Portland may be the whitest big city in America, but unlike Seattle, its black population is not declining sharply. In fact, The Oregonian claims that “the number of black Portlanders increased 4 percent between 2000 and 2010” and the “metro area had nearly 5,000 black-owned businesses in 2012, a 42 percent increase over five years.” So, though the city is very white, and getting whiter every day, it is not all bad news for blacks. The post does a lot of white soul searching. It claims that there is a ton of white guilt about the increase in housing prices. That guilt is understandable because in 2015 the Portland Housing Bureau found that there wasn’t one Portland neighborhood that had a two-bedroom apartment that an “average African American can afford.” Not one.
The post also makes a great comment about IFC’s Portlandia, a popular comedy show that made lots of fun of the habits and schemes of white liberals and hipsters. Tellingly, many of the shows “iconic sketches took place in historically black areas.” But black people are not in one of those sketches. Not one.
The fact that Portland is growing even less diverse is also bad news for white people – not just people of color. A more diverse and integrated city offers a richer life for everyone.
I seriously don’t see how this is even an issue. People simply move where they move and live where they live, and anyone with any knowledge of sociology and runs a comparison of countries that are heterogeneous versus those that are homogeneous will see that in fact people tend to get along better more when they are pretty much the same (Iceland as opposed to Pakistan, for example). This is starting to feel a little hyper-liberal New World Order to me; “You will all love each other OR ELSE!” Except that it seems to lay the burden of this on whites while turning a blind eye to infractions against this purportedly exalted ideal committed by those who aren’t. I can say confidently that I’m getting little love from my black peers on the streets and in housing; as such, I feel little love in return.