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Co-written by Sheleswau Crier

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COVID-19 highlights what was already true — while we all may be weathering the same storm, we’re definitely not all in the same boat.

Black people — across urban and rural communities — are more likely to be laid off or confined to dangerous jobs that cannot be done from home, denied proper protective equipment and faced with barriers to adequate treatment and healthcare. We straight up die from COVID-19 at much higher rates and it’s got nothing to do with genes.

Black businesses are more likely to be denied business assistance, including loans and access to the Paycheck Protection Program. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that nationwide, more than twice as many Black-owned businesses have closed since COVID-19 hit than white-owned businesses.

This health and economic discrimination is nothing new. And in Oregon, we’ve got our own history that makes this anti-Blackness even more pointed.

Time and again, we have witnessed this kind of discrimination against Black people by various government programs and policies. But Black Oregonians weren’t going to sit by and watch it get worse. We organized. We collected our data. We made the case. We won.

In July, the Oregon Legislature allocated $62 million of our State’s $1.4 billion in federal Coronavirus Relief Funds to focus on the Black people, Black families, Black businesses and Black-led nonprofits suffering from economic impacts. (If you’re doing the math, that’s about 4% of the overall fund in a state where Black folks are about 4% of those in poverty.)

The Oregon Cares Fund for Black Relief and Resiliency is just that: a fund to provide targeted relief to a segment of our community that would be less resilient otherwise. It is limited in time and scope and solely respondent to the COVID-19 pandemic. In other words, it’s the least our State could do to ensure things don’t get even worse for Black people through this historic crisis.

Unfortunately, some people do not like Black folks winning or getting what they need. In fact, some people are so against it, they literally dedicate tons of money and years of their lives fighting against it.

A small group of anti-equity activists led by Edward Blum and the Center for Individual Rights, are suing to stop the program. Blum has made a career of attacking race-conscious policies, including Affirmative Action and the Voting Rights Act — programs that get at the heart of fixing systemic racism.

These type of folks shame and blame the very victims of systemic discrimination. They bring lawsuits, try to pit people of color against each other and point fingers to distract us from their failures to ensure every American — including Black Americans — have the care, security and support we need.

Now I don’t have to tell you all that doing good for one group of people does not automatically do harm to everyone else. Anyone who tries to use this fund or efforts like it to divide us as Americans, or scapegoat Black people struggling to make ends meet, endangers us all. It threatens everything that our ancestors and those that joined us fought for in our past.

The good news is that most Americans see through these attempts to divide us. They know coming together across race, religion and region doesn’t mean we can’t right the wrongs of those left behind because of the color of our skin.

In fact, it means just the opposite.

Jesse Beason

Writing since February 2022 · 1 story contributed