Oregon as a Microcosm of our Divided Nation

Beginning with a trip to Crater Lake in 2016, followed by our eclipse trip in 2017, and ending this spring with a road trip to Portland and Seattle, I have had a bit of the grand tour of the state of Oregon. The combination of the trips gave me an interesting view of a state which is deeply politically divided, and seems in some ways to be a microcosm of the nation as a whole. I actually wrote some of this back in 2017 after the eclipse trip, but put it aside. Our trip this year really brought home to me the contrast, and I decided to write a bit about it. 

Oregon has an...interesting history with race. To be blunt, Oregon has a long history of excluding African Americans. Way back to the 1840s, Oregon had laws which prohibited blacks from living there. Oregon entered the union as the only “no-blacks” state. This racism eventually became enshrined in the state constitution. While the 14th Amendment effectively overruled it, the clause remained on the books until 1926. Oregon didn’t acknowledge the right of blacks to vote until 1959. It didn’t ratify the freaking 14th Amendment until...wait for it...1973, nearlt a decade after desegregation. Furthermore, other racist language in the constitution was not removed until...wait for it...2002. This contributed to Oregon remaining a very lily-white state to this day. Only 2% of the population is black, and Oregon remained over 90% white well into the 1990s. (The last couple of decades, this has shifted quite a bit, which I suspect has made the eastern - whiter - part of the state very uncomfortable…) Portland is by a significant margin, the whitest large city in the US, although this too is changing. 

Once you get out of the major cities, though, Oregon is painfully white. On our eclipse trip, I was really struck by just how white it was. I think we saw a few latinos working at service jobs, but just a handful. And I saw one black person. One. At the eclipse viewing site. And he drove up from another state. 

During my childhood (and even my adulthood), I have known quite a few people who moved to Oregon, typically as part of “white flight.” These days, they tend to go to Idaho, which, outside of Boise, has kind of become THE destination for white nationalists. (It isn’t an accident that Mark Fuhrman ended up there. Or that Doug Wilson has his compound there.) But a few decades ago, Oregon was that destination for conservative whites fleeing diversity. 

I have come to realize that I just feel out of place a bit in an all-white society. I have never lived in an overwhelmingly homogenous place. The neighborhoods I grew up in were mostly minority, and Bakersfield is gloriously diverse, with vibrant hispanic, Filipino, Korean, Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim communities. I take for granted that I will come in contact with a wide range of people on any given day, and they aren’t segregated into categories like Latina maid, African American janitor, etc. I’ll sit next to a Muslim American watching a Mexican American woman sing a Joe Walsh tune while an older Filipino couple dances. That’s America as I know it. So eastern Oregon just felt, well, weird. And that is before you get to the other challenge, which is finding food. It is hard to quantify it, but the presence of legitimate “foreign” food makes everyone up their game. Los Angeles isn’t just a Mecca for foods from around the world; the genres cross pollinate and mix and everything is just to a higher standard. A certain political figure or two may not realize it, but a taco truck on every corner makes for a better world. 

Contrast this with Portland, which felt much more familiar. Although Portland is pretty white for a major city, it has growing minority and immigrant populations, and a gratifyingly broad range of culture - and food. We had an absolutely fantastic meal at a Lebanese restaurant, in addition to legit Banh Mi. Go to a park, and there are kids of all ethnicities, just like in CA. 

Portland is also loudly progressive. We took a walking tour of Bevery Cleary’s neighborhood (yes, I loved the books growing up), and literally every other house had a Pride flag (it was Pride Month), a Black Lives Matter sign, or other signal of pushback against the racism and hatred of Trump and the GOP. Most common, perhaps, is a Portland phenomenon that I love: the “In Our America” sign. I have one of these as a sticker on my trailer. 

One of the houses Beverly Clearly lived in as a kid. Note the sign...

Here is the sign. We have a sticker on our trailer. If you want one, you can get them at

Nasty Women Get Shit Done. And you should.

As a Californian, this level of political activity is a bit foreign. Certainly San Francisco is more liberal than Portland, but you don’t see the same quantity of signs. And certainly not in Los Angeles either. (For what it is worth, Seattle is also aggressively liberal. At least now that “opposing racism, xenophobia, and bigotry” has come to mean “liberal.”) 

