"For Portlanders who want more racial and ethnic diversity, there is a solution: "

There's another way, tell the white people on city council to leave town. Every little bit helps achieve racial equality.

FRED REED did a very good piece on the subject of diversity.

Fred also writes: The drug industry is an instance of racial cooperation: Brown people grow drugs, black people sell them, and white people buy them.

Sounds like Pamela's snide little take on the non-diversity of Portland is an argument to keep the city white. How 1950's of her.

Sounds like Pamela's snide little take on the non-diversity of Portland is an argument to keep the city white. How 1950's of her.

Sounds like your snide little take on Pamela means you never read Shelby Steele, did you? He'd likely disagree with you entirely. The book's at the library--check it out.

Oh, and: Shelby Steele's black.

She's entitled to her opinions about Portland - it's a smug little town, to be sure - but she lost me with her praise of Shelby Steele, a truly vile Black racist. (Yes, Blacks can be just as racist as whites, as Ward Connelly, Dinesh D'Souza and Clarence Thomas also demonstrate.) Try reading Tim Wise or Manning Marable if you want a thoughtful reality-based treatment of contemporary racial issues.

Went to her blog, read a couple of her postings. Left a comment, fairly sure that I didn't insult her aside from questioning some of her assertions. Went back today and the comment is gone, no note to me (on my email, etc), no nothing. Feels like she wants to hear herself talk ... go for it, I won't be back.

And yet you tolerate me?

8c)

So, opposing affirmative action = racism?

And Dinesh D'Souza isn't black.

I should have said people of color. No, it is not inherently racist to oppose affirmative action (even its most ardent defenders concede it has problems), but Steele, Connelly et al go much farther in absolving whites of all responsibility for the persistent economic and political disfranchisement of African Americans. In other words, they believe Blacks are unequal in present-day America simply because they are an inferior race. That ideology, no matter how politely expressed, is the very definition of racism.

Steele, Connelly et al go much farther in absolving whites of all responsibility for the persistent economic and political disfranchisement of African Americans.

You're entirely wrong about Steele, and this shows you didn't read the book, much less glance at the cover, where the title is: White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.

In fact, Steele's main premise is exactly the opposite of what you say: that "white guilt" is a way that whites attempted to maintain moral authority and power after the civil rights era. The blog author's point is spot on--in Portland, there's a smug provincialism borne of this "white guilt" that, perversely, is a way of maintaining something that superficially looks like "equality", but is really anything but.

You're wrong about Connelly too, but it'd take a longer post to explain why.

What else you got?

White Studies:

http://ridwanlaher.blogspot.com/

And yet you tolerate me?

8c)

Posted by Jack Bog

Well, yeah!!!! At least when you banish someone you tell them AND most of the time the posting that they posted remain (as a warning to the rest of us). The lady writes well, but she doesn't appear to want to have a conversation. You (Jack) have conversations.

Hello, Native Oregonian.

I approved all of my comments, and I'm sorry if yours didn't go through. Whether it was negative or positive, I don't mind. I am an old-school newspaper journalist. I like to listen to people, even when I don't agree with them.