The Black Lens staff
The racist taunting and truck revving directed at the Utah Women’s basketball team during the NCAA tournament, with teams playing at the Spokane Arena, isn’t anything new to this region. Anyone traveling to this area should be on notice that the Northwest’s racist roots are alive and no one is safe, even our student athletes during what should have been a time of celebration.
There is no excuse in 2024 that this overt racism is occurring or being accepted in these communities. Folks living in this region cannot pretend they aren’t aware. So what are we doing about it? Not enough to prevent incidents like this, experts say. The gaslighting that has come after this event, makes some people question if this even happened – it did. If you’ve been in this region for any period of time, you are probably well aware of how tolerant white people are of blatant racism, even against our youth.
Shari Williams-Clarke, former executive director of the Carl Maxey Center and former vice president for diversity at Eastern Washington University, has been following news coverage of the Coeur d’Alene incident throughout the week.
“To throw out a racial, really negative commentary … to a group of students who are guests in our community, coming here to do their best at a basketball tournament,” Williams-Clarke said, “is just horrific.”
Still, knowing the history of racism in Coeur d’Alene, she wasn’t surprised.
“When I interviewed for the position of vice president for diversity at Eastern Washington University, I think almost eight years ago now, I was told by the students that that was a real area of concern,” she said. Knowledge of the history of the area “really left a negative impact on folks who were considering faculty and administrative positions in the region because of the racism affiliated with that particular area.”
In the 1970s, white supremacist Richard Butler built an Aryan Nations compound in North Idaho. The group, which grew to more than 100 people, held parades in downtown Coeur d’Alene and annual summits at the compound.
The racial harassment in Coeur d’Alene shows “very, very clearly that there is work still to be done around issues of understanding differences, issues of respecting people who are different from what people consider the majority population in a particular area,” Williams-Clarke said.
Williams-Clarke said it’s important to acknowledge that racial issues aren’t just a problem in Coeur d’Alene.
“Certainly, Coeur d’Alene has work to do, but I don’t think it’s isolated to just that particular area. I think it’s a national conversation that needs to happen, and it needs to happen with frequency and with intensity.”
Here in Spokane, we’ve seen a quartet of elected officials who have turned a blind eye to racist, discriminatory and bigoted conduct and results: current Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell; former Spokane police Chief Craig Meidl, former Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich and former Mayor Nadine Woodward.
County Prosecutor Larry Haskell has created a legacy of racial bias in what some legal experts say disproportionately prosecuted and sentenced Black and Native community members. He has also defended racist rhetoric from his wife Lesley Haskell, who is a self-proclaimed and proud “White Nationalist,” who openly uses racial slurs on social media, including the N-word and claims white people are the only ones under attack.
From data collected in 2019, under Spokane’s former police Chief Craig Meidl and former Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich showed that Black people in Spokane County were about six times more likely to be jailed than white people and were jailed about twice as long, with average stays of 29 days for Blacks and 15 for whites as reported in 2019. From 2014 to 2019, Black people were also about twice as likely to experience police use-of-force. These findings come from arrest data and use-of-force records released by the Spokane Police Department and 2019 census estimates.
Former Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward in 2023 stood with white Christian nationalist, religious extremist and alleged domestic terrorist Matt Shea. In 2019, Shea was removed from the Washington House GOP caucus after an investigation found that he was involved in the far-right “patriot” movement and conflicts of political violence, including armed standoffs against the federal government in three states, Idaho, Oregon and Nevada.
Everyone can do their part to end racism, Williams-Clarke said. The truth is, too many are not and are tolerating racist, hateful, extreme rhetoric in this region.
“There needs to be a great deal of training and conversation and continuous follow up on these issues. That has not happened on a regular basis. I think we’re very reactionary, we see something happen and then we respond to it and then it quickly evaporates or we forget about it.”
The Northwest and the nation need to stay the course on addressing racial issues, she said.
“We want safe communities,” Williams-Clarke said, “safe communities for all citizens.”
Claude Johnson, founder of the Black Fives Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and teach the pre-NBA history of African Americans in basketball, said a history of racism in the area is no excuse.
Johnson contrasted the treatment of the Utah players with that of independent all Black basketball teams that visited the Northwest as early as the 1930s.
Teams like the Chocolate Co-Eds, a women’s team from Chicago, and the New York Harlemites, a men’s team from St. Louis, toured extensively throughout the upper United States, playing local teams or bringing their competitors with them, Johnson said.
“When a team came to Idaho, it meant that people from miles around that town would come in to watch that game. They would spend money on local restaurants, saloons, merchants, hotels, stores and other ways to spend money,” Johnson said. “They were kind of like a mobile economic stimulus for that region.”
These teams were invited to town, and then invited back year after year.
“They were welcomed to town, they didn’t sort of have to fight their way into town. The local promoters wanted them there because that’s what people wanted to see,” Johnson said.
When the racial harassment in Coeur d’Alene is put into that context, Johnson said, “this isn’t anything like, ‘Guys, you should be used to this.’ and ‘It’s normal.’ Like, come on. Are you kidding?”
It is clear there is still a lot of work to do in this region to exterminate these undying hate groups, and unlearn the tolerance and acceptance that’s been taught here. Hate and violence cannot be condoned and there must be a stronger stance and effort to hold elected officials accountable for the roles they play in allowing it to continue to thrive in this region.