I reported Oregon to its own bias hotline

I submitting the following to the Oregon Department of Justice Bias Response Hotline today.

Dear Bias Hotline Advocate:

I am writing to report a bias incident perpetrated by the State of Oregon against Oregonians. I understand your division is getting an extra $2 million from the Governor to ensure Oregon can respond, urgently, to hate crimes and bias incidents now that Donald Trump is president again. I trust those funds are also available for responding to the bias incidents I am reporting to you.

Oregon’s Bias Response Hotline fields reports of “bias incidents,” defined as the “expression of animus toward another person, related to the other person’s perceived race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or national origin[.]” "Animus” is not defined in the statute, but generally means hostility or ill feeling.

Boy, do I have a bias incident, or, really, serial bias incidents for you! Let’s begin with the State of Oregon’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan: A Roadman to Racial Equity and Belonging.” Far from fostering a sense of “belonging,” the DEI Plan is itself an expression of racial animus.

The plan was adopted in 2021 by then-Governor Kate Brown. Her introductory letter explains that the most urgent matter for the State of Oregon in the wake of Covid and historic wildfires (she left out riots, the third leg of the 2020 trifecta of Oregon misery) was equity: “we must put racial equity at the forefront of all of our recovery efforts and strategies.” According to the plan, Oregon state employees are to “center equity” in “budgeting, planning, procurement and policymaking” on behalf of the people of Oregon. (I’m sure you already know this, but I think to “center” means to prioritize).

Well, here’s how the plan defines equity:

Equity is the effort to provide different levels of support based on an individual’s or group’s needs in order to achieve fairness in outcomes. Equity actionably [Ed.: ?] empowers communities most impacted by systemic oppression and requires the redistribution of resources, power, and opportunity to those communities.

So the plan requires state employees to “provide different levels of support” and “redistribut[e] resources, power and opportunities” to people who someone - the employee? - deems “most impacted by systemic oppression.” Left unsaid is from whom the resources, power and opportunities are redistributed. That’s where the animus comes in.

The authors of the DEI Plan clearly envisioned white people as the losers in redistribution (white people are the only people capable of “beliefs about superiority or entitlement,” for example), but anyone who is not a member of a group “most impacted by systemic opporession” better center their opportunities, lest they be redistributed. The plaintiff in a lawsuit that ultimately led to the disbanding of a state program offering business grants only to black-owned businesses was Latino; the plaintiffs in the recent federal lawsuit successfully challenging the, uh, redistributive admission policies of Harvard University were Asian.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter to whom the State of Oregon directs its racial animus. It is enough, for the purposes of the Hotline, that the state exercises racial animus at all. It does. That’s bias.

While I’m not certain what the State of Oregon’s DEI Plan is itself a crime, other than a crime against competent drafting of government documents, it sure is a crime when Oregon follows its edict to, well, exercise racial bias. I’d therefore appreciate a referral to the appropriate law enforcement authorities, an important tool for the Bias Response Hotline as it provides a remedy to Oregonians who have suffered from the scourge of racial bias.

I should note that I consider myself a victim of Oregon’s DEI Plan and racially biased decisions and actions made and taken pursuant to it solely in my capacity as a resident and taxpayer. My injury is the same as every other Oregonian’s: the deprivation of the right to equal protection of the laws as promised by the U.S. Constitution, Oregon’s Constitution.

Thank you for this opportunity to report the State of Oregon’s racial bias to the State of Oregon. I look forward to your response.

Jeff Eager