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'Racist Utopia': Summary

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In Matt Novak’s “Oregon was Founded as a Racist Utopia”, he corrects the “textbook” knowledge so many have on racism in America. It is common to believe racial exclusion was only prevalent in the South. Novak highlights that racism widely existed in America, even in a progressive northern city like Portland, Oregon. This is startling to many who believed racism was only seen in the South but, the only abnormality of Oregon was that the state was “bold enough to write it down” in their constitution. (qtd. in Novak 1) The Klu Klux Klan, known for their terrorism of colored people in the South, “boasted membership of over 14,000 men” in Oregon with “frequent cross burnings on the hills outside Portland and around greater Oregon.” (Novak 4) Even the government was corrupt with Klu Klux Klan from the state to city governments. ‘Oregon’s founding is part of the forgotten history of racism in the American West’ (Novak 1) yet the remains of Oregon’s past still resonates with the state; today ‘thirteen percent of Americans are black, [but] just 2 percent of Oregon’s population is black.’ (Novak 2) …show more content…

There are still huge resemblances of this racism today, not only in Oregon but in the Pacific Northwest. Novak’s source Rich Benjamin points out that it “was shocking, to drive through Oregon and [still] witness so many Confederate flags, juxtaposed with the high-tech futurism.” (qtd. in Novak 6) Similar to Oregon’s supposed white utopia, today’s Pacific Northwest has a strong sense of a utopian white supremacist movement. Northwest Front’s, a group promoting white flight for a new country, draft constitution “says plainly, ‘The Northwest American Republic shall be a Homeland solely for the use and habitation of White people of all nationalities, cultures, and creeds worldwide, in order that Western civilization may be preserved…” (Berger

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