Held to answer

She was a picture of Aryan perfection: Blonde hair, the color of straw. Creamy complexion. Pale eyes. Thin, colorless lips. Blonde on blonde on blonde.

She followed me into the Saffron Colonial Cafe in North Portland where I had taken a seat for a late Sunday lunch.

“I want you to know that what you said out there, I found deeply disgusting.”

No, what she and the other half-dozen protesters outside this new restaurant really found disgusting was that I had the audacity to disagree with them.

I had stopped to look at their makeshift shrine of candles, incense and handwritten signs protesting this restaurant specializing in Colonial and English breakfasts, lunch and tea. Among the handwritten signs:

“I mourn for those who were raped, tortured, enslaved and killed by colonizers.”

These protesters mourn in the present tense, but what they are mourning is long past.

There is still rape, torture and enslavement, but it’s not by colonizers or Portland restaurateurs. It’s home-grown, native-on-native.

New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl Wu Dunn document in their book, “Half the Sky” the rape, torture and enslavement that hundreds of millions of girls and women – particularly in Africa and Asia – suffer today.

For example, in the Congolese region of Africa, black women working in the fields suffer gang rape at the hands of warring tribesmen, who are armed not just with guns – but with a sharpened stick for a particular purpose.

After each rapist takes his turn raping a girl or woman, they shove the stick inside her, puncturing her bladder and rectum, leaving her with a fistula – or hole – to leak urine and feces and facing banishment by her villagers. (Fistulas are also often the result of inadequate medical attention during childbirth, and these poor mothers are accorded no more sympathy than rape victims.)

So what did I say to the protesters outside Saffron Colonial that the blonde found so disgusting?

Looking at a young black woman in the group, I told her: “I would rather be a black man in America than a black woman in Africa.”

The black woman said nothing in reply, but there was an acknowledgment in her eyes that she had heard me. Had she wanted to, I have no doubt that she was capable of responding on her own. She didn’t need a white Missus (or Marse) to speak for her.

Perhaps the young Aryan wanted to show off. Perhaps she is one of those who need to believe in white privilege in order to feel superior. There are white people who need white privilege to exist so they can be in a position to show noblesse oblige to “persons of color.”

Whether or not her black colleague appreciated her intervention, the Aryan who followed me into the restaurant was ordered to leave by the owner.

I ordered the Spitfire Beans on Toast.

The first and only time I’ve ever had beans on toast was in Garforth, England.  I was in my early 20’s and traveling to Europe for the first time. Growing up in Oregon, I’d had an English pen-pal (that’s what you did before the Internet). We lost touch after high school, but I wrote to her old address figuring her parents probably still lived there.

She was still in Garforth, now married with two children. Her husband worked for the railway. I spent one night in their home, and for dinner we had beans on toast. The beans tasted like the kind you find in Van Camp’s Pork and Beans, and they were served on thin, toasted bread.

Saffron Colonial’s Spitfire Beans on Toast were more savory and slathered on thick, grilled bread, topped with a coddled egg. Normally it would have cost $9, but because of the protests the restaurant was charging nothing.

Starting a restaurant and making a go of it is hard work in the best of times.  Yet this is the target of these Portland protesters. It has had its desired effect.

Saffron’s coffee supplier, Ristretto Roasters, announced it is cutting ties with the restaurant. (Maybe Ristretto can also create a special roast called The New McCarthyism.)

The same day these protesters were taking a stand outside the Saffron Colonial, suicide bombers in Lahore, Pakistan detonated blasts in a park popular with families and children, killing at least 72 and wounding about 340. According to many news accounts, a large number of Christian families were in the park celebrating Easter holiday. One suicide bomber was within several feet of a children’s swing set. A splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban claimed credit for the bombing.

What would the young, left-wing fascists outside the Saffron Colonial do if confronted with young, right-wing fascists? Would they recognize a kinship? The primary difference is that the media, particularly in the entertainment business, are more inclined to indulge the fascists on the left.

Comedian Hari Kondabolu, who was born in America but uses his Indian ancestry as his shtick, was quick to join in the attack on Saffron Colonial  with a Tweet: “Hope it ends quicker than colonialism.”

Kondabolu is so Americanized he probably thinks Gandhi ended the caste system. (Not only did Gandhi not end the caste system, in a political maneuver he undercut a highly educated Untouchable named Bhimrao Ambedkar, who might have succeeded where Gandhi failed.)

Kondabolu’s politics are so predictable he probably thinks white colonialists started the caste system. The protesters outside Saffron Colonial don’t know any better, either.

Under India’s caste system, roughly one out of six Indians is regarded as Untouchables — the lowest Hindu social class.

“Untouchables are outcasts – people considered too impure, too polluted, to rank as worthy beings,” writes Tom O’Neill in the June 2003 “National Geographic” (accompanied by William Albert Allard’s photography. If the poor dear who approached me in the restaurant thought I was disgusting, she should see these photos).

“Untouchables are shunned, insulted, banned from temples and higher caste homes, made to eat and drink from separate utensils in public places, and, in extreme but not uncommon cases, raped, burned, lynched, and gunned down.”

This is going on now, in the 21st Century.

If the protesters outside Saffron Colonial want to do something about current sufferings in African nations and in India, if they want to make amends for past colonialism, they should stop trying to destroy a local business. They should join the Peace Corps.

There are a wide variety of volunteer openings – many of them in African nations.

The work involves living in remote areas, exposed to health and safety risks that most Americans (of any skin color) rarely experience. The women outside the Saffron Colonial might want to pay special attention to the 2015 Peace Corps Sexual Assault Advisory Council Report.

For their purposes, though, it would be easier to stay in comfortable Portland, and try to shut down a small restaurant.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons

UPDATE: The owners of Saffron Colonial bowed to the young fascists and changed the name to “British Overseas Restaurant Corporation,” a play on British Overseas Airways Corporation, an airline popular with expatriates.

Armed with this huge victory, maybe now the Portland fascists can find a more meaningful cause. Let’s see, last month India’s agriculture ministry announced that 2,806 farmers committed suicide in 2015 due to “agrarian reasons.” Farmers in some parts of India are apparently regarded as “dumb Indian peasants.”

Perhaps the Portland fascists can get word to Hari Kondabolu so he can show his appropriate concern.