I question the decision in recent articles to center the experience of the two recently-resigned school board members. The real story was that a school administrator had written a racist email to the City Council and was being considered for promotion. It’s her right to criticize city government, but her singling out two Black women for their assessments of the city manager as a white supremacist raises concerns.

The email is part of a long history of telling Black women to sit down and shut up, especially when they call attention to racism. Furthermore, her tone-policing alone was not why Rodriguez read her letter aloud. If her sole complaint had been the charter members’ lack of diplomacy, I think we would never have heard of it. It was her statement that if these charter members had not been women of color, they would have been “done, gone, and trashed.” Her latter statement gives context to the former.

It is willfully blind to suggest that hers was simply a political statement. The implicit and explicit racism in her letter raises legitimate concerns for members of the school board. This is not someone who is internalizing the superintendent’s own data about inequities faced by students of color.

The newspaper has been obtuse in suggesting that injustice has been done to the school administrator or to the resigned members of the school board. There is no evidence that white people are being persecuted and silenced, and a look around this newspaper’s newsroom should be evidence enough.

Jessica MilNeil
Portland