Publication Date: Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Our Town: Staying in the conversation
Our Town: Staying in the conversation
(March 30, 2005) by Don Kazak
Sometimes we think we understand what another person is saying but we often don't -- not completely.
I wrote a column ("Top cop under fire," Feb. 23) about the stormy meeting that the Human Relations Commission held Feb. 10 regarding alleged racial profiling by Palo Alto police.
This is a sensitive issue. City Manager Frank Benest has proposed that the commission perform an oversight function for the police, an idea with both merit and concerns.
Many people who spoke Feb. 10 were upset with the police, including Liz Wills, who is African American. I wrote that her "voice rose with anger" while addressing Police Chief Lynne Johnson and the commission.
Wills called after the column was published and said I misunderstood her. Let's talk, I replied.
She told me about her background and her feelings about the issue, which provided an important context to understand her intensity on Feb. 10.
Wills grew up in an Air Force family, living on bases around the world. Military bases are very mixed racially.
"Whatever stuff (racial attitudes) you carry, you either put it somewhere in a box or you get over it," she said. Today, most of her closest friends are white.
She expressed frustration Feb. 10 at the six times she had been stopped by police when she first moved to Palo Alto, in 1999.
The commission also talked about race in 2001. "I was reluctant to get involved in the conversation again," she said.
At that time, she was working for the Palo Alto Unified School District in the Tinsley desegregation program. She also headed up the Study Circles for Racial Understanding program sponsored by the YWCA. (See the Weekly's cover story Sept. 27, 2000.)
On press coverage of race issues in general, she said, "I was struck that someone (a person of color) would say something and then you would see it in print and it would not be in the same tone -- kind of like your misinterpreting my passion and pain for anger."
After explaining the context, she added, "So what you saw was pain around a couple of things. One is that we are still having this stupid conversation, and we're not doing any better with it than we were five years ago."
I asked her what could have made my column more helpful.
She noted she had looked at Benest and Johnson at the Feb 10 meeting and said, "I want to work with you, and I used the word partner intentionally. I said I don't want to beat you up and I want to be your partner in this because I know we can fix it together ....
"That would have been huge if it had gotten into the paper."
Wills said she was reluctant to reenter the conversation because of past frustrations: "For me, the conversation is important because I realize so often that it is just misunderstanding, because we're so afraid around race."
The conversation about race is difficult, but Wills is in it. "I have a responsibility because I want my nieces and nephews and your children and my children to inherit better than we are experiencing right now."
Part of the difficulty of the current discussion of race and police, she thinks, is due to "a cadre of voices that have decided that they need to be the voice of the people -- who have gotten really ugly, quite frankly; who are attacking people, unfairly or not, but in a way that makes the conversation almost unbearable to have."
Most of those persistent critics are white and obviously don't speak for Liz Wills.
Wills also thinks racial profiling by police isn't the whole story: "I think the people in Palo Alto racially profile," she said, when report something to police.
The conversation "is a really hard thing, and I just want us to do a better job of talking about it," she said. "We're not in such different places, we just think we are."
Liz Wills is someone who should stay in the conversation.
Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be emailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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