Is Portland a Racist City?

In her recent article, "The Racist History of Portland: The Whitest City in America," Alana Semeuls joined the chorus of critics claiming racism blunts Portland’s unique planning model. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/racist-history-portland/492035/  In the Human City, suburban savant Joel Kotkin also chastises “the nation’s whitest major city” for driving African-Americans out of the urban core via gentrification, which is “partly supported by city funding.” Unfortunately, Semeuls and Kotkin, never mention the investments made to rectify the problem.  


Since a housing emergency was declared last October, the Portland City Council has invested over $100 million for affordable housing, a $258.4 million bond issue for affordable housing was placed on the November ballot, $20 million was appropriated to give housing preference to low and moderate-income residents who have been displaced or who are at risk of being displaced, and the 2035 Comprehensive Plan contains provisions to address displacement due to gentrification.  

These initiatives are a crucial test, and Portland is the proving ground. Integrating market and subsidized housing is anathema to some, but if it done in an environment designed for livability public health is advanced while living costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and dislocations from gentrification are reduced. Instead, Semeuls would have us believe Portland is a narrow minded enclave where "white environmentalists" run rough shod over minorities.

Portland is a white city due in large part to its geography.  Seattle is also a top tier "white city" but Portland, which is not a seaport, was the most isolated city in the Pacific Northwest and last city to be connected by rail in the region. Moreover, Portland was not built on slave labor. 

Houston, which Kotkin holds up as the model of opportunity, is sited on low lying swampy land that was cleared and drained by “negro slaves and Mexicans, as no white man could have worked and endured the insect bites and malaria, snake bites, impure water, and other hardships,” O.F. Allen, an early settler, wrote. “Many of the blacks died before their work was done."  http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/explainer/article/The-trouble-with-living-in-a-swamp-Houston-7954514.php

  

Today Houston is the most flood prone major city in America, and gentrification is rife in the city’s Third Ward, the historic African-American neighborhood.  In the past decade, its African American population has shrunk by more than 10 percent, which matches the displacement rate in Portland.  https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2015/07/07/122196/gentrification-of-houstons-third-ward-a-threat-to-its-african-american-culture/ 

Like other American cities, Portland has a racist history.  African-Americans and Asians suffered the scourge of segregation and intimidation, but they did not face the brutality and malevolent policies that inflicted the South. In Oregon, one African-American and twenty whites were lynched, while in Florida (which was less populated than Oregon during the zenith of this barbaric practice) 25 whites and 331 African-Americans suffered lynching. This scourge remained virulent through the 1920s, a decade when racist policies were ascendant in American cities. 

In 1923, the Oregon Legislature passed laws preventing first generation Japanese Americans from owning or leasing land.  In Florida, racism incited violence and a distorted concept of city planning. In January 1923, a mob burned down the African-American village of Rosewood, murdered six people, and forced the rest of the residents to flee and they never returned.  At the same time, West Palm Beach issued a decree to relocate the city’s 4,000 black residents to three “concentrated zones” between the railroad and the Everglades. “Looking twenty-five years ahead,” the mayor declared, “we are trying to put Negroes in such locations as they will most congenitally be situated to their places of labor and fulfill the needs of the white people.”

John Nolen, the noted planning consultant serving the city, refused to implement the initiative.  His firm adhered to a set of principles, he wrote, “whether it pays financially or not.”  He informed his client that racial zoning was unconstitutional, “It is not possible legally to set aside such districts and restrict them to any one race or color.”  Nolen’s stand reflects the progressiveness of early city planners, and Portland is built on this legacy.http://lalh.org/john-nolen-landscape-architect/

The Portland experiment in city planning that began in the late 1960s is driven by a “moral political culture,” historian Carl Abbott contends, that stresses securing the public good over individual interests.  The public good is predicated on procuring “livability,” the concept upon which the Obama Administration restructured the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  HUD's Six Principles of Livability are straight out of the Portland 2035 Comprehensive Plan, and the agency's investment in pedestrian oriented mixed use neighborhoods with access to transit also carries a measure of social justice. 

When the automobile is an option rather than a requirement for mobility, social equity is enhanced. A recent study by Christopher Leinberger measured walkability and housing affordability (households earning 80 percent of median income) by factoring in the costs of transportation and access to employment, and Portland ranked seventh among the nation’s 30 largest metropolitan areas. Houston, where residents drive 50 percent more than in Portland, ranked 20th and Orlando, which has the nation’s highest pedestrian death rate, came in last.  The Sunbelt cities are also ringed by exclusionary, gated subdivisions, one in which Trayvon Martin lost his life, that are foreign to Portland.

Both President Obama and Pope Francis have championed Portland’s communal approach to planning. Although not perfect, the city's commitment to livability is the best hope for overcoming historic injustice and, maybe even, racism itself.  In 2012, whites supported Barack Obama at a significantly higher rate (nearly two thirds) in Portland than the national average of 39 percent, which begs the question: why did a city with an "alarming legacy of racism” so whole-heartedly support a black politician?

Portland is enacting strategies to blunt the racism's legacy, the very items that can secure the post-racial politics Barack Obama envisioned.  In a nation marred by the sin of slavery, building cites that are resilient, just, and equitable is essential.  This endeavor is a test of our better angels, and  Portland is a prototype for planners trying to secure a better future.