A city unskanned
Just like that, the Skanner, Portland's Black-owned newspaper, is gone. It stopped its print edition a few years ago, and now even the website is kaput. It's officially defunct as of this week.
This blog has always linked to the Skanner, and I'd swing by there now and then to see what their take was on things. Theirs was a distinctive voice, and the town is poorer without them, to be sure. We need more voices around here, not fewer.
The Oregon Historical Society has back issues archived here. But who will fill the void going forward? Hey, Albina revivalists! It ain't just about the real estate.
Blacks are now thoroughly integrated into the city--something black leaders hate to aknowledge as they try to "rebuild" the city's most notorious black ghetto. How do we know this? Because the radical Charter Commission told us so--repeatedly--as it crafted a minorities-first new government.
ReplyDeleteHere's what the Commission's "Progress Reports" said: "Increasing opportunities for communities of color to elect their candidates of choice has also been a driving goal for the Commission. Portland does not have a geographic distribution of BIPOC residents that could allow for a drawing of a majority BIPOC district, nor does it have the level of income or age segregation and stratification that characterizes other large cities."
A certain subset of the city's black population hates this; they want to monetize white guilt and use government racial set-aside policies for their own benefit. Fourtenth Amendment (paid for by thousands of white lives)? Fuggedaboutit!
Another victim of gentrification. After surviving the flooding of Vanport in 1948, many black residents moved to the Alberta/Williams area and rebuilt their neighborhoods. Then when houses became a small fortune, many young whites moved into the area seeking the dream of owning their own house. This time the flood wasn't just one horrible day, but a gradual but relentless push of higher bidders nudging them aside.
ReplyDeleteSo out to the numbers they went, but with no real place to coalesce as a group. Add in the steady influx of peoples from south of the border and beyond and the black community was pretty much dispersed to the bitter east winds of no-wheres-ville. The Vancouver Avenue Baptist church is still there, but not much else survives in the now gentrified old neighborhood except the street names..