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<h1 id="reader-title">Portland's dark history of white supremacy</h1>
<span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"
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<a rel="author" class="tone-colour" itemprop="sameAs"
data-link-name="auto tag link"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/wilson-jason"><span
itemprop="name">Jason Wilson</span></a></span> - May 31,
2017<br>
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<p><span class="drop-cap"><span class="drop-cap__inner">C</span></span>iaran
Mulloy remembers how the neo-Nazis outnumbered the
anti-racists in <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/portland"
data-link-name="auto-linked-tag"
data-component="auto-linked-tag" class="u-underline">Portland</a>
in the 90s.</p>
<p> A union organiser and anti-fascist, he was was deeply
involved in fighting against the far right’s
infiltration of American youth culture in the 1980s and
90s. But when he arrived in the city in 1990, he said,
“we were not prepared for what was out there in
Portland”.</p>
<p> “There were multiple gangs, and 300 Nazis in a city of
300,000,” he said, adding: “The anti-racist youth were
intimidated and isolated. The Nazis were just openly
hanging out on the streets.”</p>
<p> Drawn to the overwhelmingly white population, Nazis
brought violence to clubs, shows and the streets,
carried out gay bashings, and assaulted people of color.
</p>
<p> Two years before Mulloy’s arrival, three racist
skinheads beat <a
href="http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-30937-the-mulugeta-seraw-murder-25-years-later.html"
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">Mulugeta
Seraw</a>, an Ethiopian student, to death in a
suburban street. And in 1993, a racist skinhead named
Eric Banks was shot dead by John Bair, a member of
Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. </p>
<p> “It’s not hyperbolic to call it a war,” he said.
“There was intense fighting.” The racially charged <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/27/man-shouting-anti-muslim-slurs-fatally-stabs-two-men-in-us"
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">double
murder on a Portland train</a> last week may seem at
odds with the city’s current image, and self-perception,
as liberal. But actually, the history of Portland, and
of Oregon, reveals an enduring current of white
supremacy and militant racism, experts say, that is
apparent in the far and recent past.</p>
<p> Nearly two centuries of exclusion, violence and
intimidation have resulted in the whitest major city in
the United States, in a state that has in the past been
fertile ground for the growth of extremism. Last
Friday’s violent attack came amid a new wave of
“alt-right” organizing, but Portland’s very whiteness
has attracted far right groups to attempt to make
inroads in the city for more than 30 years.</p>
<p> <a href="http://www.walidah.com/" data-link-name="in
body link" class="u-underline">Walidah Imarisha</a>,
an expert on Oregon’s black history, said that while
“Portland spends a lot of time being incredibly
self-satisfied”, the “foundation of Oregon as a state,
and in fact the whole Pacific north-west, was as a
racist white utopia”. </p>
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<blockquote>
<p class="pullquote-paragraph">It’s not hyperbolic to
call it a war. There was intense fighting</p>
</blockquote>
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</aside>
<p> First, the land was taken from its indigenous
inhabitants and freely given to white settlers. And
while Oregonians take pride in the state’s early move to
outlaw slavery, Imarisha said that that pride rested on
a misunderstanding of the ban’s intent.</p>
<p> “In 1844 Oregon outlawed slavery,” she said, “but it
also outlawed being black in the state.”</p>
<p> Initially, the prescribed punishment for black people
for simply being in Oregon was up to 39 public lashes.
