Kinja reply list

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Bulgarian7Matt Novak
1/21/15 10:13am
Not sure what the point of this article is. America has a racist past? No way.
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  Kilgore TavernerBulgarian7
  1/21/15 10:23am
  Maybe it takes more than 13 minutes to read and grok a 5000 word article, to come to terms with a reason for it to exist?
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  doubleeBulgarian7
  1/21/15 10:23am
  From the story.
  "What's useful about Oregon as a case study is that Oregon was bold enough to write it down," Imarisha told me. "But the same ideology, policies, and practices that shaped Oregon shaped every state in the Union, as well as this nation as a whole."
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ObregonMatt Novak
1/21/15 10:29am
Time and again, my White colleagues like to say Racism in the United States (world) is something that just fell into place by happenstance.

This is absolutely wrong. It was manufactured, and intricately put in place by White Men to protect their power and supremacy. Here is a great quote from early in US history:
While standing before the Virginia House of Delegates on January 20, 1832, Mr. Henry Berry, Esq., made it clear what was needed to produce and maintain the condition of slavery. He said: "Pass as severe laws as you will to keep these unfortunate creatures in ignorance, it is in vain, unless you can extinguish that spark of intellect which God has given them. Sir, we have, as far as possible, closed every avenue by which light might enter their minds. We have only to go one step further—to extinguish the capacity to see the light—and our work will be completed. They would then be reduced to the level of the beasts of the field, and we should be safe… ."
Go search the speeches from many of this countries leaders from the founding to the present day. Racism is a tool of control, too useful to ever give up.
This is a system intelligently constructed over the course of centuries. It is going to take centuries to dismantle it, and White People will fight to preserve it tooth and nail. Heck I personally believe that some would see the world burn before letting it go.
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  Fleet Admiral JoshObregon
  1/21/15 10:54am
  I agree. There are a lot of people who believe that racism - and the consequences of racism - somehow magically ended in the 60s.
  Even if one accepted that racism itself magically disappeared at the time (it didn't) one would still have the consequences of decades and indeed centuries of deliberate racism and discrimination. But people like to pretend that since "racism ended" in the 60s, that everyone is equal and the only reason why minorities can't get ahead is because they're lazy, and not because they are INHERENTLY disadvantaged directly because of consequences those centuries of discrimination (and continued less obvious, less powerful, but still present racial attitudes and discrimination today)
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  BruinKidFleet Admiral Josh
  1/21/15 11:46am
  And then there's Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who believes it ended when we elected Barack Obama. And so the Supreme Court is about to take up a case to essentially gut the Fair Housing Act.
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tjwMatt Novak
1/21/15 10:51am
This is why I will never understand people who claim there's no such thing as white privilege. Just three generations ago black people were banned from Oregon. Just two generations ago black people were allowed to be banned from schools and other public and private institutions. Well into the 1980s, financial institutions used redlining to systematically prevent "those people" from buying houses (the #1 accumulator of wealth for the middle class).
We have a centuries-long history of systematically oppressing African-Americans in this country and preventing them voting, getting educated, and accumulating wealth, and yet people expect everything to be perfectly okay now because we have a black president.
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  Ladybug2tjw
  1/21/15 11:04am
  The blacks refuse to bootstrap them some privilege because they'd rather be thugs like Beyoncé.
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  kumfinemyyburnertjw
  1/21/15 11:14am
  There's the "I didn't own any slaves" excuse and the "nobody gave us anything" excuse. When it's clear to see all the advantages they were given.
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nonicknamephilMatt Novak
1/21/15 11:35am
Surprised this hasn't been posted yet.
That's the Coon Chicken Inn on 54th and Sandy. You entered through the door in the gap in his teeth. It was open until the late 50's, and is now a crappy steakhouse.
Oregon has always been intolerant of outsiders. If we didn't have Portland we'd be a slightly more populous Idaho.
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  Matt Novaknonicknamephil
  1/21/15 11:37am
  They mention the Coon Chicken Inn in that documentary from Oregon Public Broadcasting, Local Color. It's really worth watching if you have time.
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  nonicknamephilMatt Novak
  1/21/15 11:57am
  I attended the first screening with the director a couple of years ago! I've also seen it a couple of times since then. I'm a white liberal in Portland, so I have to fulfill monthly OPB quotas or the kulturcommissar comes and takes my ironic mustache away.
