Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Whiteness in Aspen
By Wayne Hare
Portland is the whitest large city in America. It’s the only state that came into the union with a clause that excludes Blacks from residing there under penalty of being whipped. A clause that intentionally wasn’t removed until 2001. It followed the same Jim Crow laws and customs as the deep south. And it’s the only place that I’ve ever been denied service in a restaurant. So what’s going on there? What’s going on in America? Why is America so divided into white and Black?
Racism is a wet blanket that we can’t cast off. It’s like a disability that you’re born with and since it’s the only thing you’ve ever known, you don’t really notice it.
I once attended the high school graduation of a friend’s daughter from an exclusive high school in wealthy Aspen valley. The graduation class was small. Maybe 25 kids, two of which were Asian and 23 of whom were white and zero of whom had brown skin. I mentioned to my buddy how non-diverse the class was. His response was, “It looks pretty darned diverse to me!”
Racism has kept this mountain town - full of liberals who verbally abhor racism and tout how welcoming their community is - almost exclusively white. No, not the kind of racism with hoods and burning crosses. No lynchings. No Klan rallies. No Confederate flags or statues. No redlining. No housing covenants excluding the re-sale of the home to “Negros or Chinese”…the kind of covenants that used to be required by the federal government, banks, and realtor associations in the white, post WWII suburbs that sprang up around urban areas funded by the feds. Just a nice, beautiful, peaceful mountain town full of nice, beautiful, peaceful, mountain town white people.
No, not that kind of racism, but rather the kind of racism that has been with us since before anybody reading this was born. The kind that has been around so long that it simply appears natural and has morphed into ‘institutional’. Governments, banks, customs, realtors, zoning, laws, homeowners, and police were so successful in keeping Black Americans out of white neighborhoods that it seems normal today. Blacks live there, we live here! But without access to money to buy and improve homes, Black neighborhoods, poor to begin with, deteriorated. Schools, funded by property taxes declined in quality as the value of the community declined. Kids from poorer schools, combined with discrimination anyway, had an ever more difficult time getting a higher education. Jobs were relocated to better, further away neighborhoods that for Black Americans with poor public transportation in their neighborhoods, became difficult to get to, even if they could get offered the job.
Racism brewed the perfect cyclical storm long ago. Poor neighborhoods, poor schools, poor education, poor higher education opportunities all leading to ever poorer neighborhoods, poorer schools, poorer education, poorer higher education opportunities. Repeat. And repeat again until finally, with low skill/low paying jobs and little or no inheritance to pass on from one generation to another, you get the cycle of poverty and the key words, repeated over and over again, are ‘poor’ and ‘poorer’. And for those Black Americans able to live in places like the Aspen valley, why would they want to? Many Black Americans with family incomes of over $100,000.00 choose to live in diverse neighborhoods where the average family income is $30,000.00.
None of this is what Black Americans choose. It’s what Black Americans endure. But having gone on for generations, it kind of seems normal. The Aspen valley is white and wealthy and normal. Detroit is Black and impoverished and normal. But then a white cop kneels on a Black American’s neck for almost nine minutes the country and even the world takes notice. The world took notice when 14 year old Emmett Till was beaten, murdered and tossed into the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. White America awoke and there was incremental change. Ten years later John Lewis was savagely beaten and nearly killed by police on the Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama and again, white America awoke and called for change. 55 years after that, and thousands of Black American deaths later, Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. But this time white America seems to have woke to the frightening realization that racism is bad…bad for all of America, not just white America. White America seems to finally be putting it together that a country where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is a guaranteed right and where all people are created equal would be a pretty cool country to live in. Look no further than Portland…the whitest large city in America, and the one fighting hardest for liberty and justice for all.