portland racism

A racist legacy taints this state,
doesn't it?  A Portland, Oregon college professor wrote a column for a local paper.  What he said in that column was a pile of pure manure.

There is no doubt that Oregon has a racist history.  But, to cast the racist sheet over every white Oregonian's head, as this essay has done, is more than misinformation via fact manipulation.  It is an outright lie.  Joe Uris, a flaming liberal academic, would instantly condemn someone who said, "Blacks are all ..." something or other.  He would call it stereotyping -- racist rhetoric.  What, then, is his pallid justification for, in this Portland Tribune piece, doing the same damn thing, himself? -- Larry Leonard, Oregon Magazine (2003 A.D.)
 

Note: the following is a full text reproduction of an essay from the usually otherwise sane Portland Tribune, and contains my editorial response damn near line for line through the piece.  I do not believe that I have ever in my life seen in one place as much liberal bias, misinformation, bad analysis, flawed logic, ridiculous conclusions and outright junk sociology as Joe Uris wrote in the piece you are about to read.  It ran in the Trib just after mid-October.

PERSPECTIVE: Oregon has an unfortunate history of racist acts and policies   By JOE URIS of the Portland Tribune 
In May, a police officer kills an African-American mother of two. 
OMED: Who was a known drug abuser, was high at the time of the incident and tried to drive off with the officer half in and half out of the car.
This fall, racial tensions surround a high school on the east edge of Portland.
OMED: And, we ask why that statement is proof of white against black racism, which as any follower of academia and the liberal press knows, is the only kind of racism there is. 
And just last month, Elinor Langer's "A Hundred Little Hitlers," a powerful account of the1988 Portland racist skinhead epidemic that culminated in the murder of an Ethiopian, makes a splash.
OMED: And begs the question.  Of the African-Americans killed in a violent manner in Portland in the last ten years, how many were slaughtered by skinheads or any other white, and how many were killed by other African-Americans?  Which represents the greatest threat to blacks? Whites or blacks? For another comparison, we see from the mainstream American media each day a tally of the Americans killed in Iraq.  In a similar manner to that which is under discussion, here, the prevaricators fail to put these numbers in perspective.  More young Americans die from violence in Washington, D.C. and Lost Angeles, two liberal American cities, each month, than are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Langer argues that racist history is as much or more to blame as neo-Nazism for the 1988 plague of violence. 
OMED: One death is not a “plague of violence."  Langer needs to address the serious problem, not the statistical oddity.  It would limit the scope of potential publishers since most modern presses, particularly university presses, aren't even faintly interested in the truth, but what we need from her is a book titled "Brotherly Hate: America's Plague of Black on Black Crime."  But even that isn't the central problem, here.  What we need is proof that Uris has made a botch of his description of Oregon's history of racial intolerance.  You'll see that proof begin to unfold in just a few more lines.
Our history as a city and a state is rife with discrimination, both legal and extralegal. Here, using only the African-American experience, is some of that history:
In 1859, the new state of Oregon forbade African-American settlement. Those who defied the rule faced punishment.
OMED: In 1859, Oregon, over the opposition of the Democratic Party,  joined the Union as a free state.  No slavery.  If you want to know who  has historically oppressed blacks in Oregon, right from the very beginning, don't look to the political party that fought to free them.  Look to the political party you incorrectly think was their savior.  The reason why "the new state of Oregon forbade African-American settlement" is just below.  His name is Whiteaker and his political party name begins with a "D."