Members of “We Live Here Too,” a new local diversity awareness outreach effort, will be out and about on the streets of Winslow from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 12 looking to engage visitors and citizens and raise the profile of Bainbridge Island’s non-white population.
“Basically, the premise is that only 7 percent of our population is brown,” said group co-founder Erin Phillips. “We want race to be part of the conversation in the city.”
Phillips, who recently founded “We Live Here Too” with her husband, has lived on Bainbridge for about a year, she said. Although the program is still in its infancy, already support and engagement online has been encouraging.
“Basically the goal is to create an inclusive environment in the city where diversity is celebrated and also people feel respected,” she said.
The impetus for the first outing of “We Live Here Too” came during a recent retreat of a Multi-cultural Advisory Council, which advises the school district on issues of race, and of which Phillips is a member, during which she heard first-hand accounts of recent racist behavior and race-based harassment on Bainbridge.
“Some people are part of it because their children have experienced race-based treatment that’s been hurtful and difficult,” she said. “It’s kind of hard to believe in such a progressive community as Bainbridge, but [one woman], her kids kind of look Afro-Cuban … and her children were asked if they’re going to be deported; [someone] spray-painted their neighborhood with [a racial slur].
“Things happen to kids and things happen to people of color here that I think the white majority just wouldn’t be possibly aware of, especially the older population, because they kind of run in their own circles.”
According to official estimates from July 2017, via www.census.org, Bainbridge Island’s “White alone” population is 87 percent.
Also, about 4 percent are “Two or More Races,” and 4 percent are some percentage “Hispanic or Latino.”
Just 1 percent is “Black or African American alone,” .3 percent is “American Indian and Alaska Native alone,” 3.2 percent is “Asian alone,” and .1 percent is “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone.”
On Saturday, about six members of “We Live Here Too” will be “walking around downtown Winslow so people can ask us questions,” Phillips said. “We will let people come to us, no pushing.
“To promote real change, I feel like we know relationships have to be made first, so we’re trying to keep it as loving as possible.”
Regardless, it’s a conversation, Phillips said, that can be difficult to start.
“It’s an uncomfortable conversation for some people, especially I think our kind of white and European population,” she said. “There’s a level of kind of fragility and, I think, defensiveness that goes up when you talk about two different groups, even though it’s more universal than that.
“I’ve had people tell me that race isn’t an issue, that it’s not even a topic of conversation,” she added.
Ultimately, Phillips said, the goal of “We Live Here Too” is get islanders to visit www.we-live-here-too.org and fill out a questionnaire so as to begin a database of residents’ race-related concerns.
“The form has a number of questions, starting with more demographical questions, income kind of questions. And then it gets down to the more difficult questions around race,” she explained. “It’s really meant for anyone to fill out, not just people of color. And my goal is to push people to the website and then get enough numbers to fill out the survey that we can have meaningful conversations with actual data to back us up.”
Visit www.we-live-here-too.org and select the “form” option at the bottom left to add comments and concerns to the conversation.
