At a lecture in Portland last October, Isabel Wilkerson—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who wrote about the great migration of Black Americans from the south to the north—said that when people leave a place, it’s often a referendum on the very place they leave.
So then what does it mean when I, and other people of color (POC), walk away from Portland because we can no longer stomach its racism? What does it say about Portland and specifically, the failure of its liberalism?
I’ve been wrestling with these issues ever since I moved to Columbus, Ohio, in July. But before I left, I spent my last month in Portland traveling the city, asking POC how their experiences mirrored or differed from my own. What struck me was the very frank and seldom heard opinions by POC born and raised in Portland who are tired—understandably so—by new transplants like myself criticizing their city.
They have a point. Perhaps I was naïve in thinking I would like Portland. When my partner and I moved to Oregon in 2015 from Santa Barbara, California, I thought Portland might be the place for me. After all, it’s a literary city, a soccer city, a food lovers’ city, and a solidly Democratic city—four things central to my identity. But almost immediately after I arrived, I found myself eager to get out.
I quickly grew accustomed to being asked by white people about my ethnic heritage—whether at the grocery store, sports bar, or on TriMet—and learned to say that I’m Indian American in the first few minutes of practically every conversation, just to set them at ease. It never really worked. They specifically wanted to know about the “Mohamed” in my last name.
When I lived in other more diverse US cities, I didn’t feel such a pressing need to talk about race. But in Portland, I often felt forced to do so because of the daily slights I, and so many other POC, experienced. It was taxing and unfair—especially on my partner, who rightfully missed the days when I wasn’t so obsessed with the topic. And thanks to living in many other cities, I also know that racism doesn’t exist in only one locale (or in one economic/educational class). But part of what makes it so tricky to be a person of color in Portland is that the city is often in denial about its racism because it’s so liberal and progressive on other issues.
The thing is, I tried liking Portland. I even co-founded a podcast, Racist Sandwich—covering food, race, gender, and class—hoping it would make me feel at ease in Oregon. It never worked. Call me privileged, call me spoiled. Accuse me of taking up too much space in this city. These are all fair criticisms. In fact, I left last month with a heavy heart and many apologies to dole out, especially to the POC who were born and raised in Oregon, whose voices and experiences I fear I might have misrepresented or worse, muzzled.
But Portland was simply too much for me.
Despite all this, I’m conscious that my experience doesn’t speak for every person of color. I know many who thrive, and feel at ease in Portland. I also know those who, for various family or class reasons, didn’t have the option of leaving. And this makes me wonder: Do the new Portlanders of color—such as myself—do more harm with their talk of always wanting to leave? Do we not, perhaps, deserve some of the blame?
One Black woman I interviewed—who preferred to remain anonymous—regards new Portlanders of color like me to be just as annoying as the white gentrifiers who plant Black Lives Matter signs on their lawn while pushing out longtime Black residents.
“People use this term ‘people of color’ as if we are one mass group, united, and experiencing the same thing,” she said. “But I’ve seen some of these new POC perpetuate the same anti-Black sentiments that white people have. Besides, I think white people would sooner listen to an Asian person like you talk about race than a Black person. And these new Portlanders of color who aren’t Black realize it. They exploit that.”
For her, leaving Portland is not a viable choice. Her kids are in school here; her in-laws live close by; her sister is across town. But there’s another reason, too.
“I’m like the only Black homeowner left in my area,” she said. “Or at least it feels like that. I’m not planning on giving that up.”
But others I interviewed, including some newer residents of color in Oregon, reminded me that while it’s difficult to be a person of color in Portland, it’s still better to be queer here than in many other US cities.
Marina Rose Martinez-Bateman, a Latina from Los Angeles, recently became a Portland homeowner. When I asked why she decided to plant roots here, she cited the still relatively affordable housing prices compared to California, as well as a host of other issues.
“Because of the racism and the deeply held commitment to inequity, people ask how I can stand to live here,” Martinez-Bateman said. “My answer is I traded one form of oppression for another. In Los Angeles, the sexism and classism is overwhelming. There’s more opportunity here for me as a queer woman who grew up in poverty than there ever was in majority Latino LA.”
