Portland is racist and classist as fuck. You care about that and want to change it, so you reject your parents financial help, dress "down" to look like you came from different means than you did, and value any person of color as a friend over anyone else. Because you're cool, lady. The problem is, all the shit you are doing is racist, classist, and laughable to people who struggle daily with oppression. Rejecting financial help that's offered to you just looks stupid to anyone without the access to that help. Trying to make friends with people of color because of their race IS RACIST, DUMBASS. The reason you might be finding it hard is that people of color are people JUST LIKE YOU, and they can smell your desperation to interact with them. People generally want to be valued for who they are, not placed on your self-congratulating "Friends of Color" trophy wall. Nobody is patting you on the back for all the sacrifices you've made in your life to try and equalize the horrible class disparity, they just think you are stupid because now you have rotten teeth and no health insurance (yet managed to cover yourself in expensive tattoos). Isn't it time for a paradigm shift? People like you, who needlessly hate who and where they came from, are a detriment to the liberation movement we actually need. What's more, it's a lazy, self-involved, ego-based response. If only you could put yourself and your cultivated radical image aside long enough to see it.