Sonoma County official’s departure rings alarm among local Black leaders

When Santa Rosa Vice Mayor Natalie Rogers talks about the racial bias she has experienced working as a mental health clinician for Sonoma County, one memory stands out.

About two years ago, Rogers was working on the county’s Access Team, which serves as an initial point of contact for people seeking mental health services, when a man who came in said he did not want to work with her because she is Black. He requested to work with another clinician, and was allowed to.

In a meeting with staff after the encounter, high-level supervisors told Rogers and her colleagues that clients have a right to say they don’t want to work with a particular employee due to their race, Rogers said.

The message left Rogers, who had not yet been elected to the City Council, feeling unsupported and led her to consider quitting the job. Reassurances from her direct supervisors, who told her they would do more to have her back if a similar situation arose in the future, kept her from filing her two weeks’ notice, she said.

“I realize we’re trauma-informed but when does trauma-informed stop? When someone comes in and starts being racist and demeaning, when does that stop and we begin protecting our staff?” Rogers said.

Rogers is one of several Black leaders who in recent days has spoken out about the racism and microaggressions they and other Black community members have experienced living and working in Sonoma County, which range from questions about whether they’re commuting into the area from Oakland to comments with racial overtones during work meetings.

Many coupled their accounts with what they described as disappointment with county leadership over the resignation of Sheba Person-Whitley, the executive director of Sonoma County’s Economic Development Board. In an Oct. 27 resignation email obtained by The Press Democrat, Person-Whitley said a pattern of racial bias and microaggressions made working for the county untenable for people of color.

Person-Whitley is leaving in December after 2½ years leading the economic development board for a job with the federal Commerce Department.

The news has sent shockwaves throughout Sonoma County, including among members of the county’s Black community. They say Person-Whitley’s resignation has rung an alarm throughout the region, raising questions about how the County of Sonoma treats its Black employees, establishes the culture they work in and supports them if trouble arises.

The withdrawal of Texas health administrator Derrick Neal, Sonoma County’s pick to take over its $275 million health services department, indicates those worries extend outside Sonoma County’s borders, those leaders added.

In an email, Neal, who is Black, said concerns about the treatment and experiences of department heads of color caused him to back away from the job.

Petaluma City Schools Board President Joanna Paun said the twin losses of Person-Whitley and Neal also have the potential to hurt diverse hiring efforts outside of county government as well.

Paun underscored the already small number of Black people who live in Sonoma County. The group is made of about 7,125 people that account for about 1.5% of the county’s population, U.S. census data shows.

“It does worry me that we’re going to have a hard time hiring diverse individuals and that they are going to feel protected,” Paun said, adding that boosting the number of diverse employees at the Petaluma City School District has been one of her goals since joining the board.

Person-Whitley’s resignation has stirred broader conversations about the hurdles Black leaders continue to endure in professional and social settings despite widespread local support for the Black Lives Matter movement last summer, when hundreds of people poured into local town squares and onto streets to protest racial injustice and police brutality.

It was amid those protests that the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors founded the Office of Equity and later hired former Chief Deputy County Counsel Alegría De La Cruz to lead the office.

Months later, the board incorporated racial equity and social justice as a pillar of its five-year strategic plan, a document that will shape the county’s priorities in the coming years.

Still, Person-Whitley is the second high-ranking Black female official to resign from the county this year. The other, former Department of Health Services Director Barbie Robinson, stepped down this summer to become the public health director for Harris County in Texas. Though she did not cite racism as the reason for her departure, Robinson did say working through issues related to race and gender was a challenge during her tenure.

“They say, ‘Look at us, it’s diversity,’ but they operate the same way,” said Nzinga Woods, the co-founder and chair of Sonoma County Black Forum, an organization that serves as an information hub for local Black residents. “The work environment is still the same, the pervasiveness of systemic issues … is still the same. Hiring a Black person doesn’t change that.”

Woods noted Person-Whitley’s experience is not an outlier for Black residents living in Sonoma County.

In the 10 years she’s lived in Sonoma County, Woods said she has personally experienced microaggressions, known as comments or actions, often subtle, that communicate hostility or lack of respect toward marginalized groups.

They include probing questions about where she lives, or assumptions about “commuting from Oakland” into Sonoma County, Woods said.

Nancy Rogers, the Vice President of the North Bay Black Chamber of Commerce and founder of Blacks United, a community group started last year, echoed that statement, though noted the significance of Person-Whitley speaking up about the issues she faced.

She sent the initial The Press Democrat article about Person-Whitley’s resignation to contacts within the Black United group after it came out with an urgent note to look at the story, Nancy Rogers said.

“One lady said, ‘This is not new. I work at an office and I’m the only Black (person) in the office and every time we go to meet, it’s racial comments,’” Rogers said of the replies to her email. “If Sheba had just left and not said much about it … then would we even know? And if it’s happening at a high level, what do you think is happening at the lower levels?”

Other Black leaders pointed to the treatment of Old Adobe Superintendent Sonjhia Lowery, who during contentious contract dispute between teachers and administrators earlier this year was described by Union President Diane Wolmuth as an “outsider” ill-equipped for leadership.

The Sonoma County NAACP was quick to call out those characterizations of Lowery, a Black woman hired in June 2020, as “coded and racially charged language,” though a group of Old Adobe Union teachers fired back, saying the NAACP was misinformed about Lowery’s leadership. Lowery did not respond to several requests for comment about the issue over the past week.

When asked about what she’s faced as a Black professional in Sonoma County, including two instances that drew significant public attention and raised community concerns about bias and racism, Paun said she feared retaliation and expressed a desire to put those incidents behind her.

Paun was dismissed as counselor at Kenilworth Junior High School in early 2018, a decision that fueled community speculation about whether the decision was racially motivated. Those accusations were never corroborated.

In 2020, St. Vincent de Paul High School terminated Paun, who was the dean of counseling, and a physical education instructor, the Catholic school’s only Black employees. The decision led to protests at the school, as well as a civil suit that was eventually settled.

“I don’t want to continue offering my pain and experiences for what feels like entertainment,” Paun said. “It feels like pure consumption and there’s no changes.”

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.