Kiran Herbert, Portland and Portlandia, Guernica, June 18, 2013

I was born in the northwest of a state that boasts of trees and rain and Stumptown coffee. Now,
in my treeless, industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn, people automatically assume that Im cool;
that is, once they find out Im from Portland. I can see the shift in their eyes: suddenly I look a
little more impressive. These interactions are typically followed by the inevitable, Have you
seen Portlandia? What do you think? Yes, Ive seen the show. And because I can relate, it
induces an almost violent nostalgia more often than any sort of comedic relief. Its surprisingly
spot-on.
Portlandia has completed three seasons to date, and the hipster demographic it presents can be
found in a host of different cities, from Austin, to Chicago, to Lena Dunhams (and my)
Brooklyn. Hipster as a mainstream term has of course become a vague signifier for a general,
marketable populaceyoung, semi-affluent, semi-artsy, semi-ironic, and often white, though it
is by no means confined to white people. Portlandia itself is sometimes a depiction of hipster
culture, though it is more often geared toward a hipster audience, and, it is thoroughly white.
Its all a little disconcerting when you consider a TIME magazine piece saying, In the eyes of a
skinhead, Portland, Oregon looks like the city of the future.
The shows audience is one that can argue, often honestly, that there are few black people in
their day-to-day lives, so its realistic that their entertainment keeps pretty pale. After the first
few episodes of Girls debuted last year, Lena Dunham said she didnt write any AfricanAmericans into the shows first season because she didnt feel she could accurately render
characters that she didnt sufficiently know. Its not necessarily an unfair line of thought, though
of course most people living in urban Hipstervilles see and interact with a variety of ethnicities.
Portland however, and thus Portlandia along with it, is undoubtedly lacking in people of color.
During my five years living in Portland I had the honor of being the only one in my entire friend
group. The citys musical exports are practically all white, as are our other celebrities and the
most famous of our writers. Portland has been described again and again by those who live there
as a hermetic place, and by the New York Times as a city with an obsession with all things
independent and artisan,its West Coast urban cool in a bubble. Its all a little disconcerting
when you consider that a 1993 edition of TIME magazine reported, In the eyes of a skinhead,
Portland, Oregon looks like the city of the future. Portland is often praised for its livability, for
being an ecotopia and a certain kind of alternative example of how conscious and well-informed
people can live. The fact remains that the city is around 76 percent white.
Surprisingly few people know that from Oregons birth onward the powers that be were
determined that the state stay predominantly white. In 1844 an amendment to Oregons
constitution simultaneously outlawed slavery while ordering all freed black people out of the
state under the threat of lashing. In contrast to the south, Oregon didnt want black labor, they
simply wanted black people gone. Forced labor replaced corporal punishment in the amendment
before anyone was actually lashed, but the small black populace got the idea and maintained a
low and isolated profile, outside of the cities and away from enforcement. In 1849 another law
was passed that allowed black people already in the state to remain, but forbid more from settling

in the territory. Though that law was eventually repealed in 1854 under a different act, later
attempts to rescind the new law in order to prevent blacks from settling again made the repeal
appear more of an accidental oversight.
Ultimately Portlandia is a comedy, and strangely, there seems to be a refusal to laugh at the lack
of diversity in Portland or to touch racism at all.
A third law in 1857 made black migration into the state illegal again, and banned those already
there from owning land, entering into contracts, and being able to sue in court. Similar things
happened throughout the country, but there was exceptional fervor in the case of Oregon. In
1862 multi-racial people (in addition to blacks this included Chinese and Hawaiians) were made
to pay an annual tax of $5 to live in the state. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s only
exploited attitudes that were already present in Oregon, and it was no surprise when the state was
one of only six in the country that refused to ratify the 15th Amendment giving black people the
right to vote. Racist real estate laws were openly included in state governance, in selfexplanatory acts like the Oregon Exclusion Lawand a great deal of the racist language used
during this time remained on the books until 2000.
In the late 1800s a large Chinese population traveled to the state, brought by the prospect of work
building the railroads. During the Second World War the black community came to work in
Portlandas they came to San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, Los Angelesmostly building ships
for Kaiser Shipyard and working the ports. But, because of the white populations overt racism
and the strict confinement of black housing to select neighborhoods, when the war ended, a
greater percentage of black Americans left Portland than any of those other cities. Those that
stayed were denied the more desirable housing that they could afford, restricted to the Albina and
Vanport neighborhoodsthe latter being adjacent to the most toxic waterway in Oregon. At this
point the overt racism of groups like the Klan was replaced by a more subtle bigotry, taking
shape in the creation of ghettos that were literally poisonous.
As the show is known to accurately skewer the citys tendencies, people unfamiliar with Portland
are left with the impression that its a place where white people and minorities do interact
breezily.
In the 1960s the freeways ploughed through these black communities, to provide a commuter
path for whites who had moved to the suburbs. Real estate agents continued to follow the earlier,
official laws that prohibited the introduction of people of any race or nationality that would be
detrimental to property values. So minority populations continued to be denied bank loans for
properties outside of their designated areas, which were being destroyed by roadwork. The
government eventually acknowledged the unequal policies in place and legislation was passed,
like the Oregon Fair Housing Act, and the bank discrimination officially disallowed. But as the
last decades pushed on, minorities were consistently pushed north, their moving the product of
environmental racismof loans refused and prime loans denied, of rents rising with trends in
gentrification. Minorities were forced, as they are all over the country, to live near the sewage,
unclean bodies of water, and amidst food desertsthe noise of the highway their own personal
lullaby.

