How hard is it to call racism a health crisis? For one county supervisor, very
Sacramento County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution Tuesday declaring racism as a public health crisis and Sue Frost voted against it. The resolution, which is non-binding, was passed 4-1 with Frost as the lone opposition.
“I cannot support this resolution,” Frost said despite the impassioned comments of community members. “I do not believe America is a racist country. Or that most Americans are racist. I do not believe that Sacramento County employees are racist.”
Frost read these comments from a script. Whether she or Matt Hedges, her chief of staff, wrote them is unclear. The resolution simply indicates a willingness by the county to consider how racism affects public health, public safety, housing, employment and other aspects of our daily lives.
What is the harm in that?
Why would you not only oppose being mindful of racism, but go out of your way to declare that it doesn’t exist?
I have a theory about why Hedges and Frost teamed up to produce this display of contempt for conditions that exist in plain sight in our community and country. My theory is: Frost was not speaking to the Black and brown people who testified how racism has affected us.
She was speaking to the people who believe that such talk is bunk. She was speaking to the people who don’t want to hear whining from dark-skinned folks. Frost was reading words crafted for people who are sympathetic to racist dogma and ignorance.
They’ve done this before.
Frost and Hedges have used Frost’s social media platform to post divisive us-against-them rhetoric, but more about that in a moment.
How could she ignore recent history?
For the sake of argument, let’s say Frost and Hedges missed the racism section of American history when they went to school. You know, the part about the redlining. Housing covenants that excluded people of color in Sacramento neighborhoods.
Maybe they somehow missed how the construction of Highways 50 and 99 cut off Black neighborhoods in Oak Park from the rest of town. But, they also aren’t aware of the obscene rate of suspensions of Black youth in Sacramento schools, Stephon Clark, Joseph Mann, Mikel McIntyre, etc.?
How many indicators of racial and ethnic disparity would it take to convince Frost of a problem?
Well, we know that white folks make up more than 60% of Sacramento County but they are underrepresented in COVID-19 cases. Whites are only 38.1% of COVID-19 cases, according to the county COVID-19 dashboard. Latinos are 23% of the county population, but 32% of those getting COVID-19. Testing shortages for COVID-19 hurt Black and Latino neighborhoods most of all.
Black people and Latino people are over-represented in police stops, arrests, incarceration. Black people are disproportionately ticketed for jaywalking in Sacramento. Before marijuana was making white people rich, it was making Black people prisoners. Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be killed by police in justifiable homicides than any other group.
Black and Latino kids are more likely to fail in our schools than white kids. Black and Latino kids in Sacramento are more likely to live below the poverty line than white kids.
The suspension rate of Black students in Sacramento County? It’s the worst in California, according to J. Luke Wood, a professor from San Diego State University and author of “Capital of Suspensions: Examining Racial exclusion of Black Males in Sacramento County.”
“There is a tension in Sacramento that we believe doesn’t exist in the same way in other communities,” Wood said. “Sacramento has a history of exclusion. Look at the way a freeway was constructed to split Oak Park ...We believe Sacramento is Ground Zero in this national fight (over Black suspension rates).”
Seriously, we could be here a while.
How much proof does anyone need that racism persists?
Playing to her base
“Is it really that you don’t understand or are you just playing dumb?” said Kula Koenig of the Social Justice PolitiCorps of Sacramento County.”
I would argue that it’s the latter – that Frost is not only not sincere, she is playing the kind of wedge politics you see from Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones or President Donald Trump.
It’s the kind of politics you play to your base. Frost’s district includes Antelope, Orangevale, Rancho Murieta, Rio Linda and Elverta. It’s not considered winnable by local Democrats. Frost’s opponent in her re-election campaign earlier this year was not qualified. But Frost didn’t do much better interviewing with the Sacramento Bee editorial board.
She struggled to answer basic questions without reading her notes, just as she did when she declared there was no racism in Sacramento. When you hear her speak at meetings, and you ask yourself, how the heck did she get elected? The answer is simple. She’s faced no real opponents to challenge her.
So with nothing to fear, she is the supervisor who votes against a symbolic resolution about racism.
In late August, and with protests looming in the City of Sacramento, she posted Facebook pictures of violence in other cities. She was accused by Facebook commenters of inciting violence, and later changed the wording of the post after Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn criticized it.
On Tuesday, she revealed her insincerity by asking why we don’t have a resolution identifying homelessness as a crisis. This is the same supervisor who has twice voted against moratoriums on no-fault evictions.
So if you don’t use your vote to keep people from becoming homeless, why are you asking about homelessness in a discussion about race?
“Either you are asking for clarity or you are asking to undermine,” Koenig said. Yes, Supervisor Frost was seeking to undermine a resolution to combat racism.
“To me, a crisis is something that comes at us fast and requires an aggressive and immediate solution,” she wrote on her Facebook page. That’s more of undermining, as Koenig said, but Frost did reveal one of her motivations.
“The resolution also stated that addressing any disparities was a priority,” she wrote. “Time and money would be dedicated to finding solutions. An important question naturally becomes, what money?”
And there you have it. Spending money to combat racism is not what Sue Frost is about. That’s the attitude that perpetuates racist systems, where values are demonstrated in the budget process.
If you vote “no” on a resolution about racism because you worry about what it would cost before a single dollar has been allocated, what does that say about your values?
“Some people just want to preserve the status quo,” Koenig said. “She took it upon herself, after all the people who spoke about wanting justice, to say, ‘I’m not here for it. I don’t believe you. I don’t see you. Everything is fine.”
What do you call people who do that?
This column was changed Nov. 18 to remove a reference to Matt Hedges not being available for comment. He was.
This story was originally published November 18, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
