“The below five-minute video, created by Ifanyi Bell and commissioned by the Oregon Humanities organization, offers a beautiful view on how these demographics are experienced by blacks in Portland who feel they're losing what little place they previously possessed in this city. As Casey Parks at The Oregonian points out, the word "gentrification" is never spoken in the video. Freed from its loaded, messy meaning, the short film cuts more deeply to the heart of what it's like to live in a changing city when that change doesn't seem to include you.
"Spaces have always been not only places where we gather, but places where we get sort of fulfilled, where we see each and tell our stories and where we become whole again and we become renewed," one man, Charles McGee, tells the camera. "And when you’re in the whitest city in America, those spaces are even more critical.”
The video is really, really beautiful and thoughtful and there's a cute baby in sweaters.
And it's making me think a lot about safe spaces that enable a full experience of race identity - and reflect on where they exist in "colorblind" communities.
And it's making me think a lot about safe spaces that enable a full experience of race identity - and reflect on where they exist in "colorblind" communities.
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