Portland is very proud of its equity lens. Flip through any new city policy or report and youâll see the phrase jump out at youâa subtle reminder to any reader that the city is incredibly woke. In theory, itâs great to know Portlandâs looking at big issues through a filter that considers race, gender, poverty, disability, and any other factors that disadvantage communities and individuals. In practice, though? That lens comes with a few blind spots.
For example, Portland has yet to use that equality lens to examine the cityâs 108 advisory boards and committees, the volunteer-led groups that hash out city issuesâinvolving anything from police reform to budget cutsâbefore the ideas reach city council.
Anyone with an extra hour or two a month can volunteer to join a committee. Anyone, that is, who subscribes to a newsletter that may mention it in passing; or stumbles upon a cluttered city website; or hears about it from a friend of a friend of a city staffer. Anyone who knows that city committees are things that exist. (Did you? Probably not!)
Unsurprisingly, the majority of people who apply to join a committee in Portland are those who apply for everything: white men. By now, youâve hopefully seen the data that cis white men systematically overestimate their qualifications for any role, while women, people of color, members of the queer community, and other minority groups severely underestimate their ability to succeed in the same role.
âJust like in the rest of our society, men tend to volunteer for everything and anything,â says City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who says sheâs watched this cycle repeat itself for decades. As someone whoâs occasionally been the only woman on a committee, she also knows how âunpleasantâ it can be to be the minority in the room.
At last weekâs city council session, Fritz stopped a vote that would have appointed five more men to the cityâs all-male Alternative Technology Committee. âThere doesnât appear to be anyone who appears to be a woman on this committee,â Fritz noted. âWhy is that?â
âIt could be no women applied?â a city staffer replied. âIâm not really sure.â Fritz asked her to go back and bring back a few female nominees.
Unlike in other areas of the city, the process of appointing individuals to advisory committees doesnât come with an equity lens. Thereâs no standard for guaranteeing the members of, say, the Golf Advisory Committee or the Floating Structures Board of Appeals represent the diverse communities impacted by their work.
Departments can request help from the Office of Equity and Human Rights (OEHR) to make more equitable committee choices, but itâs an optional step.
âWeâre kind of like vampires,â says OEHR spokesperson Jeff Selby. âWe have to be invited into your house before we can enter.â That means, he says, thereâs little consistency in member diversity across these committees.
But wait! Thereâs hope. In November, the city council approved a resolution that would create stricter standards for advisory boards and committees. According to Suk Rhee, director of the Office of Neighborhood Involvement (soon to be renamed âOffice of Community and Civic Lifeâ), sheâll be hiring someone in the next few months whose sole job is to create those standards.
âWeâre not interested in tokenism,â Rhee says. âBut we do need different perspectives to benefit from our cityâs diversity.â
Will new policies help bring more voices to our currently scattered and unbalanced committee system? Itâs likely. But, as Fritz notes, new rules can only go so far.
âWe can create new policies until weâre blue in the face,â she says. âBut we canât do much until we change hearts and minds.â