Black volunteer asks Human Rights Commission to take a stand on racism at 4J

Presenter: Dr. Johnny Lake spoke at the Eugene Human Rights Commission about his treatment as a volunteer in the 4J School District. On May 19, HRC Chair Dr. Silky Booker:

Dr. Silky Booker: I initially got your letter, Dr. Lake, about the 4J school system and what was going on, and I was deeply concerned about it. I’ve known you in the community, not only as an activist, but a leader, a mentor, a beacon in the Black community in terms of and the historical relevance of Black people within Eugene.

I’ve learned from hearing your speeches and reading your books and watching your seminars. So I was deeply concerned about what was happening and transpiring with you within the 4J school system.

And although, like I said, always state that we are an advisory commission, we are charged with making sure that our community is heard and given an opportunity to speak and I’m charged with that and I wanted to make sure that happened.

So thank you for being here today. The floor is yours to introduce yourself and what happened with you dealing with the 4J school system.

Dr. Johnny Lake: Okay, thank you all very much for the opportunity to speak with you and I’m familiar with human rights commissions. I was on the Human Rights Commission in Salem because of that I know that you are advisory but I also know that your voice is critically important in these very white communities that have other voices such as the newspapers and the news projecting out consistent stereotypes, racist tropes about people of color.

Any situation I found myself in in Eugene for over 20-some years, I am considered guilty first. And that is my problem with the Human Rights Commission, and anybody else who sits silent while these things happen over and over and over to people of color.

There was a situation that happened where I called out the microaggressions of an assistant principal. I spoke to her. She did not acknowledge my greeting, did not acknowledge my presence, did not acknowledge me at all, but turned to her right and said, ‘Good morning, coach,’ to a white man.

And I chose not to say anything at first. But it bothered me because I’m a grown man and I have a voice. Our children don’t. So I asked the children about this administrator and these white children told me that this administrator is exceptionally hard on children of color, but she’s easy on white children.

This is that pattern I’m asking you: What does the Human Rights Commission do about these patterns that go on for our children and adults in this community? Because you cannot sit silent. You can be advisory, but you have to take a voice and a position. Otherwise, your silence means you are complicit and in agreement with this kind of treatment of people in our community.

So I chose to go back and raise this issue as a grown man with this person. I don’t work for them. I am a volunteer. I spend my own money on the children that I work with. They compensate me zero. They said I have zero money for the work that I do in the school district.

I’m a Ph.D. I’m a licensed administrator. I’m a child therapist. And I’m working for free in a school district. And they want to punish me for addressing racial microaggressions in their school.

I went back first to the white man to check in to see if what had happened, what I thought had happened. And he saw it and felt it and confirmed it. So I went to speak to the administrator who was standing there with another staff of the school district, African American woman.

And I said, ‘You know, I just walked by you. I’m six foot two. I’m 200 pounds. I’m pretty Black. So I’m not invisible. Nobody should walk by me and not see me.’ And she apologized and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ And I accepted that apology.

The African-American woman reached out to both of us and pulled us into a physical hug and said to me, ‘I get treated that way all the time,’ which made me have some sympathy for her.

I went back to work with kids because it resolved it for me. All I needed was the apology and acknowledgement of what had happened.

The coach, the white man, came out and walked me out that day and told me, ‘I’m very proud of you.’ I said, ‘Why are you so proud of me?’ He said, ‘Because you spoke up for yourself. That’s what I teach all my athletes, especially athletes of color, that if something racist happens, you have to speak up about it.’ He says, ‘I’m very proud of you.’

Two weeks later, I get called down to the district office for something. And I’m like, ‘What is it about?’ They said North High School, North Eugene High School, which I’ve been working at since 2003 when they first called me about the racism at North High School. And I said, ‘Well, you know, yeah, sure. I’d be glad to meet with you.’ I thought it was something I could help with.

And I go down and the assistant, well, assistant superintendent of equity, inclusion and belonging—so a very official position—started a conversation with me by complaining about the school district and how they’re getting rid of all the people of color. He was told to his face that 4J owed him nothing. So he didn’t have a job next year.

I met with an African-American man who has 20-plus years working for this same school district. And he was told the same thing: You have no job next year. This 4J owes you nothing.

And then I said, ‘What is this meeting about?’ He says, ‘Well, somebody filed a complaint against you.’ And this was the first thing I had heard about any complaint two weeks after the incident I just described to you.

And I’m like, ‘What’s the complaint?’ ‘Well, she said you hugged her for 10 to 20 seconds and kissed her on the head.’

And I guess what I’m asking you is not to adjudicate the situation, but to try to ensure that people are not judged first, before there’s any kind of fair investigation. There was no fair investigation.

