1,225 words
Photograph of KKK meeting with Portland Leaders, 1921. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
For years, Portland, OR had an unshakable reputation as America’s whitest city:
“How the whitest city in America appears through the eyes of its black residents” (Washington Post, 2015)
“Portland is the Whitest U.S. City – Why Demographics are Rapidly Shifting” (GoLocalPDX, 2015)
“The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America” (The Atlantic, 2016)
“‘Livability’ in the Whitest City in America” (Story Maps, 2020)
“Is Portland still the whitest big city in America?” (Oregon Live, 2022, and the answer was “yes”)
But now, in what some will view as a milestone and others as a millstone, the City of Roses has been demoted to America’s second-whitest city. A Seattle Times article from Monday, September 16 called “New race data shows a stable Seattle and a shifting Portland” says:
…[A]ccording to annual census data released last week…. Portland is no longer the nation’s “whitest” big city…last year, it lost its long-held position as the major U.S. city with the highest percentage of white people.
The new census data shows around 64% of Portland’s population was white in 2023. That ranked the Rose City second among the nation’s 50 largest cities, with Colorado Springs moving into the top spot, at 65%.
Among the nation’s 50 biggest cities, 29 did not have a single racial or ethnic majority group last year. Seattle and Portland were among the 21 that did have a majority group, and were among the 13 major cities with a white majority. Five cities had a Hispanic majority, and three had a Black [sic] majority. No city had an Asian majority, but San Jose came closest, at around 40%.
The cutoff point here is “the nation’s 50 biggest cities.” On Wikipedia’s “List of United States cities by population,” Portland ranks 27th and Colorado Springs is 39th. And the racial bean-counting does not count beaners—it defines “whites” as “non-Hispanic whites.”
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Rather than wearing the title “America’s Whitest City” as a badge of honor, Portland’s residents have largely borne it as a scarlet letter of shame. Over the last thirty years, Portland has gradually earned a rep as the most anti-white city on the map. It’s where the soggy town’s overwhelmingly Caucasian rich-kid anarchists rioted for six months on George Floyd’s behalf.
At first blush, it seems odd that a place so institutionally anti-white would be so…white.
If you dive into its past, the State of Oregon has a history of institutional pro-white segregation that was, depending on where your sympathies lie, either shockingly racist or breathtakingly refreshing.
Peeking back into Oregon’s frontier days reveals a culture that was so racist, they banned slavery not because it was cruel to black people, but because it kept black people out of Oregon. Now, that’s some ingenious racism.
In June of 1844, the Provisional Government of Oregon passed a law that barred blacks from living in the state. Violators were to receive “not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes” for every six months they remained.
In 1849, the Oregon Territory passed a second exclusion law, which forbade “any negro or mulatto to enter into, or reside” within its boundaries. Lawmakers reasoned that “it would be highly dangerous to allow free negroes and mulattos to reside in the Territory or to intermix with the Indians, instilling in their minds feelings of hostility against the white race.”
A year later, the census counted fewer than 50 blacks in Oregon.
Although other states had tried and failed, in 1859 Oregon became the only state to enter the Union with racial exclusion clauses in its constitution. Those laws remained on Oregon’s books until 1926.
During the 1920s, when hooded men in white sheets sprouted like cotton bolls all over America, Oregon had more KKK members per capita than any other state. In 1921, Klansmen met with Portland city leaders to discuss ways to counter what they perceived as negative Klan stereotypes in the press stereotypes. In 1922, a Klansman named Walter M. Pierce was elected Oregon’s governor.
Up until 1949, Portland boasted a “Coon Chicken Inn,” where you’d enter the restaurant by strolling in through the giant grinning coon’s mouth.
In the early 1960s, Portland’s smattering of blacks was still banned from eating at white restaurants or taking a dip in public pools.
As late as the 1980s, the Pacific Northwest was still so overwhelmingly white that it was viewed as a potential Aryan homeland by such people as Tom Metzger, Richard Butler, and Harold Covington.
