By Candice Richardson
The Seattle Medium
Erin Jones is not what she seems. At a glance one might assume they know her story
Checking her out from head to toe, taking in her Afro, her skin tone, and her all athletic ensemble, they might draw some conclusions about where she comes from, what her family might look like, what she does for a living, even her age.
But chances are they’d be wrong.
She radiates a youthful energy that would suggest she’s a good 15 to 20 years below her age of 47. Watching her walk in at 6 feet tall you might assume she’s a professional athlete, however while she’s had her fair share of time on the basketball court, the mother of three who’s been happily married for over 25 years has been steadily crisscrossing the country speaking and consulting. Pair that with a photo of her parents (Scandinavian-American educators from Minnesota), and her K-12 graduation in The Hague, Netherlands (one mile away from the United Nations World Court), and one quickly realizes there’s much, much more to Erin Jones than meets the eye.
“She breaks a lot of barriers and stereotypes of being an athlete, being mixed race, being adopted,” says Khurshida Begum, one of Jones’ closest friends. “She has a magical way of telling stories, especially her lived experiences, so people can connect.”
Jones, who had a historic campaign for the Washington State Superintendent in 2016, where she lost by one percent of the vote, has held positions in the education sector as a teacher and administrator within Tacoma, Spokane, and Federal Way School Districts.
“Everybody can understand what she stands for and what she’s about. That’s not something very common,” adds Begum.
Jones settled in the Pacific Northwest 21 years ago after her husband, James, was offered a position as a youth pastor at Trinity Church of Pierce County in his hometown of Tacoma. At the time, the church’s youth ministry was 100% White.
Tacoma is a extremely diverse city,” says Rollie Simmons, whose father was the pastor that offered Jones the opportunity. “James was the right guy because of his character and his background. It was a plus that he was an African American because my dad wanted to make sure our leadership team reflected our community.”
Upon arrival, Jones played a central role alongside her husband in helping to achieve a church mandate to expand efforts to create a more integrated church. Today the youth ministry is 90% kids of color.
“She’s an initiator and she has the unique ability to walk across the room and initiate contact with people regardless of their walk of life or cultural background,” adds Simmons. “You’ll see her talking and making deliberate steps to find people she doesn’t know or even say the person that’s out in the margins.”
Jones’ ability to reach such people comes from firsthand experience of what it’s like to be categorized, stereotyped, and dismissed at first glance.
After her birth mother gave up her bi-racial baby daughter for adoption, Jones, who was adopted by Bruce and Dorothy Adamson of Minnesota, remembers how at the age of four walking through a mall with a family member in Grand Rapids and everyone stopping and turning to stare.
“There’s something about that when you’re a little kid, and people are only staring at you,” says Jones. “They’re not staring at other people. It is really uncomfortable. And as a little girl, I didn’t think about it being skin color. I had just thought somehow, for some reason, we don’t belong. And we moved to Europe so early in my life, that I got to have a really different experience there.”
Growing up in the Netherlands Jones says she never had to think about race or being different in Europe where she attended school with the children of international diplomats. All that changed on a trip to Washington D.C. when she was in high school.
“I’ll never forget getting off the plane at Dulles Airport and every single person was Black,” says Jones.
“We got off and had to walk down onto the tarmac and I’m suddenly aware these people look like me. And it was the first time that I could remember as an older kid being aware of my skin color and I just began to cry uncontrollably,” recalled Jones.
“My dad saw me crying, and he comes running back to the plane. ‘Honey, are you okay? And I said, ‘Daddy, you never told me there were this many people like me.’ And I remember this is the first time I’ve seen my dad cry. And he said, ‘Honey, I didn’t know, I’m from Northern Minnesota,” she says with a laugh.
Jones says that experience sent her on a journey of self-discovery. When she arrived back in Europe to finish her high school education, her parents scoured every American bookstore in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany and brought home all they could find on African American culture.
“I read every book I could get my hands on by James Baldwin and Maya Angelou, and Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker. When I did come back to the United States for college at 18, I knew more about Black history and Black authors than almost every Black person that I ran into,” states Jones. “That was powerful. And for my White parents to be willing to do that for me, and to learn alongside me, changed the dynamic even between us. To this day, they’re my greatest champions.”
