2025

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Mary Faith Bell

Phone: 503-842-3403

Email: maryfaith.bell@tillamookcounty.gov

SAY NO TO RACISM

(TILLAMOOK, OR. February, 2025) I had lunch with a friend and her daughter on President’s Day. My friend is a U.S. citizen and a Mexican American. She told me about a recent racist incident she experienced in Tillamook where she and her husband and their daughter were leaving a local business, and a group of teenagers in the parking lot yelled “F*****g Mexicans!”

Just imagine for a minute what it felt like for that dad, a husband and father, to be bullied by teenagers in public and not be able to defend himself and his family. Imagine what it felt like for the mom to role model making herself small before racist bullies, to show her daughter that these white teenagers have all the power.

My friend told me that she urged her husband, to ‘Just ignore them,’ knowing that she was asking him to go against his instincts and let ignorant teenagers badmouth his wife and child in public in their own hometown.

It is not only teenagers who are acting out racist attitudes. Last week in our own building a local Hispanic couple were subject to racist comments about “illegals”. Reportedly the gist of the comments was the false belief that illegal residents receive more public services than do legal residents.

Incidences of overt racism are on the rise because people feel empowered to be inappropriate and hateful by what they’re hearing on the news and online. The person in the courthouse might very well have heard on talk radio or a news channel that undocumented immigrants get more assistance than Americans. That is false information, but it is being spread.

Likewise, the teens who yelled at my friend and her family may have been listening to political hate rhetoric on the news saying that illegal immigrants are ruining America. That is also false information.

In this time of constant misinformation, we must remind ourselves and each other what is true. Tillamook County Hispanic families are good neighbors. They work hard, pay taxes, support local businesses, coach youth sports and belong to local churches. They are our coworkers, employers and employees. As a workforce they are essential to our economy; local businesses of all kinds including farming, construction, logging, the seafood industry, food manufacturing, hospitality, restaurants and social services could not function without them. They go to school, go to college, volunteer, give of their time, talents and resources to help the community.

Our Hispanic neighbors deserve our civility and respect, and their children deserve our love.

All of us are in a position now to decide what we will or will not tolerate in our families, in our workplaces, in our community, and in our own hearts and minds. Please join the Tillamook County Commissioners in saying no to racism, no to hate, and standing up for our Hispanic neighbors.

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Looking at the Content of My Character

(published 9/27/24 in the Tillamook County Pioneer)

By Neal Lemery

Almost seventy years ago, I remember watching soldiers on our grainy black and white television, escorting kids my age into a school. I asked my mom why the soldiers were doing that, and her answer left me confused, unsettled.

“It’s because of their race, the color of their skin, and that the school and the white community doesn’t want them to go to that school,” she said. “But it’s the law. They have a right to go to that school, and the soldiers are enforcing the law.”

My mom’s answer upset me, scaring me that soldiers in our country would have to make sure kids like me could go to school, and that would happen with soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets walking with school kids the same age as me. I was a naïve kid and it was the first time I remember experiencing racism.

I’m still scared and unsettled by that scenario, those responses, and all the racist conduct and talk in our country. It’s all around me. Still.

And the news. There are still the videos of racism and violence, and people living as if the color of someone’s skin really mattered. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s wisdom that the color of one’s skin doesn’t matter, but the content of their character does, still reverberates in me, still makes a lot of sense to me. Why don’t we, as a country, grasp that seemingly elemental observation?

The other day, I talked with a man who was telling me about his accident, how he is still hurting, and that the guy that T-boned him was careless, and didn’t have insurance. I’d been in a crash like that a few years ago and I expressed my sympathy and wished him a speedy recovery. I’d struggled with the pain, and the good results I had in working on my own forgiveness and compassion.

“He was ***, you know,” he added. “One of those ***** ***, who don’t belong here,” he added. He ranted and raved some more, about immigrants and “those people” being lazy and “good for nothing.” It seemed his view of the world was neatly divided into “them” and “us”.

His face reddened and he kept flying off the handle for several minutes, leaving me still mystified about the connection between someone’s ethnicity and speculative immigration status, and a traffic crash with whiplash and a concussion. I’m doubting if the guy had actually done some fact checking and checked on someone’s citizenship status. And, I recalled another conversation I’d had with him several years ago about how proud he was of his grandparents’ emigration to this country, and how they had worked hard and succeeded, living the American dream. He would go on and on about how proud of them he was, and how hard they worked to be part of America. He didn’t see the connection, the commonality of his family and the man he was angry with, or deal with the idea that most of us are either immigrants or that our ancestors were immigrants.

I’m still wondering if I shouldn’t have been a bit more vocal, and a lot more assertive about this blatant expression of racism and bigotry. It’s not the 1950s in Arkansas now, nor the Oregon of 1859, but we still seem to stay in our racist ways, a common expression of bias, prejudice, and downright ugliness. And, I’m hearing high elected officials and candidates for national office being forthright and outspoken on their racism and bias, seemingly deaf from the outrage of much of the population.

Maybe I need to be more intolerant, and more biased against bigotry and hate.

My state, Oregon, has a long and sordid history of racism and bigotry, beginning our statehood by prohibiting Blacks and Chinese people from even living here. My town had a “sundown” law on the books until the 1980s. I still hear the “N word” in public conversations.

And, until last week, a nearby creek’s legal name contained a racial slur. I came home to see a note from another friend, a celebratory announcement of his ability to prevail with the state geographic names board. He’s a historian, and his research discovered that a creek still bore a racist reference to an early homesteader. Well, its 2024 and my friend thought some reform and rehabilitation was in order, so he petitioned the board for a name change, which was promptly granted. The old name had been on maps since the 1870s. Didn’t anyone notice? Or worse, feel uncomfortable enough to seek a name change?