And this man interviewed me for an hour and a half, at least, and took notes and told me he would share his notes with me so that I could make sure that he was accurately reporting what I had said. I never got any notes.

I asked him all week long what happened to the notes. ‘I’m working on them. I’m working on them,’ he said. I asked him if he was finished. He says, ‘I finished the report. I have to check with HR before I share it with you.’ I never got a report. And I kept asking, kept asking, kept asking, kept asking. At the end of the week, he says he did not do a report.

Now, one of those comments or statements is a lie. And it’s against all TSPC (Teacher Standards and Practices Commission) standards for any educator to purposefully lie. This man has lied. One or the other. He can’t have both of those statements and both of them be true. He has lied to cover something up. And so that report has never been shared with anybody.

Then they banned me from the school before there’s any real investigation. Just arbitrarily, you can’t go on any 4J campus. You can’t set foot on any 4J campus. And then they had two white women interview me. And I told the same story I told before. They bring no report. I don’t know where they got the information. I wrote a letter already to the head of volunteer for the school district.

And she says to me, when I asked if the witnesses had been interviewed, that I would be witness tampering if I asked the witnesses if they had been interviewed. I’ve been in this situation before where I’ve given 14 witnesses to somebody about an incident. How many witnesses did they talk to? Zero. Yet they say they do a formal proper investigation.

I contacted the coach if anybody had contacted him. He says, nobody’s contacted me by phone or text. I contacted an African American woman. She didn’t even respond, which made me suspicious of what’s going on.

The two white women who interviewed me concluded that I made an administrator uncomfortable and didn’t show enough regret. Show me a policy that says if I make an administrator uncomfortable that I have to show regret.

And what the hell does regret look like for a Black man in front of a white woman? What was I supposed to do? Fall on the ground? Drop to my knees? Cry? What the hell was I supposed to do to show regret for confronting somebody about a racial microaggression?

They quoted no policy. They quoted no laws. They quoted no state policies or laws in their whole investigation. They have hidden the report that interviewed me and not shared any of that. They didn’t interview the coach, and they attempted to move this through as if it was a proper investigation.

I went through this with Northwest Christian, where they came into court and tried to prove I was an angry Black man, two angry, hated white people, and was too lazy to do my job. Playing these racist tropes in front of a white jury that’s supposed to find me guilty of all these stereotypes that none of them are true, which is why they lost that case. They’d have done better trying the real issues that I raised rather than trying to use stereotypes in front of a white jury to convict me.

And so I feel like the same thing is happening here again. They’ve not done a proper investigation. They’re using the assumption that I’m a big angry Black man who threatened somebody and that I grabbed them and held them for 20 seconds.

The African American woman initiated the contact with us. I did not initiate the contact and I was not comfortable in hugging either one of them.

So I guess, again, what I would ask of the Human Rights Commission is to take a position that is not silence and take a position that’s not complicit with these issues that go on over and over and over and over and over and over and over for people of color in this town.

It is incredibly unfair. I’m a recognized educator all around the world. I’ve worked in education for 35 years. I’ve worked at university level, private schools, public schools, all over the country. I’m in Michigan right now working with families and communities.

I have never, ever, ever had even one complaint about my interactions or my behavior with anybody, children, women, adults, anybody. Now, all of a sudden, and here’s the irony, I trained that entire school. The subject they wanted me to train about, the title they asked for was interrupting racism. I still have the PowerPoint, 127 slides, interrupting racism.

They asked for that description for the work and asked me to help them with addressing bias. microaggressions, all the things that I am complaining about, and now all of a sudden I’m violating my own teachings, I’m violating my own principles, and I’m assaulting a woman in the middle of the school, which is what they’re trying to frame it as, is some assault that I made against a woman that I had confronted about a microaggression.

So this is incredible retaliation that they can get away with because nobody says anything. I don’t accept racism under any circumstances. The groups I work with in the schools are always multiracial, multicultural. Students of sexual minority groups are welcome in our group. Special needs kids come to our group. Nobody gets disrespected or mistreated in Dr. Lake’s group. And everybody knows that, all the children. And you can ask them. You don’t have to ask me. They will tell you.

So here’s the same person who teaches this, creates safe spaces. for anybody who shows up in my groups, but now I’m going creating unsafe spaces for somebody else in the same school in front of several witnesses. I mean, this is completely outrageous.

And I guess, again, what I would ask of you is not to adjudicate this situation, but make it clear where the Human Rights Commission stands on these kind of consistent biases that live in our community. There’s no way I should be guilty before an investigation.

