Phil Campbell Still Wants Us To Talk About Race In Seattle

Past Seattlest interviewee Phil Campbell wrote an opinion piece for the Seattle Times this week on the subject of race relations in Seattle. Not really a subject which Seattlest has spent a lot of time on previously, and that's exactly the point of his article: It's not really a subject that any publication in Seattle devotes a lot of time to.

We read and loved Phil's book, "Zioncheck For President," which recalls the political campaign he managed for Grant Cogswell for McIver's City Council seat. He mentions that campaign in this week's Seattle Times piece as well:

Back in 2001, Cogswell was prepared to jump into the issue of skin color — but no one was asking. Out on the campaign trail, we did talk about race among whites, but only in private conversations, and they often came out of people's mouths as quasi-confessional statements: I can't vote for Grant because I feel uncomfortable voting against the black guy. The voter rarely cited real support for any of McIver's policies, making race an ipso facto qualifier. I would say that 3 to 5 percent of white voters voted for McIver simply because he was black.

African Americans in Seattle, of course, had their own perspective. At none of the predominantly black candidate forums we attended did Cogswell find a truly open-minded audience; people had judged him by the color of his skin before he could even speak. Cogswell was berated at a couple of black forums to such an extent that McIver himself stepped in to say a few kind words on Cogswell's behalf.

This is an issue that Cambell has done previous work on - A lot of his material at The Stranger (at least the stuff that's referenced in the Letters to the Editor) pertained to Seattle race relations . We didn't really get the sense that Seattle's discomfort with discussing race was one of the big themes in his book, though, and we kind of wish it was. It's one of his pet themes. He's better than most at talking about it (mostly by default) and definitely more willing. At times he claims it was an issue central to the Grant Cogswell campaign. And yet 'Zioncheck' only mentions it a handfull of times.