If you thought “we’re all in this together” battling COVID-19, Multnomah County, Ore., is here to set you straight. We’re not “in this together,” it turns out.
The county, of which Leftist Portland is a major part, prides itself on being “woke” and progressive.
In the summers local antifa and other members of the Portland Professional Protester class host social justice summer camps for impressionable children, teaching the fine art of sabotage and protest.
The rest of the year, the local black bloc-attired antifa and friends bash heads on the streets of people they have determined are “racists.”
The area, which is 70% caucasian, is one of the whiter places in the country.
Dividing people by race and demonizing “whiteness” is one of Portland’s sideshows. It’s taught in at least one of its local colleges.
In a recent publication on “Communities of Color” in Portland, Portland State University researchers determined that Portland’s history of racism causes “horrors” today.
Add to this dynamic that of whiteness and white privilege, and we create the one-two punch that leads to the horrors of racism coexisting with the privileges of whiteness. Undoing such inequities must occur at all levels of every system.
For being so “woke” there sure seems to be a lot of perceived racism there.
And now, in the era of COVID-19, Multnomah County Emergency Operations Equity Office has set up a “grounding space” for minorities to get away from “whiteness.”
The Emergency Operations Center Equity Officer is hosting a grounding space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) employees to share, heal, connect, and get grounded in a space that is not dominated by whiteness.
Just the News reported that the daily Multnomah County coronavirus response publication included the news about the safe space.
Heather Mac Donald, a Stanford-trained attorney and fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research who writes about policing, homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform and race relations, told Just the News that Multnomah County’s actions are particularly disturbing during a time of emergency.
“Identity politics long ago jumped from the university into the world at large, above all, into highly receptive government agencies and social service groups,” Mac Donald said. “It is of course outrageous that any alleged public health or service organization would spend any energy on reinforcing racial victimology and racial discrimination during this time of allegedly overburdened public health systems. But race hatred has been so baked into many government agencies by now that it is par for the course.”
Ron Christie, an African-American and senior staffer in the George W. Bush administration who was instrumental in getting federal backing for the The National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution, told Just the News that he found Multnomah County’s initiative to be “unconscionable.”
Multnomah County defended its non-dominant “whiteness” space, telling Just the News,
“Multnomah County is acting lawfully,” Julie Sullivan-Springhetti, Multnomah County communications director, said in a statement to Just the News. “The space excludes no one. It is based on shared lived experience not identity. The same way our employee resource groups for veterans, parents, and people with a disability are based on life experience and not identity. All are welcome here.”
The space is for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)” and “excludes no one”? “All are welcome here”? How do you have people with “shared experiences” get away from “whiteness” if they’re not divided by race?
Sure, just like “we’re all in this together,” too.
Somebody should tell Multnomah County it’s separate but equal arrangements went the way of Brown v. Board of Education a few generations back. Or so we thought.
We thought antifa just ran the streets. It looks like they run the government, too.
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