Racial Insult Directed At Nic Club Leader Equality Club President Targeted In Campus Incident; Police Investigate

A campus human rights club leader says a racist insult against him Thursday won’t slow efforts to promote diversity on campus.

Josh Buehner, 19, president of the NIC Human Equality Club, was walking to his truck after class Thursday when he was approached by a man who called Buehner a “nigger lover.”

“I know what you do. You think you can protect them,” he then told Buehner.

Caught off guard, Buehner said he told the man he was sorry that’s what his impression was.

The man, whom Buehner described as white, in his early 20s with short brown hair, then added, “We think you are just like one of them,” before spitting on Buehner.

The incident was reported to the Coeur d’Alene police and is under investigation.

The Human Equality Club promotes diversity on campus and helps organize activities like the annual Martin Luther King celebration.

More recently, club members posted fliers throughout campus announcing their next meeting.

“Josh’s photograph hasn’t been in the paper, so I am trying to figure out how he was spotted and targeted,” said the club’s adviser, Tony Stewart, who is also active in the Kootenai County Human Rights Task Force. Human rights watchdog groups are meeting a week from Saturday in Sandpoint to assess the region’s concerns about racism.

That meeting, in part, stems from several complaints from Boundary County. The Idaho Human Rights Commission said racist fliers were left illegally in mailboxes, on public school grounds and at businesses countywide. The flier’s anonymous authors show contempt for migrant workers at Elk Mountain Farms, an Anheuser-Busch hops growing operation.

It holds five former county commissioners responsible for the “forced implantation of aliens,” and specifically singles out a woman hired as the minority needs employer in the Bonners Ferry employment office.

“The next time you walk into one of the local markets with your family and a group of Mexicans stares at your wife and daughter as if they have never seen a woman before you can thank those individuals who were in the office of county commissioner between 1986 and 1988,” the letter reads.

Boundary County Human Rights Task Force member Grace Siler said many angry community members have filed complaints and asked the postal service and local sheriff’s office to investigate the source of the fliers. Siler suspects the authors are not local.

“I’ve lived here about 10 years and while people can be racist, I have never heard anybody worry about who looks at their wife and daughter. This is a Southernism,” Siler said.

Buehner’s harasser referred to “we,” and the Boundary County flier also makes reference to its authors as “we.”

Buehner said he’ll be more cautious of the company around him, but doesn’t plan to scale back his efforts on behalf of the club.

“Obviously it scares me to think that somebody has zeroed me out, but it also motivates me, knowing there is a lot of work to be done.”

He filed a police report Friday and said he will pursue harassment charges if the perpetrator is identified.

“We want to send a message out to our community that we aren’t going to tolerate these types of actions here on campus,” Buehner said.

A few upset students have called Buehner to offer support, while Interim President Ronald Bell said the college will take swift action if the harasser is identified as a student. “I’m so saddened by this. I’m not from here but it fits the stereotype,” Bell said. “When you say North Idaho it’s what people will tell you.”

All you can say, Bell said, is that “most people here aren’t like that.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Cut in Spokane edition

This sidebar appeared with the story: COMING NEXT Human rights watchdog groups are meeting a week from today in Sandpoint to assess the region’s concerns about racism.