From Knee to Shining Sea

Ah, the beautiful coast of Oregon, USA!
Sparkling waves of one of the seas to shining seas.

Purple mountains majestically falling over each other, tumbling to the sand, trying to be the first and last to be shrouded in lingering mist.

The nesting bald eagles have been around more and more.

key-YAW!

The famous American melting pot of all the races, ethnicities, and ....wait.

Humanwise, the stunning Oregon Coast actually has a rather monocultured landscape: for the west coast, there is a surprisingly homogeneous collection of mostly white people.

This is not an accident. White people came here during a period of time in U.S. history when most other people were wrestling with matters of race, back east. The easy fix to racial tension, as most white deciders coming northwest saw it, was to prevent racial diversity in the first place.

The Ku Klux Klan got pretty big in these parts, which surprises most people who think the KKK is mainly a Southern thing The klan and their fans' dreams of a white utopia led to something called "sunset towns," which outlawed walking around outside at night, while black. I live in a town that was once a sunset town.

One man's utopia can easily be another man's dystopia. Especially if the first guy is in the KKK.

But that's the past, right? Now is not then, we are not them. Now Oregon is a hippie wonderland, plus Obama, so racism must be just like Nazis, a thing we only see in scratchy black and white footage.

Except.

Woops.

And.

Because.

Which reminds me of.

It's almost like we are doomed to repeat some sort of history. How could that have been avoided? Didn't someone once say something about that? Oh well, history is old, right?

Who cares?

Exactly.

Who cares?

She cares. And her concern is taking a form that really could teach and create possibilities for something new for the future, which requires being unflinching and unrelenting when describing what is happening around us now, and in our recent past.

Here's what LaNicia Williams did (and this is just lately!)

She came to a place where she gets to live with the wearying daily reality of standing out, and kindly leads its most innocent little residents through their ignorance.

She's looking out for local kids, particularly kids of color.

In short, she teaches the wider community how to be inclusive, not only with her, but for everyone living here who has a different "label." She knows good intentions do not mean that there aren't still some who tragically don't appreciate what it's like to be not-white, young, living in Nehalem, OR and see this sprayed at a place that's supposed to be a safe haven for our youth in our community.  

I am so grateful to her for speaking out and not letting up. Thanks to that, there is now a big $1000 reward and the community of Nehalem is talking about something we obviously need to discuss: race, diversity and inclusion in the USA.

Because,if we are serious about being the best mixed collection of people whose great great grandparents probably came from other places, we're going to have to be able discuss things sometimes. Not just discuss, but listen.

The art of listening to each other could go a long way toward avoiding situation where people who have, recently, been trotted out to perform patriotic gestures, feel no other recourse but to refuse.

It's also what will help the average U.S. citizen not have to think about what it's like to be all kinds of things they aren't. Each of us doesn't have to consider all the things if we are listening to people who walk through this life and world differently than we do.

When black people tell white people that racism, the systemic oppression of a race of people, is a real and unacceptable problem, it's possible for white people to believe them before literal writing on walls.

If all of this only made you want to read more, stay tuned, because LaNicia isn't only single-handedly leading this county's most important overdue conversation. She also participated in the little project that never quits, The Food of the Future, by teaching local kids to make soul food.

For hours, she directed, explained,and invited participation; a paragon of ability, humor, and wisdom. A video presentation of her work that evening is in the works .

As she guides our neighbors through these times of racial revelation, I imagine her employing the skills I saw at work in my kitchen when she was here. I know she is treating her students' weak moments as opportunities to know and teach them better and also learn from them.


LaNicia is currently working with other like minds at Oregon Coast Love Coalition. Check it out and read more, in LaNicia's words, here.

Quite a legacy, LaNicia! And that fried chicken haunted my dreams for weeks afterward.

photo credit:Broken Banjo Photography

Written by Rebekah Laszlo and LaNicia Williams