Just finished watching the rented Freedom Riders documentary. Wow, I really had no idea what these "heroes" went through. How sickening it was for me to watch those brutal acts of blatant racism....from the top...down! It's a good wake-up call if you care to watch.
Tell me about it. Living in Atlanta for 12 years told me all I need to know. Sure, the city of Atlanta was cosmopolitan/respectable enough, but get 10 miles outside the city limits, and you may as well be back in the 60's. I HATED those southern flags a lot of folks had to have waving on poles in their front yards or otherwise on their respective properties! Disgusting, actually.
It's always funny to me when some people that were born and raised in Portland assume that racism just isn't that big a deal in the country anymore.
It's always funny to me (and I'm not saying this to be snide or undermine what you said) when people say "liberals cry racism" at the drop of a hat, and then people point out that maybe racism is a little more active then we think. I worded that poorly, but fuck it. I know what I meant.
You'll see a confederate flag down here once in a while, it's downright weird. I guess some people like putting the SOUTHERN in Southern Oregon.
you don't even have to leave Oregon to find it. There's subtle evidence of it in parts of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Not nearly to the degree it is in other parts of the country though. Whats weird is, the few times I've witnessed racism (and not blatant racism, but the subtle kind) it's always done in a way that makes the person saying/doing it come off as totally oblivious to the fact you don't have a similar opinion about things.
Outside of Portland there are a shit ton of racist hicks in Oregon. There just aren't any black people outside of NEP for them to project themselves upon. In the South, well, it's not too difficult to stumble upon a black person or two........every 1 second.
Hmm, not sure what you meant, sorry, or maybe I am reading it poorly, I apologize. I'm saying that coming from Chicago. I have actually had a few people from Portland say oh, racism isn't even a big deal anymore, it's not all that prevalent. Coming from someone who lives in a very white city, and hasn't traveled much outside of the city, it just struck me as funny. Like well, of course you never see racism if there aren't other races around. I fly back to Chicago and there's more black people that work at midway than live in Portland it seems like. I saw it all the time there.
Chicago was a most segregated city when I grew up there. There's north/south or whites/ blacks. But also by other ethnicities - Greek, Italian, Puerto Rican whole neighborhoods. This is a progressive northern city, too. The SF Bay area is also segregated. On one side of the 101 is Palo Alto, one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the nation. On the bay side of the 101 is East Palo Alto, almost entirely black, poor, and crime ridden. San Francisco and Oakland are similarly white/black. Welcome to the progressive People's Republik of California! On the subject of the freedom riders, JFK and RFK sat on their hands for quite a while, when the freedom riders were literally getting their asses kicked. Ike sent the national guard into Bill Clinton's home town of Little Rock to segregate the schools. Go figure.
It's so rare to see a thread, or anything on the internet, say that real racism is bad, and worse yet, alive. People nowadays think that racism means using a word inappropriately, since semantics were the main trick that feminism used to justify its own existence. A sincere racism conversation, as this one began, soon becomes political, as Denny tried. Isaiah Rider said that 50 miles outside Portland there were open racists. He was speculating, and got hated for saying it. 50 miles outside of Seattle, try talking to the people of Sedro Woolley. 30 miles north of there, I got an earful of racism from my dentist and his assistant. When I visited New Orleans, I was befriended by a young female who talked about nothing other than how bad black people are. It's alive and strong.
I think I detailed how racism is still alive. My point is that it's not specific to southern locations, but to progressive and northern states as well. Ike was flamed for violating states' rights. JFK took a while to get it.
Having been raised in LO, lived in Portland and Milwaukie, spent a year in Hollywood,CA, and the last decade in Beautiful Central Oregon, I have to say the reverse is true. The bigger and more diverse the population is, the more prevalent and rabid the racism is. Portland and Hollywood are the only 2 places I've lived where entire sections of the city were unsafe to travel after dark, simply due to being caucasian. Also the only 2 places I've been hassled, harassed or insulted due to skin color. Also the only 2 where I've faced openly discriminatory employment practices.
Go to the comments in the Fox News story on the death of Whitney Houston - page after page of n word, crack ho, etc etc
Is this a serious response? You're really judging how racist a place is based on how you, a white male, gets treated? Of course you're not going to be discriminated for being white in Eastern Oregon. Everyone is white.
Plenty of black people in NEP that have beaten up whitey on the Max, though. Or does that type of racism not count?
