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BY ELIZABETH MANNING
emanning@wweek.com
Okianer (o-kee-mer) Christian Dark says her 9-year-old son, Harrison, often wishes she would have more kids. He wants a playmate, but more important, Harrison thinks another kid would deflect some of his parents' laser-like focus. It's a great theory, but it probably wouldn't work. That's because Dark is one of those annoying supermoms. She's perhaps best known around town as the wife of Lawrence Dark, president of the Urban League of Portland, but she is also an accomplished professional who seems able to juggle both career and family while finding time for herself and her community. A lawyer, Dark now works in Portland as an assistant United States attorney, prosecuting civil-rights cases such as violations of the federal Fair Housing Act. Before moving to Portland three years ago, Dark taught law at the University of Richmond in Virginia, where she was the first African-American woman to earn tenure. She also did a brief stint in 1994 as a visiting professor at Willamette University. Earlier this month, she squeezed in an interview with WW reporter Elizabeth Manning about Saturday School at the Urban League (an extracurricular program for African-American kids) and what it was like moving to Portland--one of the nation's whitest big cities. Willamette Week: You moved here from the East Coast. How does Portland's African-American community compare to those in other cities? Okianer Christian Dark: I've been here a little over three years and I still don't have an answer to that question. I know that saying "it's different" is not going to explain it, but it's a different feel. Basically, I have found many supporters to commune with and that's good. But I still don't quite understand how the history of African Americans in this area has shaped the community. It's a very different history from the South. Do you mean it's a more recent history? It's recent, plus the few numbers [of African Americans] and the way the numbers were deliberately maintained to be low at the turn of the century. Oregon has a unique history with respect to treatment of minorities, a history of laws and constitutional provisions to keep minorities out, to keep their numbers limited. I still don't quite understand how that has shaped the community. A few years ago, Willamette Week wrote a story noting that Portland was the whitest big city in America ("Welcome to Honkytown U.S.A.," WW, June 8, 1994). In that article, some African-American professionals said they felt like an oddity living here. Do you feel like that? The black community here is certainly smaller than what I'm accustomed to, coming from Richmond, Va., and the D.C. area. It makes you visible within the white community. An oddity? Yeah, probably. I am surprised by the way people interact with me. It's not always clear to me how many African Americans they've interacted with, period. That visibility is positive and, in some ways, negative. How so? Professionally, it means you get called more often to become involved in a range of activities. The downside of that is that you don't get to be just you quite as much. People respond to the African-American part of you, like it's something separate from who you are. You get that piece forced out more often than you want it to be. I just find there are experiences I've had here that I haven't had in other places. Can you give me some examples? Oh yeah! Do I want to? [laughs] Sometimes when I provide these examples they look trivial, but they're not if you talk about trying to get through your day without having a racial moment. When I go to the grocery store, I want to buy groceries and that's it. I don't want someone to explain to me how to complete the check that just came out of my purse when she doesn't explain it to the white woman in front of me or to the white woman behind. Or going up to the counter, I want to buy stockings, and since I got there first I want to be waited on, [but] a white woman approaches and she gets helped before me, not all the time but enough for me to notice. Or when I ask a question, "Could you direct me to X?" and I have to repeat it again because they're concentrating so much on this [points to her skin], they don't hear what I'm saying. Or someone wanting to rub my child's head. My child is not an animal, not a dog, not a pet, just because you have never touched this texture of hair. Now I don't want to have a racial moment, but iseems like it happens more often here than I want it to happen. In that way, it's different. In that same article, some people talked about an invisible barrier between insiders and outsiders in this city's African-American community. Have you felt that? I have mixed views on that, because I go to Saturday School, which is made up of parents--some of whom came from other places and others who have grown up here. The fact that someone grew up in Portland vs. someone who didn't doesn't seem to matter. I also helped start a reading group called Sisters of the Yam. There were a number of women in that group who were from Portland, and they didn't hold it against me that I wasn't. Why did you call the group Sisters of the Yam? We took that title from bell hooks' book Sisters of the Yam. Tell me about Saturday School at the Urban League. How does it work? Saturday School started last October. We sat down and developed themes, and what we wanted was to take math, science, English, speaking and history