In 1940, Portland was 98.1% white. By 1980, it had dipped to 85.3% white. Throughout the 1980s, in response to demographic changes and a perceived bleaker future for the white working class, Portland gained a rep as America’s “skinhead capital.” This was back when using the term “Nazi skinhead” would have sounded redundant.
Then, one night in November 1988 in what originated as a dispute over a girl, three members of East Side White Pride scuffled with two black men. One of the blacks, an Ethiopian immigrant named Mulugeta Seraw, was beaten to death.
Even though Southern California-based Tom Metzger of the White Aryan Resistance had never interacted with Seraw’s killers, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center dragged Metzger up to Portland in 1990 and successfully sued him for $12.5 million over Seraw’s death.
Whereas Oregon was founded on a rigid policy of NO BLACKS, it didn’t take long for them to switch the sign in the storefront window to NO NAZIS.
Publisher Adam Parfrey flew me up to Portland in early 1994 to sing on a satirical pro-cop album. After I’d spent seven years living in LA’s hell-storm of multicultural anomie and apocalyptic madness, Portland felt like a soul-cleansing trip back in time. I saw fat people and cloudy skies. There was a Bigfoot museum in the basement of a used-paperback store, and you could find bargain-bin records of Oregon-based singing loggers. Portland had a quaint, corny, unspoiled vibe that reminded me of childhood summer days I’d spent with my paternal kin in Vermont. Parfrey told me that there was an interesting cultural tension in P-Town—sort of “Loggers v. Lesbians.”
But by the time I moved up in late 1994, it seemed as if all the loggers were lesbians. The white-power skinheads had been routed and replaced by anti-racist skinheads whose leader claimed to be Jewish. Despite a long history of murder, beatings, and random acts of felony violence, the anti-racist skins rarely seemed to get arrested. If they did, they almost always evaded prison time. Several sources gave me good reason to suspect that City Hall had given them carte blanche to be as violent as they wanted so long as they rid Portland of the “Nazis.” I had three street encounters with them in the early 2000s.
Over the years, Portland became a national punchline, a tiny homeland for hyper-entitled, self-caricaturing, self-hating white leftists who don’t know when to stop or shut up. When I first saw the sketch comedy Portlandia, which ran from 2011-2018, I thought it might as well have been a documentary.
Modern Portland has metastasized into an ugly expanse of homeless camps, open-air drug markets, sex trafficking, and municipal dysfunction. It’s where wheelchair-bound trannies lingering outside furry conventions scream “I suck dick for cock!” while assaulting you.
But at least it’s no longer America’s Whitest City.
35 comments
What demographic are the largest newcomers? Or is it just everyone? Mostly Indians I fear. They seem to have overwhelmed Canada’s Pacific Northwest. Is Seattle on the same trajectory? Colorado Springs? I’ve even heard that Eugene Oregon is a nightmare. Soon they’ll be settling Haitians in Hood River Oregon. Making it’s name far more appropriate.
“How the whitest city in America appears through the eyes of its black residents”
“How a log cabin appears through the eyes of termites”
I was born in South Dakota and my siblings and I had never seen a negro in real life until we moved to Arkansas. My heart breaks to hear that now SD resembles the Middle East in parts. Jesus help us all for what is coming.
Amazing that Vice still has an archive of Jim Goad articles.
Amazing that Vice still has an archive of Jim Goad articles.
They must have overlooked it. Give it time…
My Maine is still the whitest state.
”The Way Life Should Be.”
Hah! check out the other Portland (ME) sometime: it’s going in the exact same direction as Portland, OR! won’t be long
Not even close.
Hah. I was up there this summer, and could not believe the level of discomfort it exuded. It has been a solid 5 years since I was last there. You’re mental, or have the frog-in-tepid-water ailment, to think it’s a White City. Antifa posters plastered up in every alcove or on streetlights, hordes of homeless/immigrants malingering on the main drags—much of the charm I loved has gone- at least from a tertiary glance.
Stop lying.