They deny me my 14th Amendment. They deny me my Fifth Amendment of having due process. And they have the nerve to claim that their decision was made on what they call a preponderance of evidence standard. And that standard says that it’s 51-49, basically what it amounts to. And they say that every piece of evidence has to be included in that process because it’s the least critical way to find innocence or guilt.

So you include both sides of the issue. For them to exclude an hour and a half report, for them to exclude the coach’s comments to me, for them to exclude the Black woman’s comments to me that I get treated this way all the time, that denies the whole idea of preponderance of evidence standard.

So I looked up your purposes and there’s several places in there where you say you take leadership, make statements, you look into these kind of issues and you take a position. And I’m not even an employee.

Here’s the most crazy irony of this whole thing. I do not work for 4J. I work for myself. I am a volunteer. And I am the very wrong person for this to happen to. But in this situation, if the community recognizes what’s going on, I am actually the right person for this issue, which is an irony as far as I’m concerned.

And so people have gone to the school board. Students have written letters in support. Other people in the community have spoken up. And I tell them, you’re not advocating simply for Dr. Lake.

And I guess I would hope that it would be bigger than a Dr. Lake because I am fine. They can’t hurt me. I don’t have a job with them. They don’t control my insurance. There are people in that school district who are deathly afraid to speak up. They contacted me and they say, I can talk to you, but I’m not going to say anything publicly because I don’t want to lose this job.

I mean, that’s the kind of fear that is in that school district that’s in the city of Eugene. And I’m sure that is not acceptable to a human rights commission that says it stands up for people’s human rights.

When I look at the mission of the Human Rights Commission, it is that you take a leadership role in fostering respect for social equity, civil rights and human rights in the community by engaging in education, outreach, listening and collaboration. You take a position that you are a leadership role.

Leaders don’t sit in the back of the room and say nothing. Leaders don’t remain silent when something is going on wrong around them.

The next bullet says maintain strategic HRC liaisons and engage in cooperative endeavors with the community and the city of Eugene advisory groups that support civil and human rights and social equity.

Do you have a relationship with NAACP? Do you have a relationship with other city organizations that advocate for the same things you advocate for?

I mean, these are ways that I think our claims fall flat so that Eugene is not a welcoming city. How many people know that? Not a welcoming city to an educated professional like me.

You know that already. I don’t even have to ask for your affirmation or confirmation. You know that this place is not welcoming to people like this.

I am working in Michigan. Do I live in Michigan? No, I don’t. And I’m working with families and children, and I met with a parent group this evening. Only one other man in the whole group. Everybody’s women. I don’t have those kind of histories.

And so I don’t even want to come back to Eugene, to tell you the truth, because I’m so supported and encouraged here and appreciated here. They want me to stay here. If I was smart, I probably would.

The next bullet under your mission says study and recommend actions on civil and human rights. That again means you don’t sit in the corner and say nothing.

What’s the recommendation? And social equity issues in areas of concern to the community and city organizations?

See, 4J gets away with this stuff. Northwest Christian got away with this stuff. Most of the institutions in our community who practice racism and discrimination gets away with this stuff.

So I feel like it’s almost hypocritical to say we have a human rights commission that actually supports people’s human rights. Where are you? And I don’t mean this as a personal challenge to any one of you. But as an institution, where are you?

Presenter: Dr. Silky Booker:

Dr. Silky Booker: That’s a good question. And honestly, it’s one that’s frustrated me for quite some time. And this is why they say the system doesn’t work.

We can at least ask questions. I also want to know if Commissioner Yeh is willing to take Dr. Lake’s letter and read it to City Council to make them, all the City Council, aware that this is happening within 4J and bring attention to the discrimination that’s going on and the attack that’s going on against Black administrators.

Councilor Jennifer Yeh: So I can definitely share that Dr. Lake came and spoke to us and general concerns so the Council is aware of what’s going on at the HRC. I can definitely do that.

We do not get to tell 4J what to do. That is not our role. But I will also have a conversation with the mayor because there may be something I’m not thinking about.

I mean, I don’t think it’s up to debate whether 4J has a problem with racism. I think that’s a fact, not a question. So I think maybe a good pathway would be, you know, we’re already going to be talking about how we can get some better information for the HRC about policy and procedure and HRC can provide a recommendation to Council and then Council will have that recommendation to decide on the next step.

And that’s kind of how this role is supposed to work is the HRC makes recommendations and the council then takes action based on those recommendations. And you guys can even recommend what an appropriate next step you think would be that council should take or even several options.

Presenter: Councilor Yeh will share her report on Dr. Lake and the rest of the HRC meeting with City Council, and she encouraged the Human Rights Commission to bring forward a recommendation.

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