(Name-mce) ListServ Conference sites

Mon Jul 24 17:39:04 EDT 2006

I find it somewhat unfortunate that an organization that works to
promote diversity and equal treatment of all, as I believe NAME to
represent, would stay away from a city because it is not diverse enough.
Shouldn't an active organization such as NAME bring diversity to cities
such as Portland or Seattle, and strive to facilitate an atmosphere of
genuine sisterhood/brotherhood to all, no matter what stereotype the
local demographics may seem to portend.

Somehow, I see such sentiment to be just as racist, and unfair as what
NAME purports to defend against.

Chi H. Yi

	-----Original Message-----
	From: Name-mce-bounces at nameorg.org
[mailto:Name-mce-bounces at nameorg.org] On Behalf Of Villanueva Anselmo
	Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 6:50 PM
	To: name-mce at nameorg.org
	Subject: (Name-mce) ListServ Conference sites

	Two other conference sites that might be considered are Denver,
Colorado and Honolulu, Hawaii.

	As for Portland, Oregon, it is a great city and it would be
great to have the conference there... but if NAME is looking for a
diverse city, Portland is not the place (see article below).  And
Seattle is a close second behind Portland on that score.

	Anselmo

	--------------------------------------------------

	Anselmo Gary Villanueva, Ph.D.

	Equity Assistance Center, Region X

	Pacific Resources for Education and Learning

	900 Fort Street Mall, Suite 1300

	Honolulu, Hawai'i  96813-3718

	Tel: 808.441.1425  800.377.4773

	Fax: 808.441.1385

	E-mail: villanuevaa at prel.org <mailto:villanuevaa at prel.org> 

	www.prel.org <http://www.prel.org/> 

	Building Capacity Through Education

	--------------------------------------------------

	Northwest Cities Flip Demographics

	By Blaine Harden

	The Washington Post

	Published: Tuesday, June 20, 2006

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/06/20/a1.seaport.0620.p1.php?sect
ion=nation_world

	PORTLAND, Oregon - Already the whitest major city in America,
Portland is rapidly becoming even whiter at its core. 

	``The heart of the black community is gone,'' said Charles Ford,
76, a black activist whose neighborhood in Portland has flipped in
recent years from majority black to majority white. ``There ain't no
center anymore.'' 

	About 150 miles north in Seattle, the nation's second-whitest
major city, the same process of downtown demographic bleaching is
accelerating for the same reasons. 

	An invasion of young, well-educated and mostly white newcomers
is buying up and remaking Seattle's Central District, the birthplace of
Jimi Hendrix and the once-bluesy home of the young Ray Charles. What had
been the largest black-majority community in the Pacific Northwest has
become majority white. 

	``I am concerned and I am frustrated because I don't know what
the alternatives are,'' said Norman Rice, who in the 1990s was Seattle's
first and only black mayor. ``It clearly isn't racist; it's economics.

	The real question you have to ask yourself is: Is this good or
bad?'' 

	White gentrification is hardly unique to Portland and Seattle.
It is changing Harlem, the District of Columbia and many other cities.

	Demographers say it is especially noticeable in major California
cities

	- a function of population density, the desire to escape long
commutes and the relative housing bargains in black neighborhoods. 

	But as white gentrification accelerates in Portland and Seattle,
where the percentage of black residents was already the lowest among the
nation's largest cities, it is erasing the only historically black
neighborhoods these cities have ever had. 

	In many cities with large black populations, gentrification has
caused only marginal racial change. 

	In Washington, D.C., for example, the percentage of white
non-Hispanic residents increased 2.7 percent between 1990 and 2004,
according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. 

	Still, Washington remains less than one-third white and about 60
percent black. 

	In Seattle's Central District, though, racial change is anything
but marginal. The non-Hispanic white population in the area jumped from
31 percent in 1990 to 50 percent in 2000, according to the census. 

	Local demographers say white growth since 2000 has gained
momentum, while the percentage of black residents appears to have fallen
to less than 40 percent. With real estate prices rollicking upward at
about 25 percent a year, the Central District appears to be getting
whiter and richer by the month. 

	As black residents leave the central areas of Portland and
Seattle for the suburbs - either because they have sold their homes or
been forced out by higher rents - their community is being splintered by
geographic dispersal and racial integration. 

	``It's destroying us, socially and politically,'' said Ford, the
neighborhood activist from Portland. ``It is just a total inconvenience
and disrespect to black folks.'' 

	Rice does not view the changes as nearly so dire, especially for
people who have been able to sell their homes at a substantial profit
and set aside money for retirement. 

	Census figures suggest that blacks in Seattle and Portland have
not been displaced into homelessness and that they are not economically
worse off in the suburbs than they were downtown. In many cases, housing
in the suburbs is newer, schools are better and crime is lower. 

	But Rice said newly suburbanized African-Americans in Seattle
and Portland are being isolated from one another and ``will have to find
new places to embrace our black heritage.'' 

	Neither blacks nor whites, Rice said, appear to have found a way
to stop or slow the disappearance of core black neighborhoods. ``They
are concerned, but they don't have an option or a plan,'' he said. 

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