roronoa79 wrote:
Unfriendly reminder that the Pacific Northwest has an ugly history of white supremacy. The populations in these states really started to grow after the Civil War, as many white southerners migrated there in an effort to get away from blacks who now dared to compete with them for paying jobs. Ditto for many northerners who left once the Great Migration of freed blacks to northern states started to take off. These states were envisioned as havens for whites who did not want to live alongside non-whites. Chinese and Latin-Americans were subject to de jure racism as well. (Native Americans being discriminated against goes without saying). Google the Northwest Front. And the Oregon Black Exclusion laws. Though not always enforced, the latter meant that blacks could not legally reside in Oregon until 1926.
Scrutinize Pacific Northwest conservatives as much as you would Southern conservatives. Do conservatives not like me saying that? Then purge your godd-mn ranks of these people. Stop tolerating them. Stop enabling them.
"This is about anti-gay conservatives, not racist conservatives." Gays are just the newest target because reactionary conservatives can't as easily get away with openly despising black and brown people anymore--though groups such as the one in this article are less subtle about the interconnection of their racism and homophobia than their more mainstream counterparts.
Only in part, actually. Among some of the original settlers here in Washington were blacks who felt unwelcomed in Oregon. If anything, the Chinese were the blacks of the Pacific Northwest, much more than actual blacks were. Though that was a prejudice felt all around the country back then.
The fact that Coeur d'Alene, as Spokane, has a Pride Parade, says something about how there is true tolerance and diversity among many of us here in the Northwest.
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-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer