Shoreline Has a Racism Problem

The PNW has been in the national news for a hot minute, and unfortunately, it hasn’t been lauding our technological advances, our unique and delicious art and food culture, or our picturesque landscapes. Not even our plethora of snooty Millennial microbreweries or the friendliness of our local budtenders.

It started with Seattle being Ground Zero for Covid-19 in the States and elongated into a prodigious international shitshow after protests against police brutality toward Black people (George Floyd! Breonna Taylor!) went so completely sideways that an entire autonomous occupied protest zone was erected, and subsequently disassembled, in the middle of a bustling Seattle neighborhood.

What’s been happening in Seattle and PDX regarding police violence has been so inaccurately reported that many of our own independent local media resources here in the greater Seattle area are otherwise engaged. They’ve been tasked with righting the ship of bad reporting, and they’ve been doing a kick-ass job of it. Our local media went full corporate regarding the protests and subsequent questionable police activity. It’s been the independents that have picked up the mantle — and for that my hat is off.

But here in Shoreline, 20 minutes away from CHOP, 10 minutes away from where our neighbor Charleena Lyles was killed by police, we have a racism problem, and it needs to be addressed.

It came to the attention of the community of Shoreline that a young Black girl had recently been menaced by a woman in a truck as she walked home with a Black Lives Matter sign in her hand. And verbal altercation broke out between neighbors, which under normal circumstances would not be news. But when a grown-ass woman in a truck rolls up on a thirteen-year-old, we have a bigger problem. An adult white woman, feeling benevolent and defensive of her neighbor’s “Bl*e L*ves M*tter” sign in their yard, emboldened enough to engage in a public shouting match about racism with a Black teenager. When the young woman, Kailyn, went public via social media about her experience, her home was vandalized and her family received death threats. By and large, the Shoreline community has rallied around Kailyn and her family — holding daily assemblies near their home and inviting people to bring chalk to write messages on the concrete.

Despite all of the goodwill, in a move eerily reminiscent of the civil rights era, an unsupportive resident sprayed the young protesters with a hose. Since then, the families of the students involved in publicizing the incident have had to hire private security after violent threats were made against them and law enforcement stood idly by. More on that in a minute.

And while most of the community has continued to show support, not everyone did — and not everyone did enough. As accusations of racism incensed some members of the community, and a different story was told.

Our small local paper recently published what may have been meant to be some kind of counterpoint to the recent incidents of racist activity by white Shorlineans. What it failed to provide was a point; they chose not to report on the incidents until it came to light that one of the editor’s friends had been involved. The editor of said paper, Dianne Hetrick, took it upon herself to publish a piece defending her friend — identified only as B. Dianne Hetrick also made it her business to title the article “Racism In Shoreline?”

Racism, question mark.

Subtle, no?

No.

Our local paper has chosen to provide a defense of the white adult that engaged in a public argument with a Black child, calling it “the other side of the story.” The other side of the story is that our racist neighbor wants to defend her racism and this paper gave her a platform from which to do it because she is friends with the editor. That the piece was even allowed to be published in any professional journalistic capacity is an egregious assault on the Fourth Estate and an example of why people don’t trust the news media. It is for this reason that I will not be linking to said article.

As it went, B made sure to note that she had been standing up for another neighbor that had been very upset about the death of a local police officer in the line of duty — something that has jack nor shit to do with Kailyn as a person or the Black Lives Matter movement, here in Shoreline or as a whole. Black people have been saying since time out of mind that police harass and intimidate them, are violent with them, racially profile them; all the things white people get to ignore because we ourselves are individuals and we think that other people are treated as individuals, as well, when clearly they are not. All empirical evidence of police violence toward BIPOC to the contrary. Many o’ white people do not extend that assumption of innocence to their neighbors of color that they do to their white neighbors. Simply existing while Black bothers some of our lilywhite sensibilities.

Like B, who excuses her own actions by making sure her audience knows that she is pro-law enforcement and that Black people bother her when they walk around her neighborhood. She has absolved herself of responsibility for her behavior because she was standing up for her neighbor against a child that wasn’t acting the way she wanted the child to act.

Anecdotally, the people I have heard from about this were surprised at it. Bless their hearts, but they had no idea that racism was even a problem in Shoreline. We’re a nice suburban neighborhood. We’re very Anytown, USA. Displays of public violence ‘round these here parts are usually restricted to drunks fighting, or kids fighting, or drunk kids fighting. Most crime is petty, and — as our nice white neighbors will be sure to remind you — committed by homeless people, usually homeless people of color. I mean, sure there are some bad people, like any other place, but we’re mostly good people, right?? Certainly not racists.

That might even be true, to some extent: most of the people living in Shoreline, the town in which I have resided for 40 years, are decent people that would never consider doing violence to a Black child. Some of them have nonetheless recently managed to contort their public comments into a microaggressive hand-wringing festival. Some have not only excused violence against Kailyn and her family but condoned it.

Some of these folx weren’t even aware that they had Black neighbors.

Y’all, ignoring racism is racism. Not just ignoring but publicly doubting and denouncing your neighbors of color when they say they’ve been harassed is racism. There are racist systems in place designed to shut Black people up, and when our neighbors gang up on Kailyn and her friends and family when they ask the community to listen to them is to be complicit in those systems. Your inaction is a problem.

That is one thing about Shoreline; especially the ‘wealthier’ west side. People are very insulated in a neighborhood that looks on the surface to be not just pleasant but warm and welcoming. It can be shocking to hear that our neighbors nearby are not having as satisfying an experience; that our fair hamlet is not the nice, safe neighborhood for everyone that it is for us white folx — especially rich white folx. And people want to get defensive. It’s understandable. No one wants to hear that their home is being a dangerous place for your neighbors. If you do think that then you’re not being very neighborly.

Hell, you don’t even have to like your neighbor; just don’t treat them like shit. Isn’t there something in pretty much every religion and lore about loving your neighbor?? Just don’t be a dick. That’s all that’s required of you. And some of y’all can’t even handle that commandment on the lowest level of human decency.

In any case, the people can’t be mad about what they don’t know about. If all the denizens of Shoreline hear from our small local paper is a defensive puff piece about the shining character of the white person that engaged in an unseemly argument with a Black teenager out in front of her house disguised as “the other side of the story,” they’re not being given all of the information they need to form a thoughtful opinion. The function of journalism is not to protect our friends. That is unethical.

Neighbor B enjoys calling the police. This was made clear in the aforementioned article. Because of the letters Kailyn distributed around the neighborhood detailing her experience with racism in the neighborhood, Neighbor B summoned law enforcement not once but twice. Someone left a “Blue Lives Murder” sign propped up against a tree across from Neighbor B’s home. This got yet another phone call to 911 as well but failed to reach the definition of hate crime in Shoreline.

Riddle me this, Shoreline Police Depatment: is your inability to do anything about actual threats in our community because you spend all of your time investigating pseudo-hate crimes reported by every put-upon white asshole in this community??

At the time of this writing, no member of the Shoreline Police Department has engaged in any direct or deliberate acts of violence toward any of the Black families involved in this embarrassing monstrosity; but they haven’t done much of anything else, either. Including, but not limited to, not protecting and serving our Black neighbors during this time.