Feeling Pinch, Sandpoint Fights Its Racist Image

A Jewish couple pulled into town last week to ask about buying property. The woman refused to get out of the car, saying she feared for her safety because of the area’s neo-Nazis.

A Hispanic travel writer from a Dallas newspaper recently toured North Idaho by bike. He said he feared for his life the entire time.

Coldwater Creek, an international mail-order catalog company based here, gets calls from customers asking about former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, who moved here months ago.

A few Coldwater customers even have scolded operators, saying they want no part of a corporation based in such a “racist” community.

Those kind of tales have sent a shiver through residents and the business community. Now, some are organizing to fight back and rub the tarnish off Sandpoint’s reputation.

“Our concern is if that image doesn’t change, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Brenda Hammond, president of the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force.

“If we become known as an area for racists, then people who are racist will come and others will stay away.”

The Bonner County Board of Realtors, Chamber of Commerce and task force are banding together this week to plan a defense.

“Part of the problem is we know what a wonderful, diverse place this is. When we are portrayed as racist we tend to shrug it off because we know it’s not true,” said local real estate agent Debbie Ferguson. “But that is what people all over the country are reading about us, and they believe it.”

Ferguson has collected newspaper and magazine clippings from across the country that depict Sandpoint as a burg of bigots and haven for whites.

“It’s gotten crazy. There’s hardly a day that goes by when we don’t have someone asking about the Aryan Nations or Mark Fuhrman. I have a whole list of incidents about people who are now avoiding this area.”

Buyers working with Ferguson’s firm just canceled a $600,000 deal after friends convinced them not to move “up there with all those racists.”

Bonner County is already home to Louis Beam, a former grand dragon for the Ku Klux Klan and America’s Promise Ministry, an anti-Semitic church.

But what focused the national spotlight here was Fuhrman’s arrival and tape-recorded racial slurs he made years ago. Renewed interest in white separatist Randy Weaver and his deadly standoff three years ago with federal agents at Ruby Ridge also has been a factor.

“Clearly there are concerns about the publicity we have received. This is a problem for the community and we need to think through very carefully what our response will be,” said Chamber Executive Director Jonathan Coe.

The group will meet privately Wednesday to get organized. Members are seeking help and advice from the state Department of Commerce and the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, which won national recognition for standing up to the Aryan Nations in the 1980s.

“We don’t have any answers yet,” Coe said. “We are just taking the first step.”

Turning the tide of negativity won’t be easy. Some businesspeople already deny the publicity has affected tourism or business, Hammond said.

“Some would rather keep their heads in the sand and do nothing. They think if we don’t bring it up the media will just leave us alone, but that hasn’t been the case recently.”

Reporters coming from California to cover the Fuhrman story have asked whether they should fear for their safety. One news organization even decided against sending a black journalist.

“The national media has been eager to suck all this up and now we have to be loud too,” Hammond said.

, DataTimes