‘Just go do it’: Portraits of Black Muslim community leadership in Oregon

This text, used right here with permission, was written by Bruce Poinsette for Oregon Humanities and printed at oregonhumanities.org. This text accommodates excerpted interviews from The Blacktastic Journey, a YouTube collection produced by Bruce Poinsette that explores Oregon’s Black diaspora; Half 1 of this episode options conversations with Mac Smiff and Nafisa Fai, and Half 2 options Nikki Brown. Bruce Poinsette is a present Oregon Humanities Neighborhood Storytelling Fellow.

Rising up, I discovered about Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar—worldwide Black Muslim icons—by myself, with no due to the Oregon college system. However the place did Black Muslims characteristic within the story of Oregon?

Just like the icons I’d discovered about earlier than, this was a query I needed to discover solutions to for myself.

In late 2020, I began a Zoom interview collection known as The Blacktastic Journey to focus on the number of tales of Black life in Oregon. For the collection’ second season, I acquired the assist of the Oregon Humanities Neighborhood Storytelling Fellowship and partnered with photographer Intisar Abioto and videographer Ifanyi Bell, through Open Sign Labs, to deliver the interviews to life. I needed to characteristic Black life in particular geographic areas of the state, hash out conversations taking place throughout the Black Oregon zeitgeist, and create profiles of people from particular communities throughout the Black Oregon inhabitants.

As a part of this challenge, I needed to discover the tales of Black Muslims in Oregon—and why these tales weren’t extra well-known.

“Most individuals don’t perceive sufficient about Islam to be extra detailed of their Islamophobia,” says journalist and activist Mac Smiff. “I’m extra clearly Black [to them].”

“Oregon is simply so intrinsically racist and xenophobic that simply being a Muslim turns into a trouble for lots of people. I really feel like loads of Muslims in Oregon make being Muslim a secondary character trait.”

These portraits are on no account meant to signify the complete tales of those people’ communities, by no means thoughts Black Muslims within the state as an entire. Reasonably, they’re a part of a collection of snapshots that showcase the range of tales throughout the Black diaspora in Oregon.

“I can’t unsee the landmarks that was once right here”

I met Nikki Brown in 2013 whereas writing a profile of her for The Skanner. Early within the interview, I discovered that Brown was a latest Nation of Islam convert and was combating to be acknowledged as Nicole X at her then day job. As a younger reporter, I used to be excited to assist, in a small means, by printing her title as she desired within the article.

As of late, when reporters name, she goes by Nikki Brown. Along with being acknowledged statewide as a performer, she’s a foster dad or mum of three, a doula, a grandparent, and serves as caretaker of the Emerson Road Backyard in North Portland.

“I get annoyed after I hear, ‘We don’t have this and we don’t have that,’” says Brown. “Simply go do it.”

When Brown took on the caretaker function in early 2022, she didn’t know a lot in regards to the technical features of gardening. She simply noticed the necessity and hoped her potential to deliver folks collectively would assist transfer the challenge ahead.

The primary neighborhood actions that Brown led on the backyard had been cleanups to take away needles, trash, and different objects. A person who had been tenting on the web site even helped with cleanup efforts.

Afterward, an older Black Muslim girl volunteered to show Brown and others about gardening, and the Emerson Road Backyard, which now contains an environmental classroom, has been lively ever since.

On days when Brown is struggling to search out the motivation, she loves getting calls from Black ladies who’re fascinated with making an attempt their hand at gardening and organizing impromptu get-togethers. She additionally loves organizing gardening actions particularly for youth.

Figuring out that Portland is a hub for transplants, Brown sees particular significance in Black Portlanders main initiatives just like the Emerson Road Backyard. She’s spent most of her life residing in Northeast Portland, the place her household moved to from Louisiana when she was six months outdated. That is her second stint residing within the Emerson Road neighborhood.

“Individuals don’t perceive how essential it’s to keep up our historical past as Black Portlanders,” says Brown. “I can’t unsee the landmarks that was once right here.”

It shouldn’t come as a shock then that what drew Brown to the Nation of Islam again in 2012 was the group’s fame for neighborhood outreach and the chance it offered her to personally dive into Black historical past. Considerably satirically, the following journey led her to embrace the title Nikki Brown.

“I now not must combat to show that that is what a Muslim is,” says Brown. “I noticed {that a} good Muslim is only one who submits to God, and if I’m doing that, my work will converse to it, and folks will see that.”

“You need to say what you need to be heard”

When Nikki Brown speaks about her name to serve the neighborhood, I can’t assist however consider Mac Smiff, one other particular person I met throughout my time at The Skanner. It was 2013, and Smiff was transitioning from a younger rap profession to a writing profession. He remembers performing on the Portland State College park blocks throughout his lunch break, nonetheless sporting his work uniform.

Within the early 2010s, he started running a blog, and shortly after, he began writing for We Out Right here Journal, a Northwest hip-hop way of life weblog, the place he finally turned the editor and proprietor. Since taking the helm at WOHM, Smiff has put a serious emphasis on partaking the town and nation alike with the story of Portland hip hop.

Seeing and filling neighborhood wants was one thing instilled in Smiff early on. In 1992, his household moved from New York to an space of Clackamas that’s now Comfortable Valley. They discovered neighborhood on the Muslim Neighborhood Heart of Portland, and his mother and father had been concerned in serving to construct the Islamic Society of Southwest Washington masjid in Vancouver.

At WOHM, Smiff has created a platform for numerous rising writers (full disclosure: I wrote as a columnist for WOHM on and off between 2014 and 2016) and used the platform to affect politics. Particularly, the location has shone a highlight on Portland’s police profiling of hip hop, in addition to police brutality and corruption typically.

