This anti-outsider vibe and the erasure of the rightful owners of the land our city occupies are reminiscent of the blatant, glistening white supremacy I grew up around in Australia. In Portland, it’s cool to be pro-immigrant but hate people moving here. It’s hip to protest a border wall but definitely not want more people visiting the Gorge than already are. We all know cultural appropriation isn’t cool, but we will twerk around our white friends. We brag about our tolerance or liberalism while simultaneously shaming a Thai restaurant for its “tacky” (read: traditional) décor and rewarding the same cuisine packaged in the white upper-class aesthetics of hardwoods and Mason jar light fixtures. Portland is built upon and continues its legacy of exclusion, classism, and racism, thinly cloaked by declarations of good intention and the mantra of “I’m a nice person.”
—Anna Vo, in “Bridge City: When does local pride become exclusionary?”
Published to write.house by Bix Frankonis. Comments and replies by email are welcome.