Re: Tonya Graham, Ashland City Council
By: Kokayi Nosakhere
Tags: Southern Oregon, Local Politics, White Women, Racism, White Supremacy

Sigh. One more time. I tell myself, I can do this one more time.

In response to my 11/11/2020 newsletter: A Pocket Full of Solutions, I received the following email from a locally elected political official.

Kokayi,

I’m sorry you have to deal with this given all you are already managing given your justice work. Racial justice work will continue in Ashland with the new council and I’d like to talk with you at some point before the new year about what that might look like.

Take care,

Tonya Graham

Ashland City Councilor

Context is everything. So, please, let me put the previous words into proper perspective.

Here in Southern Oregon, I developed a political relationship with Ashland City Councilperson, Tonya Graham, spanning three years. We have one issue between us: police misconduct.

I first became imitated alarmed at the behavior of the Ashland Police Department when the national news picked up a story of a Black teenager being unlawfully arrested in November 2018. Performative measures were quickly executed in order to minimize public outrage. Police Chief Tighe O’Meara apologized and made a personal visit to the young man and his family. The public was denied access to the personnel files of the three attending officers and closure to the incident has occurred.

Meanwhile, in the Spring of 2019, O’Meara wrote a controversial ordinance, using language crafted up North, in Beaverton. He submitted it and Tonya Graham supported it from the beginning.

By summer of 2019, the City Council was in a fierce battle with its residence over a Stop and ID ordinance , as the local activist community named it. I, myself, was the second of over 50 persons to make public testimony, insinuating the racist nature of the proposed ordinance. I have a vested interest in the issue of police misconduct.

This is the work before me. I am exhausted, though. It is called racial battle fatigue. So, I must tell myself to breathe and choose, one more time, push through and find the space within me to be gracious and kind with my words and ideas.

From:royalstar907@gmail.com

Re: Tonya Graham, Ashland City Council

Peace. Thank you for sending this email. I will the following words find you in space where your personality can accept them.

I find that I suffer emotionally and psychologically whenever I deviate from my cultural standards. Proper education always corrects errors. I say that to myself nowadays to remember the purpose this life is eternal growth. Otherwise, I may find myself wasting time, searching for that which does not exist.

Thank you for your step towards growth when you responded so graciously to my celebration of Police Chief Tighe O’Meara’s growth after the SOBLACC/BASE Police Forum on October 21, 2020. The personal testimonies of two Black men, who live in the Rogue Valley, expressing a rational fear of Ashland police officers finally pierced the intellectual shell the invited law enforcement officers maintain in order to perform their jobs.

One Black man publicly stated he was stopped nine times in six months by Ashland Police officers while driving his vehicle within the city limits.

There is no legal evidence or police record of those stops being linked to racism, other than the psychological and emotional damage experienced by Black bodies from them.

That is what is takes. For those in white bodies, whether aligned philosophically to the Left or to the Right politically or spiritually, to accept bringing race into the room, it takes a personal of color sincerely bleeding out emotionally for race to be something the white body can feel. Race is thought of in the white mind; it is not felt in the white body. Race is felt through the Black or Brown bodies the white body comes in contact with. The white body itself, refuses to experience itself in racial terms, as a white body, and enters the white mind to manage the discomfort of BIPoC viewing them in white bodies.

To be most effective, when talking about race, the Black, Indigenous, Persons of Color (BIPoC) has to soothe the white bodied persons, continuously, by being deferential. They must act as if race “affects” the white mind in a manner the BIPoC can easily dismiss.

“You are safe,” the BIPoC must radiate. “We are going to have the following discussion, using the frames of white supremacy, about the American racial caste system. We will not come to any ultimate conclusions which make a demand anything really change. The goal is not going to make you feel bad about being white. You are safe. Breathe.”

The race talk has to feel like a conversation. The BIPoC has to entertain the lie of white racial innocence. The BIPoC must imagine how it is a mystery and wonder through white bodied eyes that racism is happening. The white person speaking before the BIPoC know no white person in their lives who ever acts racist.

A story about racism has to be presented as off screen violence, like during an Oregon Shakespeare play, yet carry an emotional punch. The individual white persons enjoys acknowledging racial boundaries being rigid, but does not enjoy the benefits of white supremacy, or the negative social position that it puts the white bodied persons in at all times.

In your email, Ms. Graham, you are being professional. You causally ask me to once again emotionally bleed out, for the sake of a conversation on how the Council can support anti-racism efforts.

That’s a big ask from you right now. This is an amazingly audacious ask right now. It is an ask that is beyond the normal ask of the white bodied who request a racial discussion.

You are asking me, specifically, to not view you as an open oppressor, and have a conversation with you no differently than I would inside a university classroom.

You are asking for this interview as if you have not actively upheld white supremacy. I wish for me to speak to you as a human being.

At this time, I choose to reduce the amount of racial battle fatigue I am experiencing and I must decline, for my own mental health. You have no idea how much emotional labor it took to find the appropriate words to compose this email and not overtly try to harm your ego.

Thank you reading these few words. Thank you for choosing to accept my no.