Several echoed her comments. One told me that to be non-binary in Portland is easier than in most other major cites. A few spoke with appreciation about the relative abundance of gender-neutral bathrooms compared with other states. Many spoke about needing to stay for family reasons. Some said they were encouraged by the progress they’ve seen POC make, and wanted to continue that progress.
But Tabitha, a recent college graduate who asked that I not divulge her last name, had different reasons for remaining in Portland: It provides contrast to her devoutly religious Filipina family.
“I felt so frustrated and mad, I needed to go to the least religious region in the US,” Tabitha said. “I guess I don’t really know what belonging to some place looks like yet. Portland is where I’m at right now.”
In the suburbs of Hillsboro, I met Mohamed Alyajouri, the outreach coordinator at the Muslim Education Trust. Alyajouri is a Yemeni American who grew up in Corvallis, a city that’s about 86 percent white. (Portland, by contrast, is roughly 76 percent white.) Like everyone I interviewed, he wishes Portland were more diverse, but also recognizes that compared to where he used to live, it’s much better.
“Besides,” he added, “it’s diverse enough for my needs. I found community here. I’m happy. My kids are happy.”
The numbers, of course, point to the irrefutable fact that Portland—and all of Oregon—is becoming more diverse, especially on its outer edges. According to Metro, the regional agency that serves the urbanized portions of Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington counties, “communities of color saw their share of greater Portland’s population rise from barely 3 percent in 1960 to almost 26 percent in 2010.” While Latinx individuals were once the fastest growing group, today Asians and Asian Americans in Oregon are increasing at a greater rate.
But the disparities are disconcerting. According to 2010 data, income for white Portlanders was about $62,000 per year. For Black Portlanders, it was $35,000—lower than the national average for Black Americans, which was $43,300.
These statistics, sadly, are the story of America. It always has been and Oregon is no exception. But residents of color told me that a bigger problem is that far too many white Portlanders are knowledgeable about these discrepancies, but remain complacent, even dismissive.
“The thing that trips me out about Portland is not that it’s so white. That’s just a numbers game that will change as the demographics shift,” said Robin Ye, a Chinese American recent graduate of the University of Chicago who is now once again in his native Portland. “The issue is that for many white people, they walk into an office meeting or classroom, see no people of color around, and feel like there’s nothing wrong about that.”
What makes matters worse, many told me, is the climate in Oregon post-election. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Oregon experienced the highest number of hate incidents per capita in the 10 days immediately following Donald Trump’s win. Some journalists, most of them white, wrote hot takes about those very numbers, claiming the issue is complicated and maybe even misreported. According to several POC I spoke with, it’s that “yeah, but” attitude and an overall dismissive tone that makes them feel unwelcome and trivialized.
This was the case for stand-up comedian Stephanie Patricio, an Indigenous person who moved to the Bay Area a week after the TriMet attacks in May.
“I’ve gotten pushed off of sidewalks. I’ve had my ass grabbed. Basically the Pacific Northwest is super toxic for people of color,” Patricio said. “As a stand-up comedian, it was very difficult to do my work, my craft. Being in the Bay Area I felt the tension release. Being away from Portland is kind of nice, though I miss my family and friends. I spent 20 years in the Pacific Northwest, but it’s been great to be around so many Black and brown folks in the Bay Area. All the time I think: ‘Oh shit, I made it out.’”
Taz Loomans, an Indian American, also moved to the Bay Area from Portland.
“In Portland, the most painful experience was that my white friends and colleagues very much resisted and refuted the idea that it was a difficult place for people of color.”—Taz Loomans
“I’m not saying the Bay Area doesn’t have race problems, because it does,” Loomans said. “But Portland was the Twilight Zone of race. You knew something was off and it felt really weird there as a POC, even though on the face of it everyone ‘means well and doesn’t have a racist bone in their body.’ Living in Portland made me hate white people! I came from Phoenix, which is a very diverse city, and I hardly ever thought about race there. In [San Francisco] I feel normal again cause I see people like me around everywhere. In Portland the most painful experience was that my white friends and colleagues very much resisted and refuted the idea that it was a difficult place for people of color.”
