A closer look at Portland’s racist past
Portland today is still a white utopia. Legacies of its racist past still persist.
Welcome to The Breaking Point, a weekly newsletter that draws on the historical legacies of injustice based on the news cycle and culture trends to understand what in the world is going on.
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In the midst of a nationwide racial reckoning, protests continue to envelop parts of the country. In the past few weeks, all eyes have turned to the unrest that’s been happening in Portland, Oregon, an area that once held the title as the whitest big city in America. As someone who lived in Portland for a few years, I can vouch to the fact that no matter how liberal and blue the Rose City is, there is no denying the remnants of its racist past, especially outside the city’s borders.
Now, Portland is under siege after President Trump issued an executive order that authorized federal law enforcement officers to monitor cities across the country in an attempt to diffuse what he described as “criminal violence” and to protect federal monuments like statues, memorials, and whatnot. “The locals couldn’t handle it,” he said during a military briefing in Florida.
Before that, Portland Police handled the situation by using tear gas and impact munitions against protesters, even in peaceful and nonviolent protests. The matter only grew worse the minute federal boots landed the streets of Portland. Since the beginning of July, federal officers have so far demonstrated aggression towards protesters that ended with at least one person hospitalized and many snatched off the streets into unmarked vehicles, as first reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Read more: Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets by Jonathan Levinson and Conrad Wilson, Oregon Public Broadcasting
Photo by Christopher Brown on Unsplash
The question is why Portland? Portland’s racial-fueled and white power-driven chaos actually goes way back. I still remember the times I’d walk down the streets of a now gentrified and formerly redlined Portland neighborhood — or when big pickup trucks from Oregon’s rural areas would drive by downtown proudly waving Confederate flags. For BIPOC folks like me, these are triggering and anxiety-inducing events. But these recent affairs could actually be traced back to Oregon’s racist history.
Figure of the week: 80
The number of years John Lewis lived as a hero, civil rights leader, and a respected politician. Rest in power, Congressman.
Oregon has never really been welcoming to people of color. When it became a state in 1859, Oregon prohibited Black folks from entering and residing within its borders — literally the only state to do so. As I write this, I’m actually reporting on a story for Grist that focuses on Portland’s racist city planning policies, particularly redlining — the government sanctioned effort to segregate communities of color by refusing to give them housing loans and insurance.
In my reporting, I focused on a formerly redlined neighborhood in the city called Albina — once called the “slums” of the city. When redlining was banned in the 1960s, Portland, like other major cities across the U.S., launched “urban renewal” projects that ended up decimating previously thriving Black communities. During the construction of the Interstate 5 freeway, for example, Oregon transportation officials bulldozed through the heart of Lower Albina and demolished hundreds of homes. Now, the Albina neighborhood has gentrified. For more on my reporting, stay tuned at Grist for a story and video discussing the relationship between redlining, green spaces, and heatwaves.
Read more: The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America by Alana Semuels, The Atlantic
“With the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, Oregon’s laws preventing black people from living in the state and owning property were superseded by national law. But Oregon itself didn’t ratify the 14th Amendment—the Equal Protection Clause—until 1973. (Or, more exactly, the state ratified the amendment in 1866, rescinded its ratification in 1868, and then finally ratified it for good in 1973.) It didn’t ratify the 15th Amendment, which gave black people the right to vote, until 1959, making it one of only six states that refused to ratify that amendment when it passed.” — The Atlantic
During the nineteenth century, the state also had a thriving Chinese community. Chinese immigrants created a large enclave in Portland, serving as a key routing center for Cantonese workers migrating across the Pacific Northwest. But from 1870 to 1885, white people promoted and magnified the anti-Chinese movement in Oregon, performing discriminatory acts such as ridiculing and harassing Chinese folks. The movement gained momentum as state labor and political leaders moved to expel Chinese residents and exclude future Chinese people from the state.
It didn’t just stop there. White men raided and burned large buildings and businesses in Portland’s Chinatown. The most notorious incident occurred in 1887, when a group of white men massacred 34 Chinese miners in Hells Canyon in Wallowa County. These racist and xenophobic incidents are what led to the massive dwindling of Oregon’s Chinese residents. If you visit Portland’s Chinatown today, you’ll see very little remnants of Chinese legacy. Rather, you’ll see young people crowding the streets at night not to eat late night dim sum, but to get drunk in clubs and bars.
Source: The Oregon History Project, 2 August 1921
In addition, the historical dominance of the Ku Klux Klan made matters even worse than it already was for the communities of color. Historically, state and local leaders, including governors, mayors, district attorneys, police sheriffs, and beyond, had voiced their support for the KKK. Some even posed for pictures with the Klansmen that ended up published in local newspapers.
When you look at Portland today, you can still see a white utopia. Legacies of its racist past still persist. A 2011 audit of housing in Portland found that landlords and leasing agents still discriminated against Black and Latino renters 64 percent of the time. Meanwhile, a 2014 report from Portland State University and the nonprofit Coalition of Communities of Color show that Black folks still lag far behind their white counterparts in Portland when it comes to jobs, health disparities, and high school graduation rates. To put it in perspective, in 2009, annual income for white people in Multnomah County, where Portland is located, was roughly $70,000 — while Black folks made way less with just $34,000.
Amid the unruly chaos brought by state violence and repression in Portland, white voices are still the center of the conversation. There’s a photo circulating social media platforms right now, taken by Oregonian photographer Dave Killen, of a naked woman spreading her legs and using herself as a barricade between the officers and protesters. Killen tweeted that while it was a brave act, “it’s not really representative of the night overall or the protests as a whole.” Although I don’t want to assume the person’s background, the image did receive some criticism based on the assumption that the woman in the photo was white, while some claimed she’s actually a non-Black person of color with light-skinned privilege.
Back to the question: Why Portland? Portland has apparently been on Trump’s political radar, especially since outside of the Greater Portland area — and perhaps college towns like Eugene and Corvallis — Oregon as a whole is still a politically divided state. Trump may be trying to use Oregon’s past to gain support from white, rural, and conservative Oregonians.
But the president’s actions of crafting this “law and order” message in major cities should be of national concern. It’s not just Portland. We’re seeing federal officers gearing up in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore — all of which Trump specifically name-dropped and described as “all run by liberal Democrats.”
National reporters this week have been coming to Portland to report and bring more attention to the situation, which is great, but I fear it would overshadow the value of local journalism. Tess Riski, criminal justice reporter at Willamette Week, my old newsroom stomping grounds back in college, said it best in a tweet:
Local journalists have been on the ground risking their lives covering and investigating these stories since the beginning of the protests in May. So before I end this newsletter, I’d like to give a shoutout to all local and independent journalists working hard to cover these important stories. If you made it this far, please please please don’t forget to also support local journalism.
by Rachel Ramirez
What I’m reading …
When it comes to sustainability, the path forward might mean looking back by Yvette Cabrera, Grist
Little noticed, Filipino Americans are dying of COVID-19 at an alarming rate by Tiffany Wong, Los Angeles Times
Trump administration seeks to bar undocumented immigrants from a portion of the 2020 Census by Tara Bahrampour, The Washington Post
Opinion: I Know How to Cover a Portland Protest. So Why Am I Shaking? by Karina Brown, Courthouse News Service
We Reviewed Police Tactics Seen in Nearly 400 Protest Videos. Here’s What We Found by Talia Buford, Lucas Waldron, Moiz Syed, and Al Shaw, Propublica
thanks for reading, and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already. see you next week!