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Is life that bad for blacks in portland and other cities that are mostly white? I've lived in one of the blackest metros (memphis) and the quality of life for everyone sucked.
Most Blacks in this country live in the South, due to our roots dating back to slavery, or in the major urban centers of the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast, when the Great Migration took place. The Pacific Northwest played no role in either slavery or the Great Migration; hence, you don't find a lot of Blacks in that general region.
What is appropriate though, really? This thread really isn't. Sometimes things feel like a lost cause.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make in my other post was that racial statistics are a terrible way to judge the diversity of a place and you have to take into account diversity in things like religion, political ideology, and specifically (as it relates to this thread) ethnicity.
Most Eastern Europeans (including many Russians) obviously belong to the "Caucasian" race, but they are ethnically different from other Caucasians, such as Turks, Swedes, Spaniards, Italians, Argentinians, Britons, Australians, Canadians, Caucasian-Americans, etc. That's my point. African-Americans are going to be different from Ghanaians, Somalians, South Africans, Haitians, Dominicans, etc. All East Asians aren't the same. They could be Thai, Hmong, Han Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, etc. And so forth.
That said, you can't really force diversity... It's almost ridiculous sometimes. I'm from a mixed racial/ethnic background (and a small hometown that's about 85% non-Hispanic white) and I don't really understand why people make such a big deal about it. Like what is so wrong about Portland being so white? It's not like they're enforcing a whites-only immigration policy or something crazy. Most Portlanders are very open to more diversity in their city and metro area. If it were more diverse it'd add a lot more dynamism to the city, but it is what it is, and on the other hand it used to be 100% white (30 years ago Metro Portland/Vancouver was 92% white). And furthermore, Portland is still a very diverse place in many ways, and heads above gigantic swaths of the planet in terms of racial and ethnic diversity.
Most Blacks in this country live in the South, due to our roots dating back to slavery, or in the major urban centers of the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast, when the Great Migration took place. The Pacific Northwest played no role in either slavery or the Great Migration; hence, you don't find a lot of Blacks in that general region.
Actually, with Portland and many West Coast cities, the shipping industry during and just after WW2 attracted quite a few blacks. I believe before WW2, Portland only had something like 2,000 Black folks with most of them in the Northeast side of town and with many working in conjunction with the railroad. After WW2 the black community's presence took off. Many also moved to nearby Vancouver Washington due to housing shortages in Portland. Specifically, the city's Albina district is the heart of the Black community there.
Portland actually has the oldest NAACP chapter West of the Mississippi too.
Oregon also had a ban on Blacks moving there for a very long time. So, that also could have contributed to the lower numbers.
What's interesting is that Portland actually has a high school that is about 2/3rds Black in Jefferson High on the NE side.
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Tried to rep ya, but I recently had done so on one of your other posts.
