Portland isn't Portlandia. It's a capital of white supremacy.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Many of the commenters disagree with the premise.

Portland isn’t Portlandia. It’s a capital of white supremacy.

By Keegan Stephan June 1 at 5:01 PM

Keegan Stephan is a writer, political organizer and law student in New York City.

Last week, a white supremacist allegedly stabbed two men to death and severely wounded another who tried to intervene as he hurled racial slurs at a black woman and a Muslim woman. Yet one of the most shocking aspects of the incident was where it occurred: Portland, Ore. Many Americans consider the city to be a progressive utopia, to the point of televised parody. The truth is far more complicated.

I went to high school outside Portland, and I encountered more overt white supremacy there than anywhere else. Progressive politics and discrimination are not mutually exclusive. Many classmates who would have described themselves as progressive expressed white supremacist ideals, often in violent terms. Without diversity, overt racism often goes unchecked. And where it goes unchecked, it persists.

While Portland is indeed progressive on many political issues, it is still the whitest large city in America — and that’s by design. Before becoming a state in 1859, Oregon passed laws that prohibited slavery but also required all African Americans to leave the territory. It simply wanted no black people. It went so far as to make the “crime” of being black punishable by floggings until the “perpetrator” left. Thus, when Oregon joined the union, it joined not as a free state or a slave state, but as a no-blacks state, the only state to do so.

Even as the rest of the country began to extend rights to African Americans after the Civil War, Oregon held fast to its racist origins. When the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, giving black men the right to vote, Oregon was one of only a few states not to sign on, and refused do so until 1959. While the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, granting citizenship and equal protection of the law to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” Oregon did not ratify it until 1973.

[Raster]

1. I lived in the Seattle area and spent a bit of time in Portland and surrounding environs...

...I was struck by the seemingly progressive quirkiness on one hand and the out-and-out racial bigotry on the other. Once one gets out of the Portland area and goes easterly, the racial and ethnic insensitivity becomes much more pronounced.

[dalton99a]

2. "We kept the blacks out so we wouldn't have to lynch them"

is pretty much Oregon's history of race relations

[Rollo]

3. I have a relative who has lived in Portland since the '60's...

He's said that Oregon has more than its share of rednecks. A lot because the state was an alternative destination for Dust Bowl refugees who were no longer welcome in California.

And if you drive into Oregon in a vehicle with California plates, you should not be surprised by the occasional aggressive redneck driver who will cut you off or worse.

This is in contrast with the the generally liberal atmosphere of Portland and Salem.

[Ken Burch]

5. Salem(the town I grew up in)hasn't always been all that liberal.

In the Forties, there was a sign at the Salem Greyhound depot that said "welcome to Salem, population 25,000-99.25% WHITE". In that same decade, Paul Robeson did a concert there, after which no hotel in Salem would rent him a room(a very young Mark Hatfield, later a multi-term moderate GOP U.S. senator, ended up driving him all the way to Portland in the middle of the night just to find him a room).

In the Eighties, a white supremacist group was temporarily allowed to join an "adopt a highway" program there.

The place is much more diverse and alive than it was when I lived there, though.

[Ken Burch]

4. Well, they would. This is a WaPo comments section.

For some reason, it's always had an exceptionally virulent comments community, more so than many other places(although not quite rising to the YouTube comments sections level).

[yurbud]

6. it is both. I went to high school near downtown Portland...

At an ethnically diverse magnet high school and race was not a major problem there.

On the other hand, when I went to college in a small town, a classmate was from a neighboring small town, and I joked with him once about his high school mascot, the wizards, sounding like it came from the Ku Klux Klan.

He said it did, and his town used to be the Klan headquarters in Oregon.

I asked him if any black families ever lived in that town, he said one tried once, but they made sure they didn't stay.

To a Portland boy, this was like finding out that DELIVERANCE was based on a true story that happened in Oregon.