Washington State was NOT Created as a White-Only State
Don’t package us with Oregon history
Twitter can be a crazy place, and sometimes people say things they don’t really mean. Let’s hope that’s the case here. On August 19, Seattle author Naveed Jamali claimed that:
“Washington and Oregon where [sic] not founded as slave states, they were created to be white only. As a more diverse non-white population (such as myself comes west) it might explain the dramatic rise in hate crimes.”
No Historical Proof
While hate crimes have undoubtedly been on the rise — exponentially so in recent years — unlike Oregon’s state charter, Washington State never sought to exclude anyone of any race.
Centralia, WA was founded by a combined Negro and white family in 1875, by the son of a black slave, a man named George Washington.
He had been fostered out to a white family. When Washington finally built this town, out of nothing but faith in a railroad stop and the support of local white farmers, Washington was still not even a state — it was a territory and would not become a state until 1889, 14 years later.
Bellingham and Seattle were havens for black musical artists like Ray Charles, BB King, and Muddy Waters, who in turn attracted other blues and jazz artists to the Pacific Northwest after World War II and the Korean War.
Long History of Hatred and War— But Often White on White
People come here to the Pacific Northwest and they see Swedes, Norwegians, Germans and Danes. All blond and blue-eyed. But what they don’t realize is that Swedes, Norwegians, Germans and Danes hated … HATED each other.
As a child growing up in a multi-cultural Nordic community, I was often exposed to this, but didn’t really understand it. And yet, who can? The division goes back to the 14th century, when Norway was seceded to Denmark, but then later split off, and I think got arrange-married to Sweden but then ran, and honestly I don’t even know if I’ve got that right. Let’s just call it … lots of subterranean Euro-anger.
As a child, I picked strawberries for a Norwegian. As a young teenager in the 1960’s, I worked in a hardware store, and assembled plumbing parts for Swedes and Danes. As a young female, I was ignored while these huge, blond tough guys would have their scary, anxiety-fueled arguments out right in front of me. They clearly didn’t like each other, but none of their arguments made much sense to me at the time.
When I was even younger, growing up on a farm in western Washington, my best friend lived 2 miles away, but I would ride my bike over to her house to play and maybe have a sleepover on weekends. (Yes, my parents thought nothing of letting me cruise around the countryside for hours on a bike with no speeds and no brakes.)
My friend’s family owned a large chicken farm, but also had a dairy cow or two. Saturday morning breakfast was pancakes, but instead of syrup, there was warm, fresh-from-the-cow milk to pour over the pancakes. Everyone spoke German at the breakfast table. Patti’s older brothers would then split to do chores or go to their jobs, and we would go to the barn to jump off the hay loft, tease the bull in the pasture, and otherwise endanger our lives.
But one thing I remember clearly, as unpleasant as it was then and seems now, is that townies disparaged the local farmer kids who spoke German. World War II ended in 1945, but two decades afterwards, in 1965, men who had been young soldiers in the war were now 40-year-old farmers with scars and bitter memories of the Germans.
Common Enemy: Native Americans
Sometimes that angry, bitter energy coalesced into a mutual hatred for Native Americans. Yes, we’ve had our dark years too.
In Washington, the Fishing Rights War was a benchmark experience for my generation. When I was 19, I took a job managing a community pool in Cathlamet, on the Columbia River. I rented a room in a lovely home with a view of the Columbia, owned by a young teacher whose fiancé, a young Indian chieftain, had just been murdered on the front deck of his home in a drive-by shooting. But in almost the same year, I dated a young buck with blond hair down to his ribs who owned a fleet of seven fishing boats in Blaine, WA, very near the Canadian border. He told me stories of the gunfights and reprisals at sea between the whites and the Native Americans. They would throw boulders in each others’ nets and taunt each other into gunfights at sea.
White fishermen of any nationality found a common enemy in Pacific Northwest tribes who were standing up for their right to access ocean and river harvests guaranteed under their original treaties. As someone who lived through those years, I can tell you that the Native American stories of violence and terrorism against them, including law enforcement abuse, are entirely under-represented in the popular historical narrative.
The point, I suppose, is that hate will find an outlet. It may be a skin color. But more frequently, it will be an economic issue.
Kindness and Wisdom Endure
Just as often as cultural frustration can become an engine for hate, it also translates into kindness and acceptance of other citizens and cultures. Respecting someone else’s language and culture does not dilute our own.
When I was working as a community pool manager in Cathlamet, the same year that a young Native American chieftain was murdered, I was invited to the home of the town’s matriarch for lunch. I was terrified. I was still in my teens, and this woman could hire or fire me in a heartbeat. She was, without a doubt, fearsome. And she was pissed at me because I flunked her grandson from being a lifeguard.
Her first name was Elizabeth, but I don’t remember her full name. But I will never forget that in her grand, historic home she showed me how to bake a simple dough on the bottom of an electric oven. Below the oval-shaped heating element. On the absolute bottom of the oven.
It made this raised, bubbled-up pocket of dough she called ‘pita’.
Maybe I should segue a little bit here, for context. When I was taught to be a lifeguard in Chehalis, WA, my instructors imposed a ‘reality test’. We had to pass the usual Red Cross written and physical tests, but also a gotcha test. We were sequestered in our then-gender-specific dressing rooms, brought out one by one and presented with a dire drowning scenario, in which we had to react appropriately. Our reaction, for better or worse, overrode all the Red Cross scores.
When I was hired to train lifeguards in Cathlamet, I incorporated the same test. My employer’s grandson — a handsome, athletic blond blue-eyed local Biff — was the only one in his class who failed the gotcha. He ignored a half dozen solutions and chose to dive in the water to save the victim. When I explained to his grandma that his hubris would very likely get him killed someday, after a (very long) moment of thought she said, “Let’s make tea. And pita.”
As it turned out, her husband had been a ambassador and businessman in a country I had never heard of, and clearly don’t remember now. But I remember the pita.
And I remember her explaining that it was a local bread made where her husband was working. And I have to say, fresh-from-the-oven pita is awesome and nothing like grocery shelf pita.
I hope that someday, someone will remember my vodka gravlax the same way. Not just as a recipe, or a remnant of heritage, but as a moment that they associate with a memory and a connection with someone else’s culture.
We are Washingtonians. It doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is. It doesn’t matter where you came from. If you end up in Washington State, you are home.