Others I interviewed expressed a desire to leave, but decided to stay because of the relatively cheaper housing costs versus, say, Chicago. One woman, who is Black and declined to be named, said she disliked being in Portland, but her fix for enduring the city was to “avoid white people at all costs.” She’s survived, she said, because she made adjustments.
“I don’t ride my bike at night,” she said. “No way. I’m Black. Even Black people are shocked to see Black people ride their bikes here.”
On the other hand, Jen Tam, a graphic artist and stand-up comedian, is torn about Portland, as were many other people of color I interviewed.
“Portland is racist and it’s hurting my career and spirit,” Tam said originally. But a few days later, she messaged me again to say, “I really love parts of the music and comedy scene here—especially our people of color groups. So in a very special and specific way, Portland has still fed me.”
Two words that kept coming up repeatedly in my interviews were “erasure” and “privilege.” Some POC—especially those born and raised in Oregon—told me that new Portlanders of color often speak so loudly and frequently about race that they ignore and even trample over those who have been having these conversations for decades. Others reminded me, correctly so, of how privileged I am to even have these conversations. For my friend Pam Phan, who was born and raised in Portland, home isn’t about liking a place. It’s about feeling stable—something that was engrained in her as the daughter of Vietnamese refugees.
And it’s true—Portland did give me a lot. I gained amazing friends, a keener understanding of LGBTQ issues, and the importance of asking a person for their pronouns of choice. But Portland also forced me to revisit parts of my childhood that I would rather put behind me, like episodes in my life when I was the only non-white person in the room, something I don’t have to deal with as often in Columbus.
Before we moved, my partner and I decided to treat ourselves to a dinner at a new critically acclaimed Portland restaurant that serves Middle Eastern food.
The décor was perfect, as was the service. I couldn’t, though, get past the fact that the tasting menu was called a “magic carpet ride.” Growing up in California, sometimes kids would come over and, after seeing my mother’s prayer Muslim mat in our house, tease me because they thought I carried a “magic carpet” like the characters in the Disney film Aladdin.
When I pushed back and said I was more than that, they responded I was being too sensitive, I had an attitude problem, and that maybe they might hear me if only my tone were “right.”
It hurt. It still does.
Shame can cause so much harm, of course—but sometimes it can be a force for good, for accountability. I sometimes wonder what Portland would be if it were more critical of itself, if a restaurant owner had thought, perhaps, that a person—especially a person of color—might walk into their restaurant and have a different history and a different association with a term like “magic carpet.”
I ordered a cocktail that night—a delicious but insensitively named “Eastern Maid.” When the waiter asked how everything was going, I did what I learned to do so often in Portland in nearly all-white spaces. I lied and said I was content.
Zahir Janmohamed is the co-host of Racist Sandwich, a podcast about food, race, gender, and class. In August, Saveur magazine nominated Racist Sandwich as one of America’s best food podcasts. He is now based in Columbus, Ohio. Follow him @raceandfood on Twitter.
It is ironic how racists leftists are. Thanks for this article.
You mean “paradoxical,” not “ironic.” And you mean “liberals,” not “leftists.” And your categorical assertion itself is anecdotal at best, not to be tossed around like known and established Fact.
But of course, it’s a comment in response to yet another badly written essay that is a list of minor annoyances conflated to major injustices, so who’s surprised?
It is curious to see people using diverse to mean “people like me”.
Columbus should be a lot better. Being from Ohio, I can tell you that it is a bastion of tolerance and inclusivity.
I try to be on the progressive side of racial issues, but goddamn, it gets hard to keep hearing that a traditionally white neighborhood that has more POC moving in is a positive thing but a traditionally non-white neighborhood that has more white people moving in is a negative thing is anything but racist. Honestly, can anyone explain this? Why should I feel bad that I moved to a mixed neighborhood where I could more easily afford a home?
The article’s topic aside, the author seems painfully self-absorbed. He’s at once aware of raping long-term inhabitants of their city and their voice and yet cavalier about it all. Maybe if he took his toxic masculinity and channeled the energy for better use, by sitting down and shutting the **** up so that lifelong-resident black womyn can speak, he’d learn something. He should apologize for this entire garbage bag of an awkwardly self-conscious, oppressive article.
