Whites driving BLM protests in Portland
Oregon has long history of racism toward Blacks
PORTLAND, Ore. — Seyi Fasoranti, a chemist who moved to Oregon from the East Coast six months ago, has watched the Black Lives Matter protests in Portland with fascination. A sea of white faces in one of the whitest major American cities has cried out for racial justice every night for nearly two months.
“It’s something I joke about with my friends,” Fasoranti, who is Black, said over the din of protest chants this week. “There are more Black Lives Matter signs in Portland than Black people.”
Loud advocacy has been a hallmark of Portland life for decades, but unlike past protests over environmental policies or foreign wars, racism is a more complicated topic in Oregon, one that is intertwined with demographics and the state’s legacy of some of the most brutal anti-Black laws in the nation.
During 56 straight nights of protests here, throngs of largely white protesters have raised their fists in the air and chanted, “This is not a riot, it’s a revolution.” They have thrown water bottles at the federal courthouse, tried to pry off the plywood that protects the entrance and engaged in running battles with police officers through clouds of tear gas.
In recent nights, the number of protesters has swollen into the thousands.
Damany Igwé, 43, a bath products salesman who is Black and has taken part in dozens of the protests, says white crowds have shielded him from police, all the while yelling “Black power!”
“I feel the most protected that I ever have in my city,” Igwé said during a Wednesday night protest that lasted well into Thursday morning. “White people can’t understand what we’ve been through completely, but they are trying to empathize. That’s a beginning.”
Of the 35 cities in the United
States with populations larger than 500,000, Portland is the whitest, according to census data, with 71 percent of residents categorized as non-Latino whites.
Oregon’s relative homogeneity — the state is three-quarters white compared with neighboring California, where white people make up 37 percent of the population — was not accidental.
The state was founded on principles of white supremacy. A 19th-century lash law called for whipping any Black person found in the state.
In the early part of the 20th century, Oregon’s Legislature was dominated by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Today the average income level for Black families in Portland is nearly half that of white residents, and police shootings of Black residents are disproportionate to their 6 percent share of the population. Three years ago, two good Samaritans were fatally stabbed while trying to stop a man from shouting slurs at two African American women on a commuter train, one of whom was wearing Muslim dress.
“Really there are two Portlands that exist,” said Walidah Imarisha, a scholar of Black history in Oregon. “There’s white Portland and Portland of color.”
The differences, she said, cover almost every aspect of life. “There’s massive racial disparities around wealth, health care, schools and criminal legal systems that white Portlanders just don’t understand.”
Yet on the streets this week in Portland there was optimism among Black protest leaders who generally spoke admiringly of the large white crowds, which were reinvigorated last week after clashes with federal riot police officers who are protecting a U.S. courthouse and other buildings.