressing someone else’s personality, that is not art.”

Bennie Wallace

“If someone has been escaping reality, I don’t expect him to dig my music.”

Charles Mingus

“I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.”

Thelonious Monk.

“External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.”

Yusef Lateef

“If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit.”

Miles Davis

“In Africa I discovered what the true purpose of a musician is. We are historians, and it is our purpose to tell the people the true story of our past, and to extend a better vision of the future.”

Randy Weston

“The idea is more important than the style or the contents of the style you’re trying to play in.”

Ornette Coleman

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

Charles Mingus

“You can do anything you want to do, if you know what to do.”

Betty Carter

Quotes from Jazz Corner.Com.

Asa and Holly: I’ve wanted to facilitate a conversation between you two for a while because I didn’t get the discord/disconnect between you.  Early on when Holly and I were having our struggle, I agreed with most of what Asa said or implied about you, Holly.  But as we have interacted on and off the board, I have seen you grow/shift, swallow some hard to digest truths that I’ve sent your way.  I admire that very much.

Asa, you have been a wonderful brother to me, even when I have gone over the edge (see below).  I appreciate your support and your perspective very much.  But, as I’ve asked you to clear up for me (if you don’t mind), your feelings regarding white  gay/lesbian interaction with black folks generally and specific to this particular white person, Holly.

Here’s an opportunity - RIGHT HERE - if you choose to accept it, to hash out the shit.  What’s interesting to me is that I like you both very much, how you think, your warmth and generosity towards me.  So, how can we heal this rift - not between to ideologies - but between two human beings?  Can we?

Malcolm X:

“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”

“Usually when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.”

“They don’t stand for anything different in South Africa than America stands for. The only difference is over there they preach as well as practice apartheid. America preaches freedom and practices slavery.”

“When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire or preserve his freedom.”

Dr. Martin Luther King:

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Skyscraper @ ‘Queering Me’ (http://russasian.blogspot.com/) has a couple of posts that are so maddening, I can’t really write about them. Let me just say they involve the imbecilic, reactionary, mind controlled state of most in these United States of Imbeciles.

Dr. Miles Bennell: “In my practice I see how people have allowed their humanity to drain away…only it happens slowly instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind…. All of us, a little bit. We harden our hearts…grow callous…only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is.”

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The Perfect Metaphor for these times - (http://www.gadflyonline.com/11-26-01/film-snatchers.html)

So many of us are mentally dead, brainwashed, drugged by privilege, the NFL, sitcoms, the Stars and Stripes, violence. The rot beneath the surface is out of view of those who “identify themselves with the Master, more than the master does.”

You have Negroes and other non-white nincompoops (Check out Mahndisa at http://mrigmaiden.blogspot.com), parrotting Republicrat rhetoric; and when you point it out to them and reference sources of alternative information, they tell you that YOUR sources are propaganda?! “That’s a Negro that’s lost his mind, that’s a Negro that’s lost his mind.” His or her mind.

Ain’t CNN propaganda? The Times, the Post?! Nope. Those are respectable news agencies. And right there they have you by the balls. Your slavish desire for respectability, status, blessings from your Pope, your Bishop, your Senator, your President - from folks who don’t give a FUCK about you - diminishes your integrity, your humanity to infinitesimal.

Reading Skyscraper’s posts left me again - AWED - at the perfection of the propaganda machine, the educational system, the media - instruments so powerful, that dark is construed as light, truth is false, delusion and illusion are reality. When I read the the words of the lost, I have to give big props to the Masters of the Universe.

“They break your legs and then call you a cripple; they break your wings and then call you a cripple; they poke out your eyes and then accuse you of not being able to see.”

Would you rather be right than happy?

Then, you’d probably rather be separate than a part of humanity.

As my friend Pattrice Jones posits below, division is violence. Her wonderful example of the privatization of land wherein one can “own” what God/The Goddess/The Holy Universe/The Great Unknown granted to us all, demonstrates one of the uncivilized absurdities of so-called civilization’s ways… And, its connection to other ludicrous, heinous endeavors. Its ludicrous I should say, EXCEPT, as a means to divide and conquer.

Getting us to buy in to this idea of “yours” and “mine” when it comes to land is only one in a myriad of plots/tactics that divest humanity of humanity itself. Property has to be the most insane invention - this is OUR land. But it is not insane for those who covet their neighbors turf, who live off of others parasitically.

Private property is legalized theft, legalized criminality at its root. Most don’t want to see it at its root. They use the master’s tools and presumptions in formulating their solutions that don’t solve. Audre Lourd and Fred Hampton would say it can’t be done.
Is that division of land rooted in the ultimate division of human beings into classes: male, female, stronger, weaker, black, white, hetero, homo?