I visited Portland, ME for the first time, recently. Downtown seemed much safer and saner compared to the other Portland.
They are not even remotely comparable.
Are you claiming there’s something magical about Portland ME that will prevent it from becoming like every other city in America over time?
I liked Bar Harbor.
If you are a native Mainer, why are your north state woods still so undeveloped? Or maybe, why is Northern Maine so sparsely populated? I’ve never been there, but from what I’ve heard and read, it seems to be one of the most unspoiled places left in the Lower 48. Imagine if a million prowhites moved there …. Maine could become a future Ethnostate quite easily.
I don’t know why but maybe weather plays a part, it can be very extreme cold winter here. Another theory I have about why New England is much less messed up than the rest of America is that this is where the elite live and vacation so the social experiments and other civilization disrupting activities they engage in, they don’t do that stuff so much where they live and vacation. But the rest of the country is fair game as far as they are concerned.
I prefer Portland as it was before 1926, when it was nearly 100% White, with racial exclusion clauses in its constitution. Back then, it was a human place to live.
Not now, not since it went “woke”. Now it is a shit-hole of degeneracy. As the author describes it, “Modern Portland has metastasized into an ugly expanse of homeless camps, open-air drug markets, sex trafficking, and municipal dysfunction.” This sounds like national suicide – or genocide.
This did not happen naturally. This was allowed and encouraged by a regime of traitors. It is the deliberate destruction of the our race and our culture. It is a top-down operation – inspired, directed and financed by disloyal Jews.
I agree with you, of course, but Portland was pretty much a whitopia into the 1990s, even though it was full of silly white liberals: interesting architecture, beautiful neighborhoods, better weather than most of America (rain or no rain), affordable housing, and amazing used and new bookstores. Portland was one of the best cities in America, now sadly murdered.
It’s been over 25 years since I was in Portland. Late 90s. I thought it was a wonderful city then. I honestly only saw maybe 2-3 blacks the entire time. My pal and I actually tried to find the “ghetto”. We found one Section 8 housing development only about a block long. Some black got irate at us when we started snapping some pictures of it.
I seriously was thinking then of Portland as a distant future retirement place; it seemed so much better than where I was then living (LA). And yeah, I loaded down our car with about 20 books from Powell’s, including a couple of racialist classics. I hope the antifa haven’t torched it.
Liberals eventually ruin everything they touch.
It’s definitely a changed animal since I lived there in the late 1990s. I was in downtown a couple of years ago and it looked like a pig-sty.
The Pacific Northwest is stunningly beautiful, but it is sadly ironic how the Whitest areas in this country are often dominated by the most pathetic Whites. I’ve wondered if the mild, rainy climate has some negative effect on the people.
I doubt the climate was much different from the 1840s to the 1980s.
My suspicion, and maybe I didn’t emphasize it enough in the article, is that places such as Portland were seen as “problematic” by certain types and targeted. This is happening all across the USA regardless of climate.
I had a fascinating conversation on a US cross country flight with a former Portland sheriff. I complained about the road safety issues around vehicular sideshows. He told me he would (snapped fingers ) have it cleaned up overnight. He would’ve picked all the offenders up for small citations.
His tenure was during the nineties when the bulk of offenders were Russian mob soldiers and privates thouh. That’s when, ostensibly, he could have actually enforced those Capone-effective rules.
Modern Portland has metastasized into an ugly expanse of homeless camps, open-air drug markets, sex trafficking, and municipal dysfunction. It’s where wheelchair-bound trannies lingering outside furry conventions scream “I suck dick for cock!” while assaulting you.
Sounds rather similar to the transition from Bismarck to Weimar. “And then, one day, for no reason at all….”
Oregon’s founding constitution explicitly banned blacks from settling.
A distinction which it shares with Indiana.
