One by one, stories of racism came through the speakers.
A Latina woman shared an undocumented family member’s account of being assaulted at a restaurant for speaking Spanish. A Black woman talked of struggling to find jobs, despite holding an MBA, and the nearly dozen times police have pulled her car over. Many speakers shared similar stories at the virtual meetings.
Images flashed, too, of an undated Ku Klux Klan parade down Vancouver’s Main Street, and historic real estate covenants for properties in the city that forbade rent or lease to people of color after World War II.
It was mid-August, a little over a month after Clark County’s top elected official, county Chair Eileen Quiring, delivered a public diatribe denying that systemic racism existed in the community. Now, came a cascade of tales that said otherwise.
One woman lamented the Confederate flag still waves high enough to be seen from Interstate 5, near Ridgefield.
For a combined three hours, people aired grievances through two online listening sessions. County leaders, who are all white, sat and heard about the area’s roots in discrimination and the experiences today of its communities of color.
Each councilor thanked speakers at the end of the second session for their time – except Quiring, whose silence was admonished on social media.
Asked if she should have said anything, Quiring replied, “Why should I? I’ve said enough.”
Eileen Quiring stands outside her home, where she has hung a "Thin Blue Line" flag, in late August 2020. As the board chair of the Clark County Council, her views on race and politics have echoed throughout the county.
Troy Brynelson / OPB
Quiring hasn’t spoken much about race since her outburst in June, which came as part of a defense of the “Thin Blue Line” decals that adorned the Clark County Sheriff’s Office patrol vehicles before being removed.
She’s heard — and dismissed — calls for her resignation by civil rights groups. She resisted the listening sessions when first proposed. She’s commented that she feels “a silent majority” share her doubts of systemic racism.
“If there are laws and ordinances that you see on the books, bring them to us. We’ll address it. We will change it,” Quiring said. “I really believe that we’ve done a good job. Our nation has done a good job. And Clark County, I think, is not systematically racist.”
Quiring, 72, is a flagbearer for many conservatives in Clark County. Her views on systemic racism are not shared by her fellow councilors, who are also mostly Republican, but they have been echoed in other local, rural communities — representing political opposition in areas where the population is overwhelmingly white.
Quiring agreed to be interviewed by OPB ahead of the county’s third and final listening session, held Aug. 26. In interviews, she spoke effusively when talk ranged to her past, but became purse-lipped about the political moment with which she’s currently in conflict.
“I have pretty much avoided a lot of social media. Even looking at it,” she said. “I’m not reading the paper. I don’t read the stuff about me.
“You know you’re going to have your critics. I’ve always had critics. I will always have critics — because anybody does,” Quiring added.
Since 2016, she’s sat on the county board of councilors, often supporting landowners’ efforts to develop and build. She’s resisted new taxes and fees, especially where private businesses are concerned. She became the head of the council in 2018.
Quiring is fond of law enforcement, although her only familial tie is her grandson, whom she calls a “warrior,” after he recently joined the U.S. Marine Corps.
That hasn’t stopped her from doubling down her defense of police during a time when there are widespread calls to address problems of racism and bias in law enforcement. After she tried to preserve the Thin Blue Line flags on police vehicles, she bought her own flag and put it over her home’s front door.
“I really do honor our law enforcement, and I know what that stands for and what it means,” she said. “It’s really these men and women who put their lives at risk daily to keep the peace (and) enforce laws.”
Quiring’s home sits in a curlicuing subdivision in east Vancouver, where neighbors’ yard signs stride across the political spectrum. Her immediate neighbor has staked one for Carolyn Long, the Democratic challenger for Washington’s 3rd Congressional District.
Quiring and her neighbors’ backyard overlook a 170-acre pasture owned by a silicon wafer manufacturer. Sometimes bulls graze mere feet from her patio.
It’s a pastoral view like those in rural Clark County where Quiring grew up. Near Brush Prairie, she rode horses every week, she said. She picked beans and berries for spending money. She’s one of five children to a Baptist minister and a homemaker who later became a teacher.
Life often revolved around the church, she said, to which she ties her principles today. Still, she recounted nights she dipped out of her window after curfew. One time, she returned to find her house’s lights blazing and her father talking to a deputy.
“Yeah, they figured it out,” she said. “The sheriff’s deputy went to the church, so of course my dad called him. Oh, my goodness.”