It would be interesting to have some data to go along with the anecdotes in this article. What percentage of people moving to Portland are people of color? What percentage of them move away after a short period of time (say within 2 years)? How does that compare to the percentage of all people who move to Portland and then move away in a short period of time?
Interesting points, and I’ve heard this sentiment echoed by other folks so I don’t doubt it is part of the Portland experience for many POC. I would have loved to see some exploration of the economic dimension, ie. what is the relationship between a POC who has just moved here to work in the tech industry or Nike (or some other high paying job), and a native Black Portlander who grew up in Albina, or a refugee from Somalia living in East Portland and being displaced further and further out? He does touch on the native/non-native dimension a little, but the socio-economic factors are also huge.
Thanks Lauren. I agree that this article completely is a bit tone deaf to the struggle of long-term permanent Portland POC. We have seen a lot of pieces about disgruntled new residents of color who came here with economic status, and they are all useful mirrors, but this guy moved on, and maintains good employment and economic status. A lot of recent upper class transplants have been very vocal that Portland failed to be their personal utopia. The race issue is hugely important, but we have locals, without the same economic resources, that would be more valuable voices on this topic.
Good grief, cry more why don’t you? The very last paragraph is a perfect representation of how inane this article is. “Eastern Maid” was so traumatic that you have to write about it? Really? I guess people better start moving from wherever they are if they run across a drink called “White Russian”, “Moscow Mule, “Irish Coffee”, “Irish Car Bomb” or “Caesar”. Don’t get me started on foods, I mean “French Fries”! Come on! No, no, let’s all cry about the slights that have happened to us, or our parents or our great-great-grandparents, or whatever. Heck, my ancestors were conquered by the Persians and Romans, I guess I should start having serious issues with the Italians and Iranians, right? Pizza now officially offends me, every commercial I see is a direct slap in the face and I demand that pizza no longer be sold in America. Until this happens I will sit in the corner with my blankie and post irrelevant comments on the internet. Wait…America is named after an Italian! I demand that it be renamed too! If we’ve reached a point (and it sure seems like we have) where every single phrase can be interpreted as being racist, or some sort of phobia, we might as well turn off the lights and lock the door. We’re done.
This article doesn’t actually tell us how Portland is driving away people of color. The author’s only personal examples of Portlanders’ behavior that made them leave is people asking a lot about their ethnicity and the Mohamed in their name and a Middle Eastern restaurant with an offensive cocktail name. Come on that’s it? That’s racism and so bad that you had to leave a city?
I am also Indian American and live in Portland. I do get asked about my ethnicity sometimes and people often comment on my name ( oh where’s that from, what an unusual name, I’ve never heard that name before, etc). I don’t consider that offensive, they are curious. If I lived in many places that weren’t India, I would get similar comments. I have also lived in Ohio and comments I got there about my background were actually offensive and not driven by curiosity. In Ohio, I have been asked if I lived in a hut instead of a house in India (by my school teacher in front of the entire class), if people in India owned TVs, and when I said my name they said it was too hard to pronounce and asked if they call me Debbie instead.
Portland has its problem but this article really failed to articulate any of them. Personally, any hostility that I feel here from the progressives isn’t based on being a person of color, it comes from the fact that I has moderate political views instead of super liberal ones. There is intolerance for political beliefs here in Portland when they go against the progressives ones.
Portland got a little less racist the moment this guy moved out. Does the city owe you something? Hell no! You are welcome to live, work and play here just like everybody else regardless of race, sexuality, etc. I take serious issue with how prejudice the author is and he seems oblivious to it. Why do you capitalize “Black” and not “white”? Since when were minor everyday inconveniences signs of rampant racism? Oh, you have had your ass grabbed AND pushed off the sidewalk?!?! Oh my! How horrible! Guess what, Pocahontas, so have I and I’m a white man. Stop playing the victim and grow some thicker skin. There are real people out there with real problems and you aren’t one of them.
It seems to me this essay boils down to the fact and feeling that white residents of this city dismiss POC’s valid complaints about the lack of inclusivity in Portland. All of the comments on the article prove the point of the writer and the people he interviewed. Being defensive about our privilege won’t help our reputation with POCs. Listening to their observations and working with them to try to improve the long standing institutionalized and internalized racism in Portland could possibly help. I appreciate this article. It is a way for me to listen to people of color about this issue without having to do the hard work of asking them personally for their insight.
