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Martin Luther King was a man of words and action. I’m ambivalent about the official holiday celebrating his life and work. Is he worthy of the honor? Of course. But I worry that the dominant culture may have used the holiday to tame and commodify a radical legacy. King was not as radical or extreme (a matter of perspective) as some of his colleagues, but his message was a profoundly challenging one. In my years in the housing world I’ve seen a dangerous and detestable appropriation by the dominant culture of the suffering and struggle of poor people of color. Here’s what I wrote to a colleague a while back about this:

The rules for engagement on race in this town need a rewrite, although I know they’re unwritten. Absolutely race is a real factor, and racism is something that does actual damage to real people physically, socially, psychologically, and economically. But I see a sort of secondary damage being done when the real harm of racism is appropriated by enfranchised, privileged white people as a basis to protect themselves.

I mean when the white homeowner in Columbia City says, “all this new growth is hurting people of color by gentrifying the neighborhood. And our city is segregated!”

A nonsensical grab bag argument to protect their own asset, oddly, at the expense of the realities of racism. It’s as if all that racism is being cashed in by the homeowners to make the argument that nothing should change. Why shouldn’t we build more housing in Columbia City? Racism? Oh. Ok. The dominant culture commits acts of racism, then uses the suffering of racism to protect itself. Nice work. And the final straw that breaks my camel’s back? When Rebecca Saldana is the one saying those things. The circle, as they’d say, is complete. Racism, then racism used by whites to protect themselves, then that protective use given an ethnic voice. Mean? Maybe. The truth. Unfortunately I think so.

So you, as a person of color, can make that distinction clear. Yes, there is racism. No, [fighting racism is] not about protecting [someone’s] million dollar home, it’s about doing what we can to undo the damage done and make sure we limit it in the future. Hard to do in a campaign context, but it’s what we should strive to do to keep us sane.

There is nothing more outrageous that seeing suffering turned into a talking point, and scarcity of an essential, like housing, twisted into the basis for an embargo. My favorite passage of King’s final speech I call, “somewhere I read.”

All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions.

Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there.

But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of press.

Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.

I can imagine an adaptation for Seattle.

All we say to Seattle is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in Oklahoma or even Alabama, or any place that was full of climate deniers and racists, maybe I could understand some of these drastic measures taken against housing production.

Maybe I could understand the redlining of the Rainier Valley and Central District, and calling it a “low opportunity area,” in the name of protecting the people who live there from “displacement”

But somewhere I read about the Growth Management Act.

Somewhere I read that we’d grow both housing and opportunity in our cities.

Somewhere I read that Seattle is a Sanctuary City.

Somewhere I read that Seattle is “a welcoming city.”

I often hear his voice when I see an angry mob of mostly white single-family homeowners railing against new housing.

I hear him saying, “Somewhere I read. Somewhere I read.” Then I remember his call to strength in the face of that mob.

And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around.

He calls us not to let the rules and regulations and taxes and fees and slurs “turn us around.” I hope we’ll heed that encouragement as we work to build more housing of all kinds, in all parts of the city, for people of all levels of income.