Harvard University is being sued.
I grew up in Medford, Oregon. I was 17-turning-18 and had never met a Black person. Or an Hispanic. Or a Jew. Or a Muslim.
Those two things are related.
The lawsuit alleges Harvard discriminates against Asian-Americans and gives special privilege to Black and Hispanic students. Harvard says not so. It says the whole person is considered in its admissions, of which race is just one factor. It says it tries to create a diverse student body, for the benefit of all students.
I entered college woefully unprepared for life in America. Oregon has a history on race. The original Oregon constitution forbade Blacks from living in the state. White settlers, including groups that called themselves "The Exterminators," removed native people from Southern Oregon in the Rogue River Wars of 1851-1855. It was fought on and around my farm. I had no inkling whatever of that history. It wasn't taught in school. As a child and youth I accepted the world I saw. Everyone was White except the family that owned a Chinese-American restaurant. I thought that was normal. That was the world I saw. I watched on television the civil rights struggles taking place in the American South in the early 1960s. It seemed distant and baffling. My lack of exposure did not make me prejudice-free. It made me blind. I was culturally incompetent.
Harvard was immersion into the wider world. I had two freshman roommates, one Black, one Jewish. I benefitted enormously. Possibly I brought a bit of diversity to them, too. They encountered a classmate of stunning naiveté and cluelessness. Yes, people like me existed, and they needed to learn that.
Larry Slessler was 10 years ahead of me in the Medford school system. His story parallels mine. His story is a window into the changes over the past 60 years. Those changes didn't just happen. They were resisted, and still are.
Guest Post by Larry Slessler
Back in the “horse and buggy days” of my 1950’s Medford High School athletic career, there were 5 teams in the Southern Oregon Conference. Klamath Falls was one of them. In basketball we played each conference team four games for a total of 16 conference games.
During that time there was no Interstate-5 or Highway 140, with a mostly-straight, 55-MPH route through to the other side of the Cascades. The only route to Klamath Falls was the slow, winding Highway 66 over the Green Springs, steep grades, narrow shoulders, and passengers getting car-sick from the tight curves. Winter travel by bus was tricky at best. Driving back from Klamath Falls in the middle of a winter stormy night was not a risk school leaders were willing to take. Thus, Klamath Falls became an overnight trip for our team. Except for the state tourney, then held in Eugene, going to Klamath Falls was a rare, exciting overnight bus trip for me. We stayed in the Winema Hotel in downtown Klamath Falls. Heady times for a 1950’s West-Medford kid.
Underclassman Glen Moore on the Klamath Falls team was the best player in the conference and one of top players in the state. Glen was taller, faster, quicker, and an all-around better player than anyone on our Medford team. We squeaked out one victory but Glen took us to the woodshed in the other three contests. Klamath Falls got three wins out of four.
A few weeks ago I was comparing notes with a former Klamath Falls basketball player 3 years younger than I am, and a year behind Glen. He related a basketball trip to Medford after I had moved on to college. The Klamath Coach had booked team reservations in the Medford Hotel. The Medford Hotel was the best hotel out of the three or four in downtown Medford in those days.
After the game, the Klamath Falls team rode the bus to the Hotel. The coaches went in to make final arrangements and were gone a long time. When the coaches returned they announced a change in plans. The team would stay at a motel, near Central Point as my friend remembered it.
You may be wondering why the change in plans and why the coaches were gone so long. Glen Moore, the best basketball player in Southern Oregon and arguably in the state of Oregon, was Black. The Medford Hotel would not allow a black Klamath Falls athlete to stay in the hotel.
I forgot to mention there were no, none, zero Blacks in the Medford School system in my day. The good old days were true for me. I am white, male, a three-sport athlete and musical. If you were black, brown or a girl -- well not so much. My father-in-law attended Medford Sacred Heart Catholic School in his youth. He remembered the KKK, in their robes and mounted on horses riding around the school playground. I sometimes forget that Catholics and Jews were/are also the targets of the KKK.
My unknown future in the late 1950’s would lead me to military assignments in the segregated South in 1962, 1963 and 1964. Medford of the 1950’s looked better than the South. However that was a superficial look only because no Black people were allowed to live in Medford.
Lisa, I agree that was awkwardly written and I should have fixed it in editing. I mostly leave guest posts alone, except for typos and little grammar fixes. I am sure what he meant was that the racial climate appeared better in Southern Oregon than in the South, but only because it was masked here by the fact that there were no people of color visible to him. Therefore he didn't see prejudice. It wasn't truly better. It only seemed so.
I graduated Medford Senior High in 1977 and it was basically the same even then. I have clients and friends that complain of receiving racial slurs even today. It would be nice to think things have changed, but as a community we have a long way to go.