Quiring’s rosy recollections of law enforcement contrast starkly with movements against structural injustice, both nationally and locally, and with the lived experience of people of color. Like many white politicians and political commentators who have positive views on law enforcement, Quiring said the message of the movement for racial justice was undercut by “people that are acting out.”
E. Malcolm Slaughter tries to talk with a counter-protester outside Jefferson Davis Park in Ridgefield, Washington, during a protest in support of Black Lives Matter. The park sits on private property off Interstate 5 and includes Confederate, Gadsden, Mississippi and American flags.
Bradley W. Parks / OPB
“I think they should try to convince people in a way that really is peaceful, first of all, but convincing with numbers and statistics and real facts,” she said. “Because a lot of this isn’t facts.”
The Northwest Justice Project, a legal aid organization in Washington, recently raised a statistic. The organization reported that from Jan. 1, 2018, to Jan. 1, 2020, Black men and women made up 9.6% and 6.7% of the population at Clark County Jail, respectively, despite comprising 2.4% of the county population.
“The idea that systemic racism is a thing of the past is disproven,” said Tim Murphy, a staff attorney for the organization.
Quiring couldn’t explain the disparity.
“You’re talking about so many variables,” she said. “I can’t say just because the percentage is larger … that you would automatically say that’s systemic racism.”
Quiring, a self-described law and order proponent, has conflicting views of the prison system.
As an Oregon senator (Eileen Qutub at that time) with a family values platform, she led efforts in the late 1990s to site a 1,300-bed women’s prison that became Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. She relished her role.
“I just had the pleasure of going around the state meeting so many people, and I just enjoyed the process,” she said.
The prison became part of her political undoing in Oregon after she clashed with then-Gov. John Kitzhaber and he successfully threw his support behind her Democratic challenger.
Quiring said she has compassion for people jailed and imprisoned. She said she no longer supports three-strike laws, for example, out of concern they lock up nonviolent offenders. She said she sees some drug charges as going too far, as well, though she remains against the legalization of recreational marijuana.
“We do need law and order, and our prisons serve a real purpose,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have compassion for people that are in prison, believe me. It’s painful, but it’s necessary.”
Civil rights groups don’t know if any evidence will be strong enough to convince Quiring — and other politicians who share her views — that systemic racism exists, said Jasmine Tolbert, vice president of the NAACP’s Vancouver chapter. But, she said, the goal of the listening sessions was broader.
“This just reaffirms that it’s not about Eileen,” Tolbert said. “It’s about educating the community.”
Quiring’s stance has echoed throughout Southwest Washington. Town halls debate systemic racism and intertwine it with social justice movements in Portland — and a specter of violent protests. Officials say lines are being drawn.
In Woodland, city councilors passed a resolution that condemned “organized hate, planned violence and community disruption” but tabled a resolution that specifically condemned “systemic racism.”
Woodland Mayor Will Finn, who is a law enforcement officer with the Washington State Patrol, said many interpreted the resolution condemning systemic racism as being anti-police. He said Quiring’s defense of the thin blue line flag resonated with some in the community.
To some, Finn said, condemning systemic racism implied the town and its police were racist. He said he would have blended the resolutions together, but to many councilors and citizens that was out of the question.
“I think our political climate right now is we’re all being forced to take a side, there is no middle ground. You’re either with us or you’re against us,” said Finn, who states support for Black Lives Matter. “That’s the impression that I’m getting.”
DeeAnna Holland, a Woodland councilor, said systemic racism is a problem, but the lines drawn make it difficult for rural elected officials to have that conversation.
“I think people in Woodland were immediately defensive because, ‘Hey, we’re not like that, so don’t say we are,’” Holland said.
Likewise, in Yacolt, a councilor who tried to pass a resolution condemning systemic racism was met with calls for her resignation. A flier then circulated in the town, warning of a Black Lives Matter-backed “unrest, loss of revenue, property damage and violence.”
Despite her own views, Quiring disagreed with the reaction in Yacolt. As she felt about those who called for her resignation, she said voters will decide for the town’s councilor, too.
“You know, she’s going to have face an election the next time,” she said. “As will I. And we’ll see what happens.”
Quiring spoke in Clark County’s final listening session, held in private for more sensitive stories to be shared. Quiring thanked the speakers, according to her and other sources who attended.
“I did thank them for telling their stories,” she said. “It was interesting to hear their stories. I empathize with everyone who feels they’ve been discriminated against, whether they’re white or Black.”
But has her mind changed?
“I really maintain that we’ve come so far,” she said. “If there’s more to go, I’m willing to do that, if it’s shown to me.”