A few weeks ago, a clerk bragged to me that she didn’t need to learn Spanish for her job. “They can just learn English,” she said. Then I watched her struggle to handle a simple transaction for the next customer, whose native language was Spanish. I ended up helping them, with my limited skills, but I was able to smile and make an attempt with both of them, receiving smiles and appreciative nods from both the stubborn clerk and the customer. It was a good reminder to me that I need to work on my own language skills, that I need to practice what I preach, and to keep on learning and growing in our culture, and a reminder that while others are learning English, that I and other English speakers could work on our Spanish. The issue seems to be one of developing a good character.

I’m not sure the clerk got the memo, but the exchange was a good example of the benefits of bilingual skills.

Racism seems to be still infested in our community, and our nation. I find myself often confronted with my own biases and prejudices, and need to realize that I’m a product of our culture, a lot of subtle bigotry, and that it’s never too late for some introspection and to be on the smart side of the 21^st century. I need to smarten up.

9/27/24

Cheering With My Best Friend

He would have liked yesterday. Yesterday, my state made history, ending a legal ban against letting people get married to the ones they loved, ending a time when our state constitution wouldn’t let people enjoy their right to be married, simply because of their sexual preference.

We would have one of our deep discussions in the car, listening to the radio and the reports of long lines of couples lining up at the county clerks offices across the state, getting their licenses, and getting married today. We would have talked about all of the possibilities we have in our lives, and social change, and people being happy, raising kids, and moving ahead in their lives.

Best friends in high school, we always had those serious discussions, and challenged our teachers and our classmates about what they believed, and where we needed to go as a society. We grew up during Vietnam and the March on Selma. We skipped class that day that Robert Kennedy came to our small town, and spoke in the town square about our country being a land of opportunity, of freedom, how each of us had a voice, and a duty to move our country forward.

We read Thoreau and Ginsberg and Malcolm X and listened to Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. We had deep discussions about war and poverty, racism, sexism, and how we could change our town, and our country.

We headed to college, and our separate ways, and drifted apart, as friends do after high school. Once in a while, we’d send each other an essay or a book review, offering more ideas to each other about making a difference in the world, how things needed to be changed.

Ten years after high school, he came back to town and we went out for coffee, taking up our conversations where they had left off, doing what good friends can do, the years apart really not changing our friendship, and how we challenged each other’s thinking.

He came out to me then, telling me that he knew he was gay, back in high school, but had been afraid to tell me, to tell himself, afraid to really be who he was, deep inside. He knew his dad would probably kill him if he came out to his family. He was beaten up for a lot of lesser sins, and couldn’t wait until he could run off to college, and live his own life.

He’d always struggled with love and relationships, and we lived in a time when being gay was looked at with more suspicion and hatred than it was for folks who were trying to live their lives by being black, or being against the current war our country was waging, or for the language they spoke.

He cried when he told me of coming out to his family, how his dad had disowned him, of wanting him dead, of telling him he didn’t have a son now, that his son was dead. And, how his mom had called him later, telling him that she loved him more now than ever, that she was proud of him and the man that he was becoming.

Yesterday, I listened to the radio, and all the celebrations and stories of joy and love, and the happiness people were willing to share, being proud of being gay and in love, proud of the families they were nurturing, proud that they could now be married, and publicly love their partners. We would have talked about how times have changed, so much, about how we’ve all moved ahead in our thinking, how we live our lives.

He would be proud, too, proud that he could marry his lover, and live in a state where his love and his family was respected, that he could be married, and respected for who he was, for who he had become. Knowing him, he’d have been one of the parties in the lawsuit that brought us to this point. He’d be leading the charge, speaking out, willing to take a stand, willing to publicly fight for civil rights, for bringing a bit more equality and liberty to our country.

We’d get together for coffee, to talk about his work, and his activism. We’d talk about this week being the fiftieth anniversary of Brown vs Board of Education, when racial segregation in schools was finally seen as something that we didn’t think was right in this country. We’d say that fifty years really wasn’t that long ago, that racial bigotry is still around, and we needed to keep working to change how people looked at each other, how we treated other human beings, about how we looked at opportunities for real change in our world.

He’s gone, long gone from this Earth, taken from us by AIDS, back in the 1980s, back when hatred and bigotry against gays was at its height. Yet, he’ll always be a part of me, his courage always something I can tap into, when I need to take a stand, when I need to speak my mind, and make a difference in the world.

Yesterday, I felt the people in my state take a step forward, taking on a serious discussion about our lives, about equal opportunity, and civil rights, about families and happiness, about who we were becoming, we Oregonians. We’re on uncharted ground here, pushed into this new world by some people willing to take a stand, willing to speak out and sue their state to bring about change. We’ve got a federal judge willing to look at the law as a means to achieve justice, to think about equal protection and civil rights in a way that moves us forward. We’ve got his words to think about now, to push us forward, to think about who we want to be.

Yesterday was another Brown v Board of Education day, and fifty years from now, a lot of us will think that where we were the day before, when this kind of discrimination was legal, when it was part of our state Constitution, was so archaic, so old school thinking.

Yesterday, I heard my friend again, his voice clear and strong, speaking about his commitment to be someone who was willing to work for change, someone who was willing to be comfortable with who he was, and who he wanted to be. Yesterday, I felt him close by as we Oregonians realized that our state had changed, and we had taken a step ahead in how we looked at ourselves, how we looked at families and relationships, how we looked at our laws, and how we really felt about equality and human dignity, how we felt about ourselves.

I heard his voice, and felt his energy, deep in my soul, as I drove down the freeway, listening to the radio, adding my own voice to the cheers of the newlyweds walking out of the courthouse. We cheered together, we Oregonians, cheering for freedom and liberty, cheering for each other.

Neal Lemery 5/20/2014