This was quickly repealed, and replaced in 1849 with a
system of fines, arrests and deportations. From 1857 to
1927, there was a prohibition on black people entering
the state, which was enshrined in the state’s bill of
rights. These laws were sporadically enforced, but they
sent a very clear message to would-be settlers, black
and white, and limited black migration to the state.</p>
<p> “The goal was to keep out people of color,” Imarisha
said. “Oregonians were anti-slavery not because of
issues of racial justice, but because they didn’t want
people bringing enslaved black folks to Oregon.”</p>
<p> The exclusion laws, incorporated in Oregon’s
constitution, were not <a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2002/sep/29/news/adna-racist29"
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">fully
removed</a> until 2002, after one of a series of
campaigns led by people of color to expunge them. Even
then, 28% of voters opposed the measure to clear the
language. </p>
<aside class="element element-rich-link element--thumbnail
element-rich-link--upgraded" data-component="rich-link"
data-link-name="rich-link-2 | 2">
<div class="rich-link tone-feature--item ">
<div class="rich-link__container">
<p class="rich-link__standfirst u-cf"> Has Donald
Trump’s presidency emboldened racial violence? A
brutal double murder in Portland, a stabbing in
California, and the hit-and-run death of a Native
American man – all within a few days – are dark
signs<br>
</p>
</div>
</div>
</aside>
<p> Chinese Americans were also prevented by the state
constitution from owning property, and from filing or
working mining claims. Amid a growing anti-Chinese
movement throughout the country in the 1880s, buildings
in Portland’s Chinatown were burned down. And in Hell’s
Canyon, in eastern Oregon, a group of white men
massacred 34 Chinese miners in 1887.</p>
<p> Around that time, so-called “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town"
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">sundown
towns</a>” began to form in the state, as in the rest
of the country – municipalities that endeavored to stay
all white using “laws, practices and the threat of
violence”, Imarishi said.</p>
<p> She added that even though racist ordinances are off
the books now, covert methods are still in use such that
“there are hundreds of sundown towns across this nation
to this day”. An online project coordinated by James
Loewen, who wrote a book on the phenomenon, <a
draggable="true"
href="http://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntownsshow.php?state=OR"
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">lists</a>
several in Oregon which remain almost wholly white.</p>
<p> And in Portland, “<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining"
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">redlining</a>”
was used in an attempt to confine people of color to
specific neighbourhoods. Adding in waves of
gentrification, the net effect has been the creation of
the whitest major city in the US.</p>
<p> This deliberately crafted demography was one of the
city’s, and the region’s, attractions for white
supremacist organisers in the 80s and 90s.</p>
<p> The <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Aryan_Resistance"
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">White
Aryan Resistance</a>, masterminded by Californian
racist Tom Metzger, was actively recruiting skinheads in
Portland from the mid-1980s.</p>
<p> “He saw the spontaneous self-organization of skinhead
youths into white power organizations,” Mulloy said. “He
wanted to turn it into a more politicized movement and a
fascist force.”</p>
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<blockquote>
<p class="pullquote-paragraph">The foundation of
Oregon as a state, and in fact the whole Pacific
north-west, was as a racist white utopia</p>
</blockquote>
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</aside>
<p> Portland, and Oregon, were already integral to the far
right’s plans.</p>
<p> “There was an idea floating around called the <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territorial_Imperative"
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">Northwest
Imperative</a>,” Mulloy explained. Far-right leaders
like Metzger and Richard Butler from Aryan Nations
imagined carving out the Pacific Northwest as a white
ethnostate, because it was already “the whitest part of
the United States”.</p>
<p> This idea echoed the desires that the State’s founders
codified in the constitution, and is still
enthusiatically discussed on “alt-right” podcasts and
websites.</p>
<p> By the time Mulloy went to Portland, the skinheads
were deeply entrenched. Anti-racists engaged them in a
prolonged street conflict.</p>
<p> “The Portlandia image is quirky and middle class,”
Mulloy said, referring to the popular comedy sketch show
that lampoons the city’s liberal image. “Underneath that
is a long history of working-class militancy in
Portland, from the right and the left.”</p>
<p> But he says that in the 1990s, other, non-violent
tactics also played a significant role in driving
fascists underground – organizing and building
anti-racism into youth culture.</p>
<p> He thinks these tactics are still relevant, as the
city prepares for an <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/28/portland-knife-attack-free-speech-rally--sunday"
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">“alt-right”
rally downtown on Sunday</a>. The rally is the latest
in a series that has been growing in numbers and
militancy all year. Jeremy Christian, accused of
attacking the three men on Friday with a knife, attended
one of them on 29 April.</p>
<p> He says they feed on the current downward mobility of
the working class, and Portland’s whiteness. “The
‘alt-right’ is careful not to embrace the neo-Nazism of
Metzger, but they’re using the same ingredients.”</p>
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