A few years ago my husband, small daughter and I packed up our bags in Portland and drove across the country to the exotic Midwest. There, we planted ourselves in the most diverse neighborhood in all of America, soaking up the differences while striving for commonalities. Our new neighborhood has a rich history of African-American and Native-American populations, and it is also a space where wave after wave of immigrants and refugees crash on the shores a decade or two after the wars in their own countries caused them to seek asylum.
We were thrilled as only white people can be, gentrifiers in every sense of the word, experiencing the benefits of diverse culture and cheap rent while having no knowledge or experience in the systemic injustices that governed the lives of many of our new neighbors. While we had lived in low-income housing before, we still managed to view it all as a bit of a lark, an “experiment” in downward mobility.
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