Chenoweth Weighs In On Diversity Lawmaker Joins Opposition To Minority Hiring

U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth said Friday that North Idaho has plenty of ethnic diversity, and she’s against the Forest Service trying to recruit minority workers who she said simply aren’t attracted to the region.

“If it were attractive to individuals maybe in the Hispanic community, Afro-American, to be in Northern Idaho, well, they would be here,” she said. “It’s an area of America that has simply never attracted the AfroAmerican or the Hispanic.”

The 1st District congresswoman said weather might play a role.

“The warm-climate community just hasn’t found the colder climate that attractive,” she said.

Idaho Human Rights Commission Director Marilyn Shuler said she found those comments puzzling.

“Spokane has a fairly large black population, and that’s the same parallel,” Shuler said. “Seattle is just as far north, and it has a large African American population.”

Shuler said she also was surprised at Chenoweth’s comments because she recently returned from a community meeting in Coeur d’Alene organized by business leaders. “There was a concerted effort to determine what could be done to turn around the negative image that North Idaho has, because it is incorrectly perceived as a haven for white supremacists,” Shuler said.

Doug Cresswell, president of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, said, “I think our concern is the image of North Idaho is one of a haven perhaps for racists and bigots, and we need to do what we can to change that. I think that people don’t feel welcome in North Idaho because of that perceived image.”

Chenoweth, whose comments came after the taping of KTVB-TV’s “Viewpoint” public affairs program in Boise, said she supports Kootenai County Commissioner Ron Rankin’s efforts to fight minority recruitment at the Panhandle National Forest.

“When we import migrants from other areas to take jobs that could be handled by that 10 percent of unemployment in Kootenai County, we’ve lost the focus of what Teddy Roosevelt thought,” Chenoweth said.

Roosevelt believed the Forest Service should “enable local communities,” she said.

“I really think there is ethnic diversity in Kootenai County and in Northern Idaho, when we look at all the cultures that settled up there,” the second-term congresswoman said. “We have Poles, people from Scandinavia, people from England, people from Italy.”

She said, “I think in regard to the Hispanics, they come in to work the fields to help support their families back home, and we just don’t have that much agricultural crop harvesting up north. They were just never attracted to the logging industry.”

Although North Idaho is mostly white, she said, “I don’t think it’s the role of government to…force this issue… I think we should be the kinds of people that others would be attracted to. But I think as we look at our neighborhoods in the future, what we want to see down the pike are areas that are productive and peaceful, and a climate that can cause humans to prosper.”

Shuler said corporate leaders have told her that a diverse work force tends to be more creative and innovative. “Indeed, some people suggest that this is why America is so on the cutting edge…in research and development.”

Plus, she said, some Idahoans are concerned that when their children enter the military, go off to college, or seek employment outside the state they won’t be well-prepared to succeed in a diverse world.

“Being very homogeneous deprives us of the pleasure of each other’s company,” Shuler said.

According to 1994 census estimates, just 3.7 percent of North Idaho’s population is non-white.

Chenoweth said of Idaho’s homogeneity, “I think it exists, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing, and I don’t think it’s a problem that government should invest its resources in.”

“Government should invest its resources if something is harming a group of people, but I have to ask, where is the harm?”

, DataTimes