Oregon county creates race-specific 'grounding space' to escape 'whiteness' during pandemic

'Multnomah County is acting lawfully,' spokesperson declares.

Multnomah County, Oregon

Portland, United States - April 3: People walk their dog in Lillis Albina Park in Portland, Ore., on April 3, 2020, as people continue to practice social distancing measures under a statewide stay-at- home order to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. (Photo by Alex Milan Tracy/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

By Carrie Sheffield

Last Updated: April 24, 2020 - 4:15pm

In a daily report dedicated to news updates and guidance for county employees fighting the coronavirus, an Oregon county in the Portland area said it was creating a safe "grounding space" for minority staff to escape a predominant “whiteness.”

The April 5 "situation report" from the Multnomah County Office of Emergency Operations Center announced that 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."

To read a portion of the Emergency Operations Center bulletin, click the pdf below.

Multnomah County, Oregon coronavirus manual.pdf

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.”

“If what has been reported in Portland is true, that people are being identified and classified based on racial or ethnic characteristics, it continues a disturbing trend that we‘ve seen for the past several years, where public and private institutions are seemingly self-segregating in a time when we just had the first African-American president for eight years,” Christie said in an interview.

Christie, an attorney, BBC's North American Political Analyst, author of “Black in the White House: Life Inside George W. Bush's West Wing,” and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, said actions like Multnomah County’s set back racial progress in America.

“If Brown v. Board of Education was truly a landmark Supreme Court case that overturned the notion of separate but equal, and [ruled] that we are all equal, we’re all Americans, we’re all afforded the same privileges and protections under the Constitution, it fits a disturbing pattern of late that people are ignoring the historical progress [achieved]” Christie said,"and instead are seeking to resegregate, but in this notion, it’s people of color who are seeking to do this, which is unconscionable."

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Poster Comment:

Discrimination is ok now if "they" do it.