At a lecture in Portland last October, Isabel Wilkerson—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who wrote about the great migration of Black Americans from the south to the north—said that when people leave a place, it’s often a referendum on the very place they leave.
So then what does it mean when I, and other people of color (POC), walk away from Portland because we can no longer stomach its racism? What does it say about Portland and specifically, the failure of its liberalism?
I’ve been wrestling with these issues ever since I moved to Columbus, Ohio, in July. But before I left, I spent my last month in Portland traveling the city, asking POC how their experiences mirrored or differed from my own. What struck me was the very frank and seldom heard opinions by POC born and raised in Portland who are tired—understandably so—by new transplants like myself criticizing their city.
They have a point. Perhaps I was naïve in thinking I would like Portland. When my partner and I moved to Oregon in 2015 from Santa Barbara, California, I thought Portland might be the place for me. After all, it’s a literary city, a soccer city, a food lovers’ city, and a solidly Democratic city—four things central to my identity. But almost immediately after I arrived, I found myself eager to get out.
I quickly grew accustomed to being asked by white people about my ethnic heritage—whether at the grocery store, sports bar, or on TriMet—and learned to say that I’m Indian American in the first few minutes of practically every conversation, just to set them at ease. It never really worked. They specifically wanted to know about the “Mohamed” in my last name.