On Gentrification, Ambition, and Portland

I’ve read Michael Copperman’s Rumpus essay “La Boheme Portlandia” probably five times in the past 24 hours. I can’t figure out what to do with it. Copperman describes the growing socio-economic inequality between the young white Portlanders who are gentrifying the city, and the older residents of color whom they are displacing.

He begins with the story of an open mic night in a formerly Black neighborhood, and a young man who takes the stage and admits he has nothing prepared, he just wants to talk:

And the young man tells his story, typical enough in today’s Portland. His name is Jonah. He’s an upper-middle-class kid from upstate New York who went to state college. Jonah has loans, but isn’t without resources. He has connections, a job in the family business back east if he returns. He doesn’t like working service, but doesn’t want to return home and become his father, his uncles, his cousins who are already there. Jonah wants to travel, but doesn’t know where to go, if he has the courage to say no to his obligations calling him back. He drinks too much of whatever he can at night trying to put down doubt or make it rise up so he can face it. He spends most of his time alone. Jonah just isn’t sure how to be.

And as he tells his story in fits and starts, a strange thing happens. The crowd, a dozen voices in it, doesn’t get exhausted at his halting and plaintive confessions. Instead, they call out advice and encouragement. “It’s okay,” croons a young woman. “I’ve felt like that!”

“We all want another!” bellows a man when Jonah talks about wanting another drink.

“Go!” hollers two or three voices in chorus when he speaks of putting his things in a bag and leaving. “Mynamar!” a girl insists. “Mongolia!” another voice calls out. “India!” “Guatemala!” “Spain!” “Home Depot!” someone retorts, and everyone laughs. It takes a long while for Jonah to stop talking and leave the stage, and when he does, a group forms around him, and the men and women of this open mic audience surround and lay hands on him, they clap him on the shoulders, openly embrace him. He remains enveloped in a circle of goodwill for a long time, hands clutching the hollows of his armpits as if reaching for what isn’t there, sobbing genuinely, if perhaps a little self-servingly as this attention confirms the depth of his despair. Only the two black women at the video poker machines remain indifferent, feeding dollars into the machine and choosing lines of roulette, holding cards and checking them against the dealer, intent on winning games which are impossibly rigged.

Portland’s gentrification, Copperman writes, is particularly ironic given the city’s racial history:

Few whites moving to Portland today know the reason North Portland is historically black is that a city ordinance existed that prevented blacks from living closer in.

But the part that seems to insult Copperman most is that people like Jonah have nothing prepared.

I work in higher education where I serve a particular student population: low-income first-generation Oregon college students who are often of minority background. The exception to the exception, their success despite their lack of means confers rare traits: they’re overachievers flush with potential. They’re also practical in their orientation toward education: they see intellectual exploration as a privilege reserved for the wealthy elite. They need their hard work to have concrete economic benefits to career and pocketbook, a validation of the sacrifices their parents and grandparents have made on their behalf. As one student wrote, “I cannot fail to make my education pay off — my family’s hopes and dreams ride on me. I am here for them, not for me.” Their worldly aspirations, then, are directed by the imperatives and constraints of the poverty they hope to leave behind.

The last two summers teaching in Portland, I’ve taught a different student population. These University of Oregon students are all white; only a few work, 80% of them attended private school, and in classes which are heavily female, 2/3 are in sororities. This summer, especially, I’m besieged by salon-blonde and Nordic-tan, by the backslapping bonhomie of the backward-baseball-cap sporting boys, who show out for the girls. As students, they’re quite average: the least successful children of first families of Portland. They’re polite but disengaged, seasoned professional students expecting to be underwhelmed. Most are personable, superficially affable; theirs is a polished mediocrity of means.

There’s a lot going on in college classrooms right now — I’m watching the news about Mizzou and Yale with everyone else — and a lot to discuss about gentrification and inequality, and to unpack it would take more than a Billfold article and a Rumpus essay.

But I’m stuck on this comparison Copperman makes between the Portlanders who are trying to win games that are rigged against them, and the Portlanders who have chosen the city as a place to stay out of games they do not want to play. I can’t say that the latter choice is wrong, and I can say that using Unprepared Jonah as an example of The New Portlander is unfair to the people I know in Portland, many of whom are also part of marginalized communities.

But I just read this essay for a sixth time, and I can’t figure out what to do with it.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.