Opinion: Thoughts on Portland, OR

Over the Spring Break, I had the opportunity to make the trip up to Portland, OR with a friend. We rented a room for a week and explored the tiny city. The first thing I noticed was its whiteness. Compared to my home in the Bay Area and my school home in LA where white people seem to be the minority in my social spaces, Portland was remarkably white. This took a few days to adjust to, but once I did, I could pick up on the subtle differences between the people there and the people here. Zooming out a little bit, it was interesting to study what made the city Portland different from those that I’m used to like LA or cities in the Bay. To start, gentrification did not seem to be as prominent an issue in Portland than it is in SF or Oakland or LA– of course I’m only drawing from a week of observations as an outsider tourist. Nonetheless, this difference was stark. The Bay Area, for example, is home to growing industries. It’s a coastal city too so there are international corporate interests. LA is the same. There seems to be a focus on making money in the development of these regions thus prices are getting higher, more community members are being displaced, and the cities are gentrifying. Though I am not saying that Portland is free from gentrification, these capital-driven processes seem to hold less of a grip on this city. There seemed to be no rush in reopening businesses. Almost everywhere, there were shops and restaurants and services that were closed—they looked like they had been closed for quite a while—yet it seemed like those businesses would still be there when it came time to reopen. Contrasting that to the landscape of the Bay Area, if a business cannot afford to operate, it will simply be replaced by another one. Another unique trait of Portland, OR is its strong activist spirit. After speaking to a local, I learned that Portland, and all of its weirdness, is characterized by a culture of young people. Young people from all over the country come to the city to settle, and with it comes their progressive ideologies. This makes for an interesting cocktail because Portland, and the state of Oregon at large, has such a rich history of racism and white supremacy. Racist policies still exist today and remnants of this sentiment are alive and kicking. The clash between its racist foundations and its influx of young “weirdos” act as the impetus behind such a sociopolitically charged climate.