Noticing difference is one thing; it is another to HAVE to ‘celebrate diversity’ because people use difference as a guillotine, rather than a mirror, as a reflection of another aspect of YOU!  But we don’t want to see how we are caught up on a ‘liberal, radical, anarchist, black militant treadmill to no where.’ You don’t want to get off; you want to heighten the difference massa has bred into your slave ass.

And don’t let a nigga like me talk about this; I’m a color blind advocating colloborator/I’m a traitor/I’m not giving difference its due.  I’m a “pro-black white oriented black person.”

My daughter is mixed race and when I pick her up at daycare, the little kids yell ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’ just like she’s a little kid-buddy of theirs. And she is. Soon and perhaps, right now, her parents are teaching their kids about the box that they must live in, the container that’s suited for them and the one suited for little brown girls. And these children will learn their lessons well.  Monkey see, monkey do.
I believe it kills a little piece of our humanity, the more we fail to see “from the root to the fruit.” I have brown skin; I’m a ‘black man.’ I’m a man; hetero. And…That’s it.’

When do we graduate from our cozy little compartments to human? When do we have the courage to say, “fuck what the white man or white people are doing/have-haven’t done and recognize our overarching, common humanity?  Because they’re sick I need to act like them, think like them in reverse?  I ain’t sayin’ love stupid/whiteracist/sexist muthafuckas; I’m sayin’, in spite of their disease and dis-ease, when are we who get it going to move on a truer truth?  When are we gonna take it to another level, ‘take it to the stage!’ P-Funk style?!
I’m not waiting for some blue eyed/cockeyed white person to do THEIR work, in order for me to do mine. I’m taking my AP Racism-consciousness wherever my intellect and soul leads me. To stay in some ‘black bunker’ that white racism proscribed for me, UNTIL they change, fuck that. Everybody white ain’t unconscious, though many of US are.

BTW: I plead guilty for doing the same thing. I put people in boxes, too. I’m also aware of calling people out who put themselves in the boxes, in the shackles assigned to them by someone else. I’ve learned this way of thinking is a stop along the way; it ain’t my destination.

Too many of us adapt to and riff off of oppression, racism, sexism - and can’t create/see/project beyond it. This is some of the violence we do ourselves.  This is how we use the master’s tools to slit our own throats, limit our thinking, feeling and acting.
Enough rambling, but I’ll be back with more…

From one of my favorite thinkers on the Planet:

“The Turtle Talk”
pattrice jones

This speech was delivered at the “Paths to Animal Liberation” plenary session
at the national AR2006 conference in Arlington, Virginia on Friday, 11 August 2006

We are all discrete, color-coded organisms with barely a connection to the other two-legged vermin un-like us. We are real; they are generic: you are a brown cow and I am a white rabbit. We must honor (which really means: wallow) in each other’s differences to the exclusion of any similarities.

We need to celebrate our differences; Right On, Baby, Right ON!

Let me ask a question: Should we EVER celebrate our similarities? Is it truly progress to delineate with a fine toothed comb, “how different/special/unique we are from every garden variety slug-wo-man?!

Is it not polarized, sanctified, difference that is the root of the world’s problem? While some may assert “colorblindness…isn’t enough,” most folks who die unnatural deaths, do so from exploitable, hyper-difference.

Does the “white” man kill niggas out of ‘colorblindness’, cuz he can’t tell the difference between himself and niggas, or does he kill us in bushels precisely cuz he sees nothing BUT difference?! What about niggas who kill each other? Is it our colorblinded-ness and the devil that makes us do it?

Has there ever been a “colorblind” society? So, why the kneejerk fear of a future world where color ain’t the ghetto pass between life, liberty and a death induced by ‘pork inhalation and Mad Dog 20/20′?

Nappy said: ” How is it that you have been able to distance yourself from it, when you live in the same world that we do? A trip to Paris by a black american who is intellectually stable, doesn’t at all speak to the racism and anti-semitism that is experienced by others in France without the access you have. You know what I mean? Let’s ask Arabs, North Africans, West Africans, Jews if there’s racism in France?”

The first step is wanting to distance myself from this crazy bullshit. I want to put this crack pipe down that’s been shoved down our throats from jumpstreet. Anybody who doesn’t want to distance themselves from the contagion called “America,” who doesn’t want to get outside of it and examine their own presumptions about everything - needs to be interrogated closely.

