I don’t think it’s any question that this year’s Portland NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner was successful on many levels. We must count it as a measure of progress because 27 years ago, we marched around the Convention Center protesting the absence of Black Jobs on the Convention Center site and other construction on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

As I held my grandson this year, it is clear that we must continue the fight if he and other black kids are to have a bright future in Portland.

A black man making money

Dr. Steven Holt

A black man making money is such a novelty that I suppose the world can’t help but suspect something nefarious is going on. To some on the right and left, it is simply too outrageous. When a black man becomes successful regardless of the sector, he becomes an immediate target. Couple this narrative with the juicy divisions purposely devised and cultivated in the black community, and Wow, you got a doozy of a story.

I doubt that this story will yield Nigel another Pulitzer, but it will ensure that seeds of dissension, mistrust, and division in the black community continue. This all while true benefactors of corrupt and deplorable systems escape scrutiny, and white carpetbaggers grow exponentially into the future. We may never know who got most of the 130 million spent by ODOT on technical support, but you can be sure it was not black people.  Moreover, it will be forever written that a black man ostensibly scammed the system and that several black community ponds received 48 thousand dollars in gift cards over four years.  This was a harmful story on so many levels, but it is not new, and black people ought to get used to it because they are not hiding the fact that they are coming for you. It is the classic Willie Lynch playbook.

Nigel Jaquiss