Eleven years ago (dear God - can it really be that long?) I wrote that Portland Oregon had been designated America’s ‘most European’ city. Presumably this was because “it’s got loads of pedestrian areas, trams, bike lanes, cobbled streets, is environmentally friendly, has lots of clean high-tech enterprises, and its crime rate is among the lowest in the country”. Like a Swiss city, its streets were clinically clean. “Literate and small-scale urban, there’s a pleasant surprise around every corner!."
But Portland had a terrible dark secret that threatened to spoil everything: It was – peer anxiously over shoulder- not ‘diverse’, you see. Almost all of the citizens were, shudder, white. If only, if only, we had more diversity, they whispered… for instance large numbers of blacks, Muslims and Hispanics……..the mind boggled at how wonderful it would then be. For instance Jeanne Faulkner of The Oregonian implored her readers “Let's show the world how Oregonians really feel about our immigrants, refugees and people in desperate, impoverished countries like Somalia. Let's show them we really care about them.” A colleague at that rag bemoaned the fact that “the Portland metro area is startlingly white viewed against the national landscape -- even whiter than Salt Lake City”.
Well eleven years on the city has got its wish. And now it celebrates the full diversity package. Skyrocketing crime, racial riots - make that attacks by minorities on Whites - corrupt public officials, soaring welfare dependency, the formerly bustling downtown area boarded up and deserted at night, trash everywhere (in a single street last week volunteers picked up no fewer than 71 bags of litter). And now there’s an unpleasant surprise around every corner!
So to Portland's virtue-signaling snowflakes I say you got your wish. Enjoy.