Fatal stabbing in heart of US ‘white utopia’

A MAN fatally stabbed two passengers aboard a Portland, Oregon, commuter train after they tried to stop him from harassing two young women who appeared to be Muslim, police said.

Police identified the assailant, who was arrested soon after the attack on Friday, as Jeremy Joseph Christian of Portland, a 35-year-old convicted felon. A senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center said Christian’s Facebook page showed he held “some racist and other extremist beliefs”.

The killings have brought renewed attention to Rose City’s foundational identity as a white supremacist stronghold and its embedded racism, say analysts.

In a popular 2015 essay by Matt Novak, the author detailed how the state of Oregon was conceived as a “white utopia”, where prior to statehood in 1844, legislators passed a law detailing how free black people found in the state would be flogged if they didn’t leave within two years.

While the flogging part was removed from the law a year later, Oregon still made it illegal for Black people to move there until 1926.

Even into the 1950s, Portland restaurants had signs displaying the type of sentiment most people might think were restricted to the US South: “White Trade Only – Please.”

Oregon’s population remains low on black residents due to the continued marginalisation of non-white communities, through structural and informal mechanisms. Latest census data shows that 72.2% of Portland’s population is white while only 6.3% of the population is black.

“I think that Portland has, in many ways, perfected neo-liberal racism,” black educator and activist Walidah Imarisha told the Atlantic magazine, explaining how the city facilitates subtle white supremacy in business, culture and housing.

In 1970, the expansion of Legacy Emanuel Hospital led to the destruction of nearly 300 businesses and homes, decimating the then-heart of the black community in the city and displacing hundreds of families.

In a 2011 housing audit, the city found that landlords discriminated in nearly two-thirds of the cases by adding extra fees, charging higher rents and demanding larger deposits.