Portland OR: Red and Black Cafe
Would They Welcome Rand Paul?
Portland Oregon has been famous for its café culture for well over 100 years.
The Red and Black Cafe near 12th and Stark SE across the river from downtown, recently 86’d uniformed Portland Police Officer James Crooker for nothing more than who he is.
The Red and Black is a prototypical non-downtown totally-local, vegan, community-minded café serving Equal Exchange Coffee, offering yoga and film screenings. The kind of place that makes Portland Portland in 2010.
Red and Black owner John Langley defended the 86 that he felt uncomfortable having the uniformed officer in the vegan café and thought his patrons would as well. How does law enforcement conflict with vegan food? But, in Portland Police fashion, Officer James Crooker understood the hostility and left peacefully.
But isn’t this discrimination against Crooker simply based on his job? These very patrons of the Red and Black are usually the most vocal in defense of the customary targets of discrimination.
What would Rand Paul do?
The Red and Black discrimination reminded us of a recent referendum on adding gay rights as a protected class in local housing and employment. And that is, in the end, what it was – a “preference” by adding this “status” to the list of protected classes in housing (more than 4 units) and employment (more than 5 employees) – like religion or skin color.
So the critics jumped on the “preference” with easy to read and say signs: “Equal Rights, Not Special Rights.”
In a sense these signs made sense, because yes the goal of the referendum was to add this status to the list of historically-accepted preferred ones.
But ask a closeted sign-wielder what the “Special Right” the referendum would in fact grant, and they get quiet quickly.
It is hard to even explain what the “special right” is, but goes something like: “Yes, I would like the ability to retain the right to not offer you a job or a house based on your gay criteria -- just like I can use any other irrelevant criteria for my decision other than religion or skin color – like your weight or the length of your hair. So even though some lives have been ruined by capricious application of this housing/job criteria-whim by the random-discrimination-empowered, this is what makes America America.”
Maybe every undercover cop in Portland should converge on the Red and Black and give them something to be concerned about.
Here is the Oregonian story -- the paper has a photo of Officer Crooker’s white-appearing visage, yet offers no explanation how Mr. Langley’s cop-86-program would work had Crooker not been pigmentally-challenged.