The Sharp thing was infuriating. It never made any sense. They definitely had the cops on their side. They would congregate at certain bars and have a blank check to jump people, put them in the hospital and they never seemed to get charged. In street fights when they lost they would be little bitches and press charges. The skinhead scene in CA was very hardcore in the late 80s early 90s. People got killed. Shot, stabbed, beaten so bad they were never the same again etc. If you were involved in it or even around it you had to watch your back. Your Skinheads Against White People article was right on. There was this mentality that it was their duty to maim and kill you if you didn’t tow the anti-racist line. That shitty mentality has now spread to the mainstream. Despite winning and beating them from time to time, the trajectory was on their side: Its easy to cause mayhem and push your enemies out when you have the cops and DA’s on your side. The Nazi skinhead scene has mutated from a street thing to a prison thing unfortunately, but those fuckers with the nod of approval from the establishment are still out there. In fact Rose City Bovver Boys are having a big party this year celebrating their 30th anniversary. Must be nice to announce it on facebook and twitter and get tacit approval
And whose fault is this? If there weren’t so many dysfunctional progressive whites, none of this shit would be tolerated. Although I do seem to recall that Portland did slightly move to the Right recently. Or was that Seattle?
one perspective
@FischerKing64
Seattle is a shithole. The downtown is so bad that New Yorkers complain about feeling unsafe. You smell marijuana all over. Third Avenue – a main transportation hub – is just a drug market. It has a beautiful waterfront and skyline, but that’s how they have decided to live.
It’s depressing about the Pacific Northwest though. I got the fuck out of CA 12 years ago and came up here to escape diversity. Didn’t want my kids to have to go through what we went through. California even 30 years ago was way better even though we saw the writing on the wall at the time. You could see a third world invasion on the horizon. Up here it’s definitely everywhere now.Indians, blacks, mestizos. The people up here, many of them have bought their way out of diversity but still preach it like its a religion. The race thing, they are playing with fire and don’t know they’ll get burned. These whites are almost impossible to get through to. I go back to CA to visit family, see the old neighborhoods, white in the 80s and 90s still. These neighborhoods my grandparents lived in, my parents grew up in, that still had this high trust in the 80s. Gone completely. Taken over. Alien. Nobody speaks english, garbage everywhere. Very unsafe. Its cancer and it’s spreading everywhere. Just trying to raise kids and have a normal family life is becoming really hard. The cancer is spreading fast. Whites have become a complete messs. How we’re gonna wake up i don’t know but we better do it fast.
Just threw this video together. You can see “bad” Portland right next to “good” Portland.
PORTLAND: FROM CITY OF ROSES TO CITY OF PSYCHOSIS
Pretty good man. I don’t like to live in the past but i find myself drawn to nostalgia and topophilia because everyday its just so glaringly obvious how much better things used to be. Before cell phone addiction, child trannies, open borders unlimited, legalized black crime etc.. Just people in general nowadays, what the fuck is going on? They can’t look you in the eyes or be honest about anything. Any problems and everyone whips out their phones to record. Remember when fuck you meant fuck you? I miss those days.
Somber and powerful. Depressing, too.
The first African (Somali/muslim) born female became mayor of Southport, Maine in 2021..! A city which is 90% white!
in Toronto, as the old white ethnics die off and sell their houses, these are not purchased by whites, and it is projected to be a majority Muslim city by 2050…” São Paulo” of the North with a Muslim majority. Oh, well the $$$$-changers declare war in the West some 2,000 years ago, and Canada is an easy target!
Bigotry and intolerance are innate survival traits that prevent us from being victimized by non-whites. Anybody telling you to be all-loving and nice is either a deranged fool or two-faced liar.
New construction homes in the surrounding suburbs are often being bought by middle easterners and asians. The pricey and new Lifetime Athletic in Beaverton is full of foreigners. They already act like they own the place. It was disappointing. The area is feeling more and more like the SF Bay Area or Irvine, California, people-wise. The high end Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland still feels like it used to, but they are begging members to propose “diverse” candidates for consideration.
Believe it or not Cleveland, Ohio was 92% White in 1940. If you go to Wikipedia almost EVERY SINGLE town or city has a rapidly decreasing White population and rapidly increasing non-White cohort.
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