Article on how Oregon was founded as a white Utopia

[netmouse]

Important to read: Oregon Was Founded As a Racist Utopia.
(I would like to note that it mentions consulting educator Walidah Imarisha. I know her better as the co-editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements, due out this spring.)

"America's history of racial discrimination is most commonly taught as a southern issue. That's certainly how I learned about it while going to Minnesota public schools in the 1980s and 90s. White people outside of the South seem to learn about the Civil War and civil rights movements from an incredibly safe (and often judgmental) distance.

Racism was generally framed as something that happened in the past and almost always "down there." We learned about the struggles for racial equality in cities like Birmingham and Selma and Montgomery. But what about the racism of Portland, Oregon, a city that is still overwhelmingly white? The struggles there were just as intense — though they are rarely identified in the history books."

Comments

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting that. A very interesting article.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. Trying to keep the dialogue about Race and racism going. :)

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

"down there"?
I'm from Chicago. It's nothing to be proud of, but Chicago terrified and defeated King . . .

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

References?

I know from The Warmth of Other Suns that black ghetto-ization was terrible in Chicago, with people being charged higher rents than whites while being cramped into overcrowded miserable housing conditions and threatened with firebombing if they left.

But the book makes no mention of King being afraid of it. Did you learn about this in school? What are you talking about?

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

um, references? When he got hit in the head with a rock, it was in all the papers.
Here's a summary from the Trib; here's our "educational TV" channel; here's a bit of History.

Daley totally stonewalled him.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Racism in Michigan is different than down South, though we imported a lot of Southerners at various points in history, so hard to say if it's really that different.