TRUTH. Until White AmeriKKKa comes to terms with its comfort with and support of the horrific lie of white supremacy, nothing will change, no matter how much lipstick is put on the pig. Oregon is the Mississippi of the PNW. And as it is MLK Jr. day (thank you, Coretta Scott King), and the white supremacist in the White House is spending his day golfing, let us remember some things MLK Jr. said that the white washing racist AmeriKKKans would like to forget:

Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?

And what is it America has failed to hear?...It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.

Ahhhh, making assumptions. I'm white and sick to fucking death of white supremacist assholes in Oregon and AmeriKKKa.

Oh and white people play the race card every day, as they walk around in their privilege. Remember: accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.

The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity. - Martin Luther King Jr.

I smell Soviet? See #4 again: accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.

Portland is about as white as it gets - at least when we're only perpetuating the conversation as if only white and black people exist. It doesn't take a scholar to read some books and understand that we have a marked history of institutionalized racism. That being said, the white guilt being taught and embellished in the community is functioning by white people for white people simply to make themselves feel better in the face of increased scrutiny on "racist" public policy and overt racism in the media. The progressiveness and quasi-liberalism people adopt doesn't help minorities or people of color.

Example: we continue to have this white vs black conversation. BLM is a household name and our rallies - demographically speaking majority white - occupy the Portland streets the moment tragedy strikes in the United States. Statistically speaking, more Hispanic men are shot by police in the United States than Black/African - American, led only by white men shot by police. To bring it closer to home, the statistics on police related shootings and deaths in Portland are available on the cities website, and you'll learn than since 2003 Portland has had three times the number of white deaths, followed by Hispanic, followed by Black. And if you're worried about weighted statistics, I'll agree that proportionately speaking Black vs White is unbalanced based on the population figures. However, the Hispanic population leads the Black by a percentage and a half, yet has experienced twice the number of police shootings and deaths. Point in case : why do we continue to polarize this conversation?

I know that's a digression from the post and other comments. But I believe it relates back to the point of blind-liberalism whites are adopting in the city. The purpose means well, the people have good intent to remove racism from the public sphere, but they are ignoring the fact that we live in bubble with a terrible sampling of what systemic racism actually looks like while concurrently ignoring the issues that are plaguing other minority communities.

Back to the post. I/A, I know it's easy to believe that white people are guilty for gentrification. But we shouldn't ignore that while some black families / home owners and business owners were pushed out by increased taxation, mortgage and rental rates, the majority of those properties and businesses were sold willingly. What's unfortunate is there weren't other people of color to move in when they moved out. The level of guilt that places on white people is marginal. If anything, the guilt can be placed on bank lenders, who are ultimately dictating (albeit based on capital assets and credit scores) who gets the loan to buy or invest in a property resulting in streets like Alberta becoming predominately white. Point in case: it it so much the fault of the "wealthy" white person buying a home or storefront, or the fault of the multi-layered institution which caters to them?

this dominant interest in race-relations is what I call quasi-liberalism because I honestly don't believe people are developing these philosophies for any purpose outside of it being popular. It sounds terrible to consider a socio-political position an accessory, but I'm not seeing much evidence to suggest otherwise. Our Native community continues to struggle and has become all but invisible. Our Hispanic community is suffering the same if not greater level of police profiling and are currently being pushed out of communities in SE Portland due to rising rental rates, and we are completely ignoring the fact that a greater number of white students in PPS district are statistically impoverished and going to school hungry than any other. Meanwhile, the "libtard" (I hate that word) community wants to talk about the Black experience and rationalize counterarguments away with points on weighted statistics ("but there's way more white people!?!?"). If people actually cared, they'd quit ignoring it, and they'd quit talking about it as much as they do. Action speaks louder than a BLM poster in your window.

#12. That person gets it.

Accusing Someone You Disagree With Of Being A Russian Troll Is Admitting You Have No Argument: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/accus…

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates