They're old, and so they're scared of any "kid with a backwards hat who went down the street twice on a BMX bike. And they're even taking our Uber driving jobs! We're talking, of course, about Californians. Specifically, Californians