How can one distance themselves from the domestic brainwashing that pits us one against each other? Well, travel out of this country has been helpful for me. On my first trip to Paris I stayed for three months. I’ve visited 4 more times. I’ve been to the south of France, Amsterdam and Brazil for one month. I’m going to Africa next month. I’m not going to shop and I’m not going for a tan; I’m going for work AND to really absorb the spirit of the land.

More than physically leaving the States and going on ‘vacation’, I left intentionally - mentally and spiritually; I wanted to experience how other people lived and to live like they live. I wanted to compare and contrast where I’d come from with where I was. The question that truly animated me was, “this can’t be all there is?!” If America is the best, the world really is fucked up.

I didn’t go to Paris because there was no racism there. I knew and learned even more once there, about the Algerian, the Martinican, the former colonies offered honorary French citizenship, but not first class treatment. I learned how the Paris militarized police rounded up African men in the year 2000 - Y2K and locked them up to “prevent them from running amock.” My black ass breezed right by cops in the subway while Africans were “detained.” I know how those Africans feel cuz the same has happened to me here.

But the experience of leaving the States and dealing with another flawed country and culture - was a revelation. To not have race shoved down my throat in quite the way it is in the US, was very new. And liberating. I found the energy there to do things that I’d only dreamed of doing. Other black people I know have felt similarly. James Emmanuel, a poet who moved to France in the mid 80’s, told me how in the States he could not write for two years; he went overseas and eventually put pen to paper again.

He spoke of how his soul was sick in this country, how his spirit felt unclean here, how he felt shackled by the racism/white supremacy he experienced from his nation. He told me how home is wherever he is, yet, the home of his birth is NOT and will never be again. I find that profound and it resonates with me. Doesn’t mean there is any paradise on earth; but there are places that don’t psychically murder you.

Emmanuel considers himself an “Earth Citizen.” Are not we all? Do any of you feel American? Or is it that somebody told you how to feel and you never considered you had a choice. BTW: Choosing to simply feel and do the opposite of what the man tells you is not really choice, is it?

When the Twin Towers were brought down on September 11th, I didn’t feel pain for the so-called Americans who died; it was a global, human tragedy. How many other people of different nationalities were mutilated? Yet, how we were treated to the red, white and blue kool aid, how the exclusive ownership of 911 was asserted as a ‘US thing’, and none other. Poor, pitiful us. This is a common instinct, or perhaps, an extremely well manipulated one.

To know or feel the commonalities between human beings is not “enough” for who? The people who can’t see what I’m talking about? I can’t live anyone else’s life but my own. I can’t defeat the power structure and the Nazis of this country alone. And frankly, I don’t see anyone else trying too hard, don’t see anyone calling it like I see it. We’re gonna have to give up something to be free. Our ‘gender and color-segregated time shares’ are facilitating a heinous, vicious, criminal, cynical, devilish cabal of swine who are having their way with this country - on OUR dime.

To quote Dr. Phil: “how’s that working for you?”

Its not working for any of us. When Martin Luther King broke from color politics and took on the Vietnam War swindle - he had to go. When Malcolm X broke ranks with the Nation and decided to embrace political struggle, decided to work with some of the folks he’d disparaged - he had to go. When anyone proposes a solution that - calls for black/gay/lesbian/latina - unity, unifying in spite “of our petty differences,” you’ve sinned against Willie Lynch and his progeny.

I’ve never once supported colorblindness; but I’ve been accused of it. I accuse the people who accuse me, of failing to see their support of the conflict ridden/exploitative status quo embedded in their positions, of being unable and or unwilling to see that we are different and we are not just the same, but we are ONE people. We are a blind people who can’t see how alike we are - and don’t want to.

When you read this don’t pull out your red pen: open your mind and challenge YOUR belief system, challenge your attachment to your/our terminal uniqueness.

Only a united front can defeat the global tyranny fucking up the planet. But we don’t want to defeat them, not if it means giving up some sacred cows. And if you sense things that those around you don’t, its crazymaking and fruitless to beat your head against a brick wall. The addict who hits bottom and wants to change will come to it in their time. Everyone else will keep on keepin’ on.

I was really pissed after I did my “Fuck Race” post. I couldn’t believe how folks just chipped off what they “didn’t agree with” without actually getting what the piece was actually about. It was like folks going to a movie and closing their eyes at the scary parts and then reviewing the film as if they’d seen the whole thing.

The greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed, indeed. What do you think he’d rather see us thinking about then? And what do you think they are trying to get us to stay focused on - our difference or our commonalities - including our common enemy?

The Matrix is in full affect.