Why Portland, Oregon is Problematic & Damaging to People of Color
By: Alexandra Tsuneta
Tags: Politics, Gentrification, Race, Racism, Portland Oregon

Black Well-Being Requires Racial Justice

“The most difficult social problem in the matter of Negro health is the peculiar attitude of the nation toward the well-being of the race. There have… been few other cases in the history of civilized peoples where human suffering has been viewed with such peculiar indifference.” — W.E.B. Du Bois

Racial differences in health contribute to adverse birth outcomes as well as life expectancy. It is said that these racial disparities affect a person of color from before they are born to the day that they die. In the United States, Black women are two to six times more likely to die from complications of pregnancy than white women, Black women are also far more likely to experience complications during their pregnancy than white women.

Even before a baby is born, the stress that their mothers feel during pregnancy is passed on; startlingly Black babies that are born in the United States die at over two times the rate of White babies within their first year of life. In order to analyze the racial disparities in the health and medicine industry we need to tackle restrictive policies in the United States based on acts of racial dominance.

Considering the dire implications that poor health has on people of color, we must begin to understand that by improving the social, structural, economic, and environmental factors of Black communities, you are also improving health, as well as life outcomes for the residents of these communities. In the 1960’s the Portland Black Panthers understood this simple fact and began providing Black communities and neighborhoods with medical clinics, dental clinics, and a free breakfast program for children. By providing these simple community survival programs the Black Panthers carved out spaces of sanctuary for poor Blacks in an unjust social and economic system.

However, since the “urban renewal” efforts, of the 1960’s and 1970’s in Portland, this city has not only demolished neighborhoods, but with this demolition they have destroyed places that were critical to the enrichment of the lives of people of color in Portland. By destroying clinics, arts and cultural centers, neighborhoods, and the environmental aspects of these neighborhoods, each resident experiences trauma or Root Shock (emotional trauma from the destruction of his or her environment) in which they must live with every day.

Much of the sociological research on health and race has been built upon and elaborated on the insights from Du Boi’s seminal work. For example, the list of contributing factors of poor health for Blacks in Philadelphia [in 1899] included, “poor heredity, neglect of infants, bad dwellings, poor food, and unsanitary living conditions.” Du Boi also noted that the causal factors of poor health were primarily environmental. These issues, the issues that Blacks in Philadelphia experienced in 1899, are the same issues in which Blacks experience in Portland and in the rest of the United States today.

Clearly, the institutionalized racism and the racialized social structures that govern the communities in which people of color continue to live have not changed much. The “peculiar indifference”, mentioned at the beginning of this section is astonishing, and in a city noted as the most sustainable city in the U.S., Black unemployment still remains double that of White Oregonians, with thirty percent of Blacks living in poverty. So, who exactly in Portland sustaining? I’ll give you a hint: the wealthy, and the white.

In comparison to whites, people of color have “lower income at every level of education; less wealth (net assets) at every level of income; higher rates of unemployment at all levels of education; higher exposure to occupational hazards, even after adjusting to job experience and education; and less purchasing power because of higher costs of goods and services in their residential contexts,” (Conrad & Leiter 2012:37).

In Portland, housing insecurity significantly impacts Black residents, considerably more than it impacts white residents. With all of these factors combined, it must be understood that one’s traumatic stress reaction is cause for extreme health outcomes. Thus, by tackling urban living conditions and improving access to cultural centers, programs, and projects, we are also tackling the health disparities that Blacks in Portland continue to face. In order to tackle these issues, we must begin first with tackling systemic racism and racially restrictive policies in the United States; including but not limited to, reproductive justice, housing laws, restrictive employment opportunities, and the demolition and gentrification of Black neighborhoods