According to the 2013 US Census’ American Community Survey, Vashon is 94.9 percent white. Yes, that’s pretty white. We two writers are white.

Looking at the most recent issue of the annual “Vashon Island Child” of The Beachcomber, you’d think we were an exclusively white community. For the second year in a row, there is not one child of color pictured on the cover, and in the pages within, the most recent issue only has one child of color, and that’s in a paid advertisement for an off-island school.

As issues concerning race and social justice (appropriately, finally) fill the news and our social media feeds, important, sometimes difficult conversations are being had about race, identity and #BlackLivesMatter. When people push back against the idea of “white privilege,” we’re disappointed we can easily pull out an all-white issue of a magazine ostensibly for all island children and families and say, “Here, this is what it means. When you look around and all you see are images reflected back of people who only look like you and you don’t even notice — that’s white privilege.”

White privilege is constructed around perpetuating institutions, power structures and images in the media that serve to maintain white culture, white power and white perspective as dominant. We suggest that putting a message out to the world that this island and its educational opportunities are only for white children is a grave oversight and mistake. While Chelsie’s two children are black and Juniper’s two are white, they are all subject to the implicit and explicit messages contained in the media that surrounds them.

As readers of The Beachcomber, and residents of Vashon, we’d like the Beachcomber to take greater responsibility for the written and visual messages they send out. Because when they don’t, we all lose.

— Chelsie Irish and Juniper Rogneby