Editor’s Note: This article is based on BWNA Vice President Tim Gillespie’s “Statement Condemning Discrimination” and collectively reviewed and edited by the BWNA board.
The Beaumont-Wilshire Neighborhood Association (BWNA) board believes that neighborhoods are strongest when they celebrate the varied talents, skills, experiences, viewpoints, and backgrounds that different neighbors bring to our work together. Our neighborhood is enriched by its diversity when we roll up our sleeves to improve our parks and streets, support each other through challenging times like this pandemic crisis, check on neighbors who need our assistance, resolve problems, back local businesses, and join in all the collaborations that dynamic urban neighborhoods invite. Beaumont Middle School supports this value with its stated goal of preparing its multicultural student body (with 42% enrollment of students of color) “to contribute as citizens of a diverse, multicultural, and international community.”
Our commitment echoes the centuries-old history of our area situated near traditional gathering sites for Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and other Chinookian native tribes. As those different communities met to trade and work together peacefully here, so can we.
We also recognize the troubling exclusionary history of our state, city, and neighborhood. The original 1859 Oregon constitution banned Black people from residing in our state. Even after that shameful ban stopped being enforced (though, shockingly, it was not officially removed from the Oregon constitution until 2001), Blacks and other Oregonians of color faced significant racist obstacles. Overt prejudice was legal until 1953, when Oregon passed its first civil rights bill forbidding discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin in hotels, restaurants, swimming pools, theaters, and other public spaces, thanks to decades of lobbying from the Portland Urban League and NAACP branch and their allies.
More pernicious from the point of view of our neighborhood, redlining and legal exclusionary policies were the norm after World War I in our rapidly expanding city. In 1919, for example, the Realty Board of Portland approved a Code of Ethics forbidding realtors and bankers from selling or giving loans to people of color for properties located in white neighborhoods. This was the Realty Board’s official policy for the next 33 years, an era of explosive population growth, especially here east of the Willamette. It wasn’t until 1948 that the U.S. Supreme Court declared such “racial covenants” unconstitutional, and it wasn’t until the national Fair Housing Act of 1968 that all discrimination in housing based on race was officially prohibited.
This was not a problem remote from our neighborhood. Many developments here had explicitly race-restrictive clauses included in their deeds. A 1924 Dolph Park contract, for example, states, “For a period of twenty-five years from the date of this dedication, the premises shall be used exclusively for residence purposes and shall be occupied by the white race and no member of any race other than the white race shall own or occupy any portion of Dolph Park.” A Laurelhurst restriction added Chinese and Japanese citizens to its exclusions. By such institutional racism, people of color were denied measureless opportunities for property ownership, the main path to wealth creation, and neighborhoods like ours lost the benefits of diversity.
This affirmation against racism seems particularly important at this moment in our history. The recent deaths of George Floyd, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and too many more African Americans (including Tony Stevenson, Kendra James, Aaron Campbell, and others here in Portland in past years) have spotlighted the worst abuses of violent oppression inflicted disproportionately upon the Black community and have caused a global outcry for justice, for police reform, and for an end to systemic racial inequity. Incidents of white supremacy, hatred, and racial violence are antithetical to civic discourse and abhorrent to our neighborhood. In the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement, the BWNA board wants to reaffirm its commitment to opportunity and justice for all—starting with Beaumont-Wilshire.
Our call is to do a better job of living up to our highest ideals. Our neighbors and our neighborhood deserve no less.
Our Pledge
The Beaumont-Wilshire Neighborhood Association (BWNA) is committed to diversity and equity in all our activities. We welcome and celebrate everyone in our neighborhood and, as per our longtime by-laws, condemn any form of discrimination, exclusion, or expression of hatred based on race, ethnicity, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, legal citizenship, national origin, income, political affiliation, or any other basis of personal identity people might use to divide us. Accordingly, we pledge to:
- listen and learn and assess our own practices and policies in regard to equity and inclusion;
- seek advice in particular on how to combat racism in our neighborhood and our city, and welcome feedback that makes us better allies to our neighbors of color; and
- develop ways we can confront discrimination and support cooperation among Beaumont-Wilshire neighbors.