I was born in Oregon but only spent the first two years of my life here. When I moved back to the state as an adult, one of the first things I noticed was that most people were White like … Continue reading Jacob Vanderpool and Me
It’s one thing to desire peace on earth. It’s another, very different, thing to try to figure out how to make it happen. I was reminded again of that difficulty on one of the most humiliating days I’ve had in … Continue reading Stumbling Down the Path Toward Peace on Earth
When my family visited the nation of Cameroon last year, it was a linguistically challenging trip. Cameroon’s main colonial language was French. Out of the six of us, I was the only one who’d ever studied French—and that was thirty … Continue reading The Sound of Many Languages
An excerpt from The Place We Make: Breaking the Legacy of Legalized Hate We don’t know what we don’t allow ourselves to know. But when I began to know—after I’d picked my jaw up off the floor enough times to wonder … Continue reading Imagining My Way In
On December 23, 1921, the mayor of Portland, Oregon, announced that he was forming a vigilante group to assist the Portland Police. One hundred civilians would be armed—with guns, badges, the power to make arrests, and the cloak of anonymity—and … Continue reading Guns in the Hood: A Brief History of Klan Violence in Oregon
The first time I read Richard Wright’s 1937 essay, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch,” it took my breath away. I stumbled across it while flipping through a fat volume I’d checked out of the library, The … Continue reading What I Never Knew: Reading Richard Wright
This morning, my son’s best friend—I’ll call him Danny—got dropped off at our house before school. Normally, Danny rides the school bus that picks him up near his own house. But this week, his parents are driving him over here … Continue reading Un-Othering the Otherers
Three-Fifths 