I always find it interesting when people say San Fransico is more diverse than Portland. If you take the Chinese American and radical queer element out of the equation, the demographics of Portland and San Francisco aren’t that different.
After another read through of the comments, I’d like to change my observation from “all of the comments” to “many of the comments”. There are many constructive comments as well.
Why should I care about “our” reputation with “them”? I do not represent anyone but myself, and I try to treat everyone I interact with the respect they deserve. Racism thrives when we treat people as members of groups rather than individuals.
Yep, and it enforces a terrible fallacy to say that anyone who disagrees with the author has “proved” his point. Also using the construct of saying that anyone who disagrees is just being defensive about their privilege is predictable and lazy.
This article was crap, and people have the right to say so: As many noted, his examples were poor, and his generalizations undermined his points further. The fact that several people he interviewed identify him as part of the problem, and rightfully so.
The worst part is that this is how The Merc always approaches race. It really oughta stop.
…because although people say we never discuss race in the U.S., I disagree. We talk about it all the time. Badly.
As far as Portland goes, there’s all sorts of people here; they come from all over. So a couple of anecdotes about some time you felt vaguely uncomfortable don’t really mean a damn thing as regards the city. You might well have been talking to someone who just moved here, say.
I’m not gong to be asking you questions about ethnicity, race, religion largely speaking until you bring it up. But – I’m always gonna treat an idiot like an idiot, regardless of who.
The real miracle, by the way, would be if we ever had an honest conversation about Class in America. That’d be a hoot.
speaking if racism in LA and Frisco – they both have distrcts adjactent to downtown that are culturally distinct. When I think of race in Portland being a problem for anyone non-white I think of downtown pdx. black Women don’t even come down here 🙁
Why are nearly all the “People of Color” identified by the specific national origin or specific culture of their ancestors: “Indian,” “Filipina,” “Vietnamese,” “Latina,” “Chinese,” “Indigenous,” and so on and so forth… But every “white” person is lumped into the same catch-all category? The author devoted an entire section of the article to “erasure,” but has no problem engaging in the same when it suits his purpose.
What the hell does “white person” even mean anyway? Can we please get a working definition of the term?
Are we meant to believe that every Albanian, Belgian, Cypriot, Dane, Egyptian, Frenchman, German, Hungarian, Italian, Jordanian, Kulak, Lithuanian, Montenegrin, Norwegian, Ossetian, Pole, Québécois, Russian, Spaniard, Turk, Ukrainian, Venetian, Welshman, Yemeni, and New Zealander (just to name a few) are all part of the same monolithic culture?
Why on earth does any person of color want to live in a predominantly white community?
Why not live in a predominantly black/Asian/Muslim/Jewish/Hindu/Native American community?
My goodness, you have the entire WORLD to choose from.
Try Bombay, Detroit, Calcutta, East St. Louis, Lahore, Compton, Mexico City, Baltimore, Peking, Camden, Dehli, Tel Aviv, or tens of thousands of vibrant, white-free zones.
If you talk to just about anyone anywhere about race–even to people who agree with you completely–you are almost guaranteed to have a bad day. String enough of those conversations together and you are guaranteed to feel uncomfortable.
So much whining
If you view life through the prism of race, you are a racist. That is the ironic state of the left. They obsess about race, it is their defining factor of existence. Not hard work or a kind heart nor a generous nature. It’s all about race, 24/7/365. Race defines who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor without the messiness of being oppressed or oppressing.
If you’re an officially designated ‘oppressed minority’, your life will suck for eternity regardless of what you do. If you’re white, especially a white hetero male; you are scum…. evil scum regardless of any good works you might have done.
This is the environment of the left and if you don’t buy into it…. you’re a racist or a traitor to your race. Such a lovely life.
“One woman, who is Black and declined to be named, said she disliked being in Portland, but her fix for enduring the city was to “avoid white people at all costs.” She’s survived, she said, because she made adjustments.”
Imagine the foaming SJW outrage if a white woman had said the same thing about black people. It would rightly be called racism.