As I was contemplating this, I started to think that maybe the open activism of Portland (and Seattle) has a bit to do with the way the rural parts of Oregon (and Washington) are. In contrast to the cities, rural Oregon has a lot in common with my part of California (Kern County is known as the “Texas of California” because of our oil and redneckery.) Except, because rural Oregon is blindingly white, there isn’t the counterweight. 

For example, certain wealthy farmers in my neck of the woods have giant shrines to Trump. I mean, huge - the size of a city lot. I use the word “shrine” intentionally, because this is very much idol worship. He is their god. 

Eastern Oregon has the same thing. We drove by shrine after shrine after shrine. But there was a difference. Because central CA has a large hispanic (and east and south Asian) population, there are counterweights. Pro-immigrant signs. Anti-hate signs. Billboards for Mexican and Indian and Thai restaurants. Spanish and Punjabi language advertisements. Everywhere you go in California, you will be rubbing shoulders with people of all colors and origins. It’s a beautiful thing.

Not so much in Eastern Oregon. Instead, I saw far too many aggressively racist and xenophobic signs to go with the Trump shrines. (This is not a coincidence.) Without the counterweight to lend some shame to open bigots, they get to be as loud as they want. 

In recent years, this division has become even more stark, and even troubling. At the same time that Portland (and Seattle - while I don’t know rural Washington well, I think there are similarities) has embraced social activism, neo-Nazi groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer have chosen Oregon as a sort of headquarters. (Possibly because of the relaxed gun laws.) 

Of interest to me in this context is the fact that law enforcement seems increasingly sympathetic these days to openly white supremacist ideas and groups. In the case of Portland, there is solid evidence of completely inappropriate coordination between far right groups and the police. Because left-leaning groups doubt that they will be protected by police, some are arming themselves. I don’t feel particularly great about this development - it would be much better if the Proud Boys were treated like the terrorist group they are, rather than coddled by sympathetic cops. But if you don’t have that, well…I believe this state of affairs is unsustainable, and sooner or later, there will be substantial changes in Portland. There is already significant pushback. 

These are basically my impressions from our three trips to Oregon. Obviously, I don’t live there, and can’t have a truly complete knowledge of the local nuances. However, I can and have observed what Oregonians themselves choose to say about themselves. There does seem to be a deep divide, more exaggerated than elsewhere perhaps, but similar to the divide in our country. In my view, the divide is exacerbated by the long history of racial exclusion, leading to large portions of the state with few non-whites. In line with human nature, we fear and hate most those we do not know. The cosmopolitan and diverse cities increasingly embrace diversity - racial, ethnic, national origin, and sexual orientation and gender identity. The rural areas continue to lose their young people, alienate minorities, and become increasingly angry and bigoted. This is what we have seen across the country, as rural whites have taken their legitimate grievances, and turned them into vicious hatred directed at immigrants and non-whites. 

It was an interesting experience visiting. While most places in California (with the exception of a few rural counties in northeastern CA that are indistinguishable from eastern Oregon - or even rural Idaho) feel like home in some way, Oregon was different. I could absolutely enjoy living in Portland, with its diversity and multiculturalism. But even Eugene was disturbingly white, at least where we were. I mean, literally, all the people at a park concert were white - you would never see that in Bakersfield. And rural Oregon, for all its natural beauty (which is considerable!) and outdoor opportunities, made California’s more conservative cities (like Bakersfield) seem like beacons of progressivism and diversity. I mean, we have our racist asshats and horrible politicians (hello, Kevin McCarthy, hands down the absolute worst representative I have ever had), but there are competing voices too. We had an “unexpectedly large” protest over immigrant detentions, our women’s march was vibrant and large, and those of us marching have seen support from our local law enforcement. We may have more than our share of Confederate Battle Flags flown by redneck dude-bros. But the other voices are louder and more organized. And, um, “demographics” are changing. Because Bakersfield (and other cities in the central valley) are affordable by California standards, young people are moving in. And they aren’t just white either. It is easy to see Kern County go the way of Orange County - and turn blue. 

In the case of Oregon, one wonders what the future will hold. It seems like the cities will continue to grow, and grow more diverse. Will the rural areas wither? Or become more and more radicalized and racist as they lose influence and power? It will be interesting to see. It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss the decline of rural America - and the ways that it is committing suicide - but I hope to make that a future post.