and integrate each of those into a lesson. If we wanted to talk about leadership, then in a three-hour period the kids would be writing about leadership, they would be reading about it, and they would be learning about leaders in math and science. What has been the response? The kids love it. My son didn't like the idea of going to school on Saturday morning initially, but after the first couple of Saturdays he started asking to go. We have about 16 children now, ranging in age from 7 to 11. I think all but four of them are boys. All of them are African Americans, and for any of them to participate in the program, the parents have to agree to participate in the planning and teaching. It's parent-driven. You're a member of Mount Olivet Baptist Church, yet you send your son to Holy Redeemer, a Catholic school. Why is that? We decided to put Harrison in Holy Redeemer because we were looking for an academic program that we felt would work with him. We were really impressed with Holy Redeemer. For my child, I want a solid educational program. I want to know that when he takes these national tests, he will have a good chance at being successful. And I did like the idea that there would be some spiritual component to his day-to-day activities, that he would have to think about God at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. My faith and belief in God is central to my family. I don't move without God, and I know that. Was Harrison always in private school? He was in public school the first year we came. He was at Metropolitan Learning Center. What was your experience with that school? Well, it just wasn't mutually working out from our point of view. So we moved him from that setting. [Back East] he had been in school with large populations of African-American children and teachers. I still don't know to what extent that impacted him when we moved to a setting where he was the only black child in the classroom. There were no African-American teachers except for someone who taught at the high school at MLC. You felt that wasn't the best experience? Well, I felt like it had to be a factor. He needed other children in his classroom who looked like him. Sometimes I use this flower metaphor to explain: Assume you have this wonderful bouquet of daisies in this beautiful vase. I mean it's wonderful, but then one day, a red rose comes along. You know what happens, everyone's eye goes to that red rose. And the red rose may not have all the institutional support that it should within that vase. Maybe a red rose needs some different kind of water, lighting, or other things. Institutions tend to add the roses without making any changes. So the rose wilts or maybe it decides to leave. We think that's the rose's problem--it's just not fitting in. What I'm looking for are environments where they recognize that when we add the rose, we have to change something about the way we support flowers in this institution. The daisies may be a little uncomfortable until they understand the rose's way. But of course, in the end, we all benefit. That's one of the things that wasery attractive about Holy Redeemer. It has a nice concentration of African Americans and other children of color in the student body. In his classroom of about 22 kids, Harrison is by far not the only black child. So when he does something, everyone's eye does not necessarily go to him because he's a black person. Do you ever feel guilty about pulling away from the public school system? No. I do think education has to be more of a priority in Portland--at least as important as our property taxes. And my husband and I do support the public schools with our tax dollars and with our time--in a heartbeat. The decision about our child and what school he should be in is a decision about what's right for him. Besides the funding crisis in education, what are some of Portland's other problems? I know that unemployment is supposed to be low around the state, but I wonder about people being able to have all the opportunities to make a living wage--a wage where you can pay rent or buy a house, where you can eat, take care of your utilities and have some fun. That kind of wage--where you don't have to work three jobs in order to make some basic things happen. How well do you think WW covers Portland's minority communities? Some people have complained that WW only covers violence within the African-American community. I think part of the criticism is the recognition that you must tell your own story about what's going on in your community: We cannot depend on majority-owned papers to tell the whole picture. It might be useful for newspapers like The Oregonian and Willamette Week to talk to the people at The Skanner and The Portland Observer and The Asian Reporter, to have an honest conversation with them, newspaper people to newspaper people, about the ways in which they do their coverage. Or just read those newspapers on a regular basis. What color is your reading list? Maybe a little history might not be a bad idea, too. In general, there's a lack of understanding of perspective and context. So what's your favorite thing about living in Portland so far? Oh, now that's a tough question. When the sun shines, it's pretty. I'll give it that. I like the fact that there are a lot of parks and I like the fact that there are a lot of activities directed at children. It's also a place where there is positive support for community activism. People here, in general, do speak--and they will act. |