Hey, @#20: did you just seriously claim that black women never go downtown? What in the serious fuck are you talking about?
What a sadly missed opportunity. Instead of approaching the subject with hope for solutions, love, compassion, open heart and self-critique, the writer instead indulges in escapist self-pity, malice, prejudice, snark, and projection.
The sum total of this piece is that Portland would be nice — with fewer white people The fundamental problem seems to be that white people have the temerity to exist:
“Her fix for enduring the city was to “avoid white people at all costs.’”
“The thing that trips me out about Portland is not that it’s so white.”
“Living in Portland made me hate white people!”
So the solution to this poor author’s suffering is immediate reduction in the existence of white people, then?
When a heart is so hardened by being asked where he’s from, is there any hope?
Evidence of mind-reading too: “The issue is that for many white people, they walk into an office meeting or classroom, see no people of color around, and feel like there’s nothing wrong about that.” How could that be? They don’t look around the room, see individuals but representatives of race, and say ‘Something’s wrong! We aren’t individuals, we are either part of a tribe or nothing!’?
“I feel normal again cause I see people like me around everywhere.” Ah, race-specific bias: in-group preference, out-group abhorrence.
“In Portland the most painful experience was that my white friends and colleagues very much resisted and refuted the idea that it was a difficult place for people of color.” You had white friends?– but I thought you hated them? Maybe they refuted the idea because they didn’t adhere to your exemplary point of view, namely that they can only “feel normal again” when they see people like themselves.
In other words, they have had racism driven out of them by cultural stigmatization of your kind of bigotry, and strive to eradicate it, while you’re only too happy to indulge in it.
“Basically the Pacific Northwest is super toxic for people of color… it’s been great to be around so many Black and brown folks in the Bay Area.” (Away from those icky whites). Toxic, as in deadly? Face the truth: you just hate non-POC, and love to indulge in hate–so their very existence/co-existence is “toxic” to you… just by being themselves. If you spew venom and poison, don’t be surprised if your environment becomes toxic.
“One Black woman I interviewed regards new Portlanders of color like me to be just as annoying as the white gentrifiers who plant Black Lives Matter signs on their lawn while pushing out longtime Black residents.”
Were there incidents of white pro-civil rights activists on a surreptitious Gentrification mission, grabbing Black residents and pushing them out? No? If a white individual buys a black person’s house, this is “pushing them out”? When white people move away, it’s racist: “white flight.” When they move back, it’s Gentrification (also racist).
White supremacists in the region of George Wallace refused to drink from the same water fountain as a Black person. Presumably, these bigots wouldn’t eat on the same plate, sit in the same chair, or use the same toilet seat. Now, if a white person moves into a home owned by a black person, this is somehow just as negative, although by any lights this is a rejection of the supremacist resistance to “miscegenation.”
Sometimes a white person who treats a Black person badly is simply a jerk, but an interaction is transmogrified into evidence of racism; the disrespect might just be that person’s fundamental nature. Even so, a paranoiac will add this to a litany of racial grievances.
The only way to know if there’s a racial component to disrespect is how you’re treated by this individual relative to others of a different race. What if Portland is simply filled with jerks/ smug idiots? When you’re a Black person surrounded by sneering white pompous snobs, who sneer at other whites just as much, give it try and say “it’s all relative.”
And that truth goes both ways: if a lot of people treat you like you’re a creep, maybe, just maybe, you’re a creep. If POC are the only people who treat you well, maybe they, on a group basis, are consciously overriding their honest opinion of you, in some kind solidarity, overriding their real feelings.
I hope most people of all races reject this author’s divisive, nasty, self-righteous hypocrisy and myopia.
Um….slavery. The segregation that followed. I’m done listening to white bros rationalize their anger and frustration with their lives into a freaking white pride movement. The playing field isn’t level yet. Sorry you are pissed about some portion of your lives going unfulfilled, but acknowledge that you have it easier than most. And work harder.
That’s why I sleep with as many women as possible, that way there will be no racism as everyone will one day “look like me”! The most racist country is North Korea — it’s time for POC to move there, as there is no diversity. POC who don’t move to North Korea or at least China are guilty of racism by simply being complacent.