Portlands non-white neighborhoods now make regular appearances on Portlandia, such as in the
episodes featuring the Women and Women First bookstore (in real life a shop called In Other
Words on NE Killingsworth) or the brunch place Fishermans Porch (filmed outside Woodlawn
Coffee & Pastry on NE Dekum). Sometimes the show will even go to historically black
neighborhoods such as King, where youll find NE Alberta St and the setting of the Battlestar
Galactica skit. The characters will interact, without hesitation, with a black family, or there will
be brief glimpses of racial diversity as people wait in line for brunch, but a viewer wouldnt have
any reason to believe that these are black neighborhoods. A certain amount of effort is made to
insert a little color, but ultimately Portlandia is a comedy, and strangely, there seems to be a
refusal to laugh about the lack of diversity in Portland or to touch racism at all. If anything, its
scenes featuring people of colorin which white characters are completely comfortable and at
ease with black onessimply confuse the picture, and, theyre inaccurate: they come off like a
quick attempt at political correctness. Its like pointing to a black person on the street and saying,
See, theres diversity. As the show is known to accurately skewer the citys tendencies, people
unfamiliar with Portland are left with the impression that its a place where white people and
minorities do interact breezily. And since many of the young people in Portland are transplants,
Oregons particular racial history gets lost, and the reasons for Portlands whiteness get, well,
whitewashed, unknown by those who simply came to farm or ride their bike. It is also important
to note that Portland is known for its liberal, accepting culture in relation to the rest of Oregon,
and that comparison allows some level of self-congratulations in the city.
If you dont know, its quite easy to believe that Portland is so white because it somehow just
happens to be that way.
Portlandia is a white show for a white audience, and Portland is a very white place, by design.
But the shows accurate portrayal in this regard does basically nothing to raise self-awareness
through comedy or to generate any sort of local conversation. People may say, The shows too
white, so a few more minorities are thrown in the mix, but it is never laughed ata fact so
strange for a show that laughs at every slightly unique breed of white urbanite. To laugh at a
mania for Battlestar Galactica, or local-seasonal-organic food, or an obsessively liberal culture,
is to laugh at ourselves for things we wouldnt necessarily want to change. To confront the
uncomfortable lack of diversity in one of Americas liberal Meccas by bringing it up on the show
could however, actually slowly enact a little change. By laughing at subtle racism, gentrification
and white privilege, maybe we can subvert it.
Those that make television sometimes subscribe to an apolitical agenda, often forgetting that the
sphere of popular culture can never be apolitical. But when I laugh at Portlandia, Im laughing
because it is political. I am laughing at myself and at my community, while thinking about the
absurdity and commercialism of some of my liberal values. Portlandias objective is to depict
various mutations of privilege, to make those who become so obsessed with their progressive
image reconnect with actual real world concerns. The show is undoubtedly a success in this
regard. Race conversely, is an issue that makes hipster culture undeniably defensive and is only
reluctantly addressed.
Ultimately, what upsets me about Portlandia is really the larger problem of how Portland is
perceived by the rest of the country. More people are moving there every day, ignorant of the

large Mormon or fundamentalist populations, the meth problems, and, of course, Oregons very
particular racial history: if you dont know, its quite easy to believe that Portland is so white
because it somehow just happens to be that way. Diversity can be found in north Portland, but
property valueson Alberta and Mississippi, on Killingsworth and Fremont, and even in St.
Johnsare rising and Portlandia is only encouraging the trend. That those who were forced to
live there will no longer be able to, seems only a matter of time.
Kiran Herbert is a graduate student at NYU.