I spent last Friday morning on a charter bus stuffed with city employees, housing advocates and staffers from a diverse array of well-meaning organizations, rolling around the city on a tour of Portland discrimination. The tour is featured in the news section this week, but I wanted to post some photos of the highlights here. What’s really striking is how these places of dramatic, terrible encounters in our city’s history have become such mundane locations.
Take this Rite Aid and condo complex on the corner of NW 10th and Hoyt, for example. In the winter of 1944, Mayor Earl Riley decided the Gypsy communities who had recently come to town were no good for the city. He forced them to live in the 10th and Hoyt building before getting federal funds from FDR’s administration to ship them all to Texas. No joke.
The Golden West single-occupancy residence hotel just around the corner is now owned by Central City Concern and used for transitioning people off the street. But from the early 1900s until it closed in 1931, it was the only hotel black people could stay at in Portland. Yikes.
And then, of course, this 100% completely normal apartment complex just off of Laurelhurst Park in SE Portland was where skinheads beat Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw to death one night in 1988. When I stopped by, it was a sunny day and the cyclists and pear blossoms were out.
Oregon was one of the most racist states in America. Thank god we’ve got plenty of white liberal guilt to get things fixed now.
Amen Graham. Nothing like fighting the battles of decades ago. An afternoon of ‘see how bad you should feel?’ how fun!
I wish the city would “force” me to live in that building. Right now, I can’t afford it.
The 10th and Hoyt apartments have CARPET in them. Wall to wall.
This is the true crime here.
I was told there would be a sack lunch provided.
I remember when I was on the bus on my way to my Neu Lyfe~!(tm) in Portland and this old native woman leaned in over the bus seat and goes, “you’re lucky you’re part white kid, Portland, Oregon is full of racists.”
She said she hadn’t been to Portland since the mid-80s even though she lived about 40 minutes away.
I kinda gulped, but luckily, turns out things were fine. Even when I lived in Beavertron. I did get harassed at Clackamas Town Center, though, but no bigs.
“Nothing like fighting the battles of decades ago. An afternoon of ‘see how bad you should feel?’ how fun!”
If you think these battles ended decades ago, you are sadly mistaken D. besides this sort of exercise isn’t supposed to be “fun”, and it isn’t supposed to be about guilt either. It’s supposed to be about awareness of our history, and how it shapes the here and now. most of all it’s about addressing systematic and pervasive racism that continues to poison our community.