Still, Jones wasn’t prepared for her return to the States to attend college at Bryn Mawr in Philadelphia. For the first time the young woman — who graduated number two in her class — was told she didn’t have the mental capacity to play basketball as well as succeed academically. She lost count of the times she was called the N-word the first six months of school. In a time prior to the internet and cell phones, with her entire family and support system across the Atlantic Ocean, the then 19-year-old became depressed and began to contemplate suicide.
“I would just lay in my bed in my dorm for hours at a time in the dark,” said Jones. “One night I prayed this prayer: God, would you just take my life? I think I’m a mistake. I think being adopted was a mistake. I think, moving to Europe was a mistake. I think believing that I could be a world changer was a mistake. I am too scared to shoot myself and I’m too scared to take drugs. Would you just let me not wake up tomorrow? And I woke up the next morning and I felt this weird urge to walk. I ended up in a tiny little community outside of Bryn Mawr where all the Black people lived who worked in the White people’s houses.”
Jones said she ended up on a basketball court where a man was playing with his sons and other kids.
“I played basketball with him and his boys that day, until the lights came on at 10 o’clock at night. And it was glorious. And it was the first time I felt like I was home,” says Jones.
The man she was playing with was none other than NBA legend Julius Erving, affectionately known as “Dr. J.” Having spent the majority of her life overseas, Jones had no idea at first that she was playing with the great Dr. J. But moreover, it was the conversation with the young men that ended up forever changing her life.
“Nobody asked me where I was from until the game was over,” said Jones. “I’m sitting on the sidelines with high school age Black boys and they started asking me questions about where I was from, they had no idea where the Netherlands was. And they’re all from North Philadelphia. All of them had dropped out of high school, and they talked about high schools that didn’t care about them, high schools that were falling apart and didn’t have enough books. And I remember asking: ‘So if you’re not going to graduate from high school, What’s your dream for your future?’ And each boy said, ‘I don’t have a dream for my future. Why would I dream? I don’t plan to live to be 21.’”
Jones, who up to that moment swore she’d never become a teacher like her parents, was seized with the realization of what she was going to do with her life and why.
“I knew in that moment how I was made Black and White for a reason,” Jones says. “I was made in America, raised in a country that believes in me for a reason. I was made a baller and an academic for a reason. And I will lay my life down for these babies.”
That realization sent Jones across the country teaching and connecting with youth, first as a volunteer at a predominantly African American school in Philadelphia, then working as a teacher for predominantly White private school in Indiana, before touching more integrated and diverse students in the Northwest.
“I love my experience at the private school but I knew that’s not where I was meant to be,” says Jones. “I knew those kids were always going to be fine. I knew public school kids needed teachers who really not only who really love them, but I knew with my kind of experience, having played basketball all overWestern Europe.”
Jones, who’s traveled to 14 countries and speaks four languages says she knew kids in public school needed to meet someone like her to know that they could branch out to do things like that too.
“I watch how communities write off kids. Whether it’s the Hilltop in Tacoma or the Southeast side of Seattle or its Hilliard and Spokane, we write off whole swathes of kids based on how much money their parents make or don’t make. And that to me is criminal,” states Jones. “I think every kid is gifted and talented. And our job is to call that out of them, to help them find their beauty and then to empower them to be able to become whatever it is that they want to be in the world. And I think that’s been the failure of public school is certain communities don’t get access and other communities do.”
Ensuring that access is what motivated Jones to run for State Superintendent, an experience that taught her even more about the delicacy and power of building bridges. After gaining momentum and support for her advocacy of access for underprivileged and marginalized students, her campaign faltered over a question on how to address the LGBTQ community as a woman of faith. Her response led an alternative weekly to rescind their endorsement of her.
“I think what I learned is that we don’t do nuance well in the political arena,” she continued. “You have to be either black or white, there’s no gray in the middle. And I live in the gray I ambi-racial, I physically embody the middle. And I just think it was unfortunate because I think a story was told about me that was not complete.”
Nowadays Jones, who is not sure if she’ll run for office again, works as a consultant for school systems, nonprofit organizations, and government entities covering issues such as race and equity, diversity training, and most importantly, building bridges through stories.
“People see me, and they don’t see bi-racial and raised by White people. They see Black woman. So they read me a certain way, and they tell my story,” says Jones. “If you’re telling a story about me, you’re not telling the right one because my face and my hair doesn’t represent the fullness of my story.”