The weblog, together with native companions corresponding to DJ Verbz, Vortex Music Journal, and Portland State College, has additionally fostered the rise of The Thesis, one in every of Portland’s premier hip hop showcases. The month-to-month occasion at downtown Portland’s Kelly’s Olympian has been lauded for consciously incorporating native photographers and an unwritten “no extra straight dude exhibits” rule, guaranteeing each present highlights the range of the native scene.

“Individuals have mentioned The Thesis is activism, in a means,” says Smiff, “as a result of it does search to show by instance.”

When Portland’s racial justice protests started in 2020, Smiff used his media expertise and expertise as a “connective tissue particular person” to offer common protection on the bottom and function a constant mouthpiece to voice the feelings of the neighborhood to the press. In reality, he emerged as one of the quoted folks through the 2020 protests and amassed a big following on Twitter.

Smiff tries to maintain the eye in perspective. “Most of those persons are following me as a result of they only need some form of protest information,” he says. “They need some info on what’s occurring with the cops. They need some rhetoric to run with.”

Just a little over a decade in the past, Smiff was rapping in his work uniform on the PSU Park Blocks. Now, his imprint will be discovered throughout the town, from the crowds he addresses on the Multnomah County Justice Heart and Kelly’s Olympian, to the youth he educates on the Numberz FM content material camp and his WOHM artistic workplace.

Finally, he says his talking acumen comes from a easy lesson discovered whereas on stage and from working for years within the media: “You need to say what you need to be heard.”

“Coming to America, I had this concept that anybody who’s Black is from Africa”

For as a lot of a tradition shock because it was for Mac Smiff and his household to maneuver from New York to Clackamas, it was that rather more of a transition for Nafisa Fai and her household. They immigrated from Somalia within the Nineteen Nineties, when Fai was seventeen, to flee the nation’s civil conflict. Earlier than starting the immigration interview course of, she’d by no means even met a White particular person.

As soon as in Portland, Fai’s household was positioned in a housing growth occupied largely by different African immigrant households close to Northeast Portland’s Dawson Park. Early on, she spent loads of time listening, making an attempt to choose up on the nuances of American tradition and her new neighborhood.

She remembers the best way ladies at her highschool would comply with her and her sister round as a result of they had been holding palms. Her uncle prompt she write the ladies a letter to ask them what they needed. When Fai did, the ladies wrote again that they thought Fai and her sister had been lesbians. She later transferred to a different college, the place a classmate thought she was Samoan, they usually bought right into a confrontation. The 2 would in the end grow to be good buddies, however it was all a part of a social studying curve. This was very true when it got here to understanding the complexities of Portland’s Black neighborhood.

“Coming to America, I had this concept that anybody who’s Black is from Africa,” says Fai. “I discovered in regards to the totally different ethnicities throughout the Black neighborhood.”

Fai finally translated these experiences into founding the Pan African Pageant of Oregon in 2017. She was initially going to name it Marcus Garvey Day however settled on an umbrella time period that particularly highlighted all Black communities. That includes meals, companies, and dwell performances showcasing the African diaspora, the Pan African Pageant has since grow to be an annual occasion and a Portland favourite.

With the success of the pageant, Nafisa turned her eyes to politics. She went by the Emerge Oregon program, which recruits and trains Democratic ladies to hunt public workplace, after which efficiently ran for Washington County Commissioner in 2020. As the primary Black and Muslim girl to carry the place, she and her marketing campaign acquired a extra virulent model of the bigotry she confronted rising up—this time from a good portion of her largely White constituents.

“Once I was operating, anti-Blackness was actual. Islamophobia was actual,” says Fai. “They accused me of being a child killer. A terrorist. You title it.”

Fai has prided herself on not permitting the hatred to distract her. Likewise, she rejects notions that search to divide both Black or Muslim communities from inside.

“In the case of leaders, I prefer to assume we’re getting smarter, studying from previous experiences and unifying to say, ‘We’re Black,’” says Fai. “Disaggregating Blackness is a distraction and doesn’t assist us. The aim is to get as many sources as doable funneled into our neighborhood.”

“The kids nonetheless deserve magic”

Whereas they may appear to signify totally different sides—the politician and the activist— Fai and Smiff show that management is a puzzle made up of quite a lot of items. A type of items may even put on inexperienced hair and a clown nostril.

Regardless of experimenting with clowning and changing to the Nation of Islam across the similar time, Nikki Brown personally struggled to embrace her clown character early on. Particularly, she regarded on the work of her friends like Imani Muhammad (who inspired Brown to hitch the NOI), Mattie Khan, and Michelle X Pratcher and felt like clowning didn’t measure up.

That each one modified when she was invited to carry out on the Nation of Islam’s Nationwide Savior’s Day conference in 2013. She discovered peace in her function, she says, strolling by the Savior’s Day youngsters’s village and observing younger folks enjoying video games, getting their faces painted, and using the carnival prepare.

“In any activism, there’s youngsters,” says Brown. “In our combat for freedom, the kids nonetheless deserve magic. The kids nonetheless deserve enjoyable.”

She likens the kids’s interactions along with her to these of theme park mascots like Minnie Mouse or Spongebob Squarepants. The large distinction, in fact, is that Nikki Brown Clown appears just like the Black youngsters she serves.

“Black youngsters not often get to expertise icons who’re human,” says Brown. “To face subsequent to Nikki Brown Clown is to say, ‘Perhaps that could possibly be me,’ or ‘Hey, that’s my buddy.’”

— Bruce Poinsette, For Oregon Humanities