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Mr. K. DilkingtonMatt Novak
1/21/15 11:02am
Uhh.....anyone else think old mister leader of the KKK here might have some, shall we say, "non-white" in him?
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  David TretheweyMr. K. Dilkington
  1/21/15 12:17pm
  It's nearly always the case. Why do you think they hate so strongly?
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  RishaBreeMr. K. Dilkington
  1/21/15 12:23pm
  ... *sheepishly raises hand* I'm sure it's partially the black-and-white photo, but at first glance he looked to me like an albino person of color.
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jacobmrleyMatt Novak
1/21/15 11:37am
Cool. Now do one about Indiana and the Klan in the 1920s.
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  Matt Novakjacobmrley
  1/21/15 11:41am
  Man, I came across so much information about Indiana's Klan presence while researching this. Terrifying stuff.
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  WasFerdinandPorcupineMatt Novak
  1/21/15 12:57pm
  Not that long ago either — I heard stories in college in the 1980s of Klan stuff in Indiana and southern Illinois. Had gay friends who wouldn't drive to New Orleans or Memphis — would only take the train.
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Jivemaster FiveMatt Novak
1/21/15 1:23pm
Saw this on Flipping Vegas last night (first time viewer). Does Nevada have a racist past? Present? Future? I am especially fond of the beer can shower head.
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  Matt NovakJivemaster Five
  1/21/15 1:32pm
  I don't know much about Nevada history, but I do know that Las Vegas had a history of segregation through the 1960s.
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  Don't Come Around Hideo NomoJivemaster Five
  1/21/15 5:21pm
  Obviously not staged?
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Y0UT00B3R1Matt Novak
1/21/15 10:31am
When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from living, working, or owning property there. It was illegal for black people even to move to the state until 1926...
Ahh!! No wonder I could never beat Oregon Trail.
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  Roan WaltersY0UT00B3R1
  1/21/15 4:27pm
  "Why do I keep dying of dysentery???"
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DaveMatt Novak
1/03/16 5:10pm
Except for the part involving the KKKowards, you can replace Orgeon with Minnesota (and likely most other states as well). The black singing group The 5th Dimension (e.g. Song: The Age of Aquarius) was in Minneapolis in about 1963 and I happen to find them standing on the steps of the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center which was on about 8th and Aldridge in Minneapolis. When I told my mother she indicated it was because they could not get a hotel room anywhere. Fortunately I was 6 yrs. old at the time and too young to fully understand the ramifications of the fact my mother had laid on me. I have since learned the PWCC routinely put up black entertainers because they were not allowed in the hotels. Racist today fail to realize is that their efforts to marginalize blacks will backfire on them. They embraced illegal immigrants by giving them jobs ‘that blacks don’t want’, with banks being part of their support system by giving them loans at the drop of a hat. In doing so racists have hastened their decendance to minority status. Soon, the voting decisions made by this racist minority will have little to no effect on most elections in this country.
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  Matt NovakDave
  1/03/16 5:14pm
  The KKK did have a presence in Minnesota though.
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SwarfMatt Novak
1/21/15 3:28pm
This is really interesting, well thought-out and well put together. But it has a giant hole. It's really egregious that this blog post doesn't even MENTION the existence of Native Americans. Which mirrors those founders of the state you quote- the "pioneer" voter who would later become a Republican state senator: "upon a theory that as we had yet no considerable representation of other races in our midst, we should do nothing to encourage their introduction. We were building a new state on virgin ground". But it wasn't virgin ground, it was the territory of the Tillamook, the Umatilla, the Paiute, the Nez Perce, the Cayuse, and so many others. It's not like those pioneers were unaware of the existence of Native Americans - they were actively trying to exterminate them. But the continuation today of that extermination, in writing a long and thoughtful piece on racism in Oregon that doesn't even give half a sentence to Indians- ugh. An aside, that all of this happened in a context of planned and intentional genocide but you want to focus on Black Americans, would be much, much better than nothing. You don't cover Latinos. But to talk about Oregon history in the 19th century without mentioning Native Americans is a big eyepatch to keep on.
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  Matt NovakSwarf
  1/21/15 3:30pm
  The majority of Oregonians (which is to say the territory's new white residents who were systematically and sometimes violently oppressing its Native peoples) [...]
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