on white flight in the U.S.
"I moved to Portland from Washington DC about 4 years ago, mainly because my wife gave birth to our first son, and I wanted to find a better place for him to grow up. Moreover, I grew up the token white in a black, inner-city neighborhood in DC, and knowing black so-called culture firsthand, I didn’t want my son to experience what I had experienced. Although I love this city, and my family and I have come to call it home, there are certain things that I’ve been able to observe in my time here.
"Regarding whites, you have three kinds here in the Pacific Northwest: the vigilant, the destructive, and the oblivious.
- The oblivious are normally your native Oregonians. Since they’ve been sheltered from blacks their entire lives, they believe naively that their white-world is a bland one, and try to inject it with ‘color.’ In this respect, they’re as racially conscious as your typical toddler.
- The destructive usually take the form (in Portland) of New Englanders, Upper Midwesterners (WI, MN, IA, etc, and Californians (specifically San Franciscans). They consciously decided to not live in a diverse area, but nevertheless talk about what a bad thing that Portland is not diverse, etc. Whatever ‘black’ friends they may have typically take the form of frizzy-haired mulattos who grew up around whites.
- The vigilant (and we are around) are people who grew up and lived around blacks, decided it was madness, and kept running until we got to a white city. I’ve had several conversations with people who came from places like Detroit, DC, Atlanta, NY, and I have yet to meet someone from these parts who didn’t share our views or weren’t at least very sympathetic."
Posted by Spaniard at 7:19 PM on June 13
"Regarding whites, you have three kinds here in the Pacific Northwest: the vigilant, the destructive, and the oblivious.
- The oblivious are normally your native Oregonians. Since they’ve been sheltered from blacks their entire lives, they believe naively that their white-world is a bland one, and try to inject it with ‘color.’ In this respect, they’re as racially conscious as your typical toddler.
- The destructive usually take the form (in Portland) of New Englanders, Upper Midwesterners (WI, MN, IA, etc, and Californians (specifically San Franciscans). They consciously decided to not live in a diverse area, but nevertheless talk about what a bad thing that Portland is not diverse, etc. Whatever ‘black’ friends they may have typically take the form of frizzy-haired mulattos who grew up around whites.
- The vigilant (and we are around) are people who grew up and lived around blacks, decided it was madness, and kept running until we got to a white city. I’ve had several conversations with people who came from places like Detroit, DC, Atlanta, NY, and I have yet to meet someone from these parts who didn’t share our views or weren’t at least very sympathetic."
Posted by Spaniard at 7:19 PM on June 13