Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Portland’s Racist Dystopia, Its Academic

University of Oregon environmental historian Steven Beda’s Oregonian editorial, “Northwest Secession and Ecotopia’s Troubled Racist Past,” exemplifies why academic is often a pejorative term. In a city where $20 million is allocated to house people of color who risk being displaced, he contends Portland is a “racist dystopia.” "Many environmental policies that Portlanders are proud of continue to perpetuate racial inequities." http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/11/northwest_secession_and_ecotop.html Interestingly, right wing zealots say the same in their desire to deregulate the green city and develop the protected lands outside the urban growth boundary.

Beda, however, is not interested in procuring profits, he wants to purify thoughts. "An enlightened view of diversity,” he claims, will rectify Portland’s ills. Filtering history's complexity through the academic lens of "race, class, and gender," Beda's rote ideology parallels Trump's view that environmentalism impedes economic growth and eviscerates communities. Sadly, virtue--the sacrifices citizens make for the public good--is foreign to the simplistic maxims of the academic left and the laissez-faire right. Virtue is also foreign to demagogues, and the presidential election exposed the nation's poverty of values.

Portland's experiment in creating a green, "ecotopian" city is predicated on a “moral political culture,” historian Carl Abbott contends.  Virtue is the essential ingredient in a land use system that stresses the public good over individual interests, and the results are virtuous--i
nvesting in sustainability has a high correlation with social equity.  Portland, like all American cities, has a history of racism.  Yet the nation's "whitest city" is hardly a racist dystopia.  In 2012, whites voted for Barack Obama at close to twice the rate of their cohort across the nation. More important, investments are rectifying historic injustice and the city's new comprehensive city plan envisions an “Ecotopia” that marries equity and resilience in sustainable form.

Stephen Beda is blind to these facts.  His reading of Earnest Callenbach’s cult classic, Ecotopia, is also impaired, having all the verity of the political commissars in Dr. Zhivago who sought “to cure people…of the habit of judging and thinking, and force them to see the non-existent and prove what was contrary to evidence.” Beda's claim that, “People of color did not live in Callenbach's imagined world,” distorts what the author actually wrote: “There are surprisingly few dark-skinned faces.”  This fudging of the truth is magnified by Beda's failure to address Callenbach's solution to the scourge of racism.


In Ecotopia, a nation that renounces consumerism and builds a society predicated on ecological principles, the majority of African-Americans live in Soul City, an independent city-state where consumerism still thrives. Incomes and work hours are higher, luxury goods are more prevalent, and cars (banned in Ecotopia) dot the streets. As a resident states, “We’re still making up for lost time.”

Callenbach forces the reader to confront racism's impact on environmentalism. Sustainability demands living within limits to ensure adaptation and survival. Yet it is one thing to down size, and quite another to exist on the edge of society. Long denied access to the gilded consumerism corporate America insistently sells, Callenbach thinks it is only logical that African-Americans would imbibe in a lifestyle that confers status.

For Callenbach, consumerism is akin to adolescence; it is something one grows out of. In Portland consumerism is questioned and sustainability championed. This act stands academic dogma on its head by begging the question: Is it possible for Americans to embrace sustainability regardless of race, class, or gender? 

For many Americans, Portland is a good-natured joke. The pinioning wit of Portlandia depicts a blithely naive people of good intentions in a nation of gilded towers and exploitative excess. Marshall Berman, the author of The Coming Dark Age, sees little humor in Portland’s special mesh of nature and urbanism. “It just may take racial homogeneity for an American city to work,” he writes, “not a happy conclusion.”

In an increasingly urban world, Portland’s Ecotopian vision is essential. Americans will never consume their way to social justice or sustainability, and the city’s judicious use of land and resources demands study. Portland remains a test case for determining if the “good life” Aristotle attributed to cities can match the goods life that infuses the 21st century. Writing off Portland as a racist dystopia may play in the safe spaces on college campuses, but it dishonors the thousands of citizens dedicated to building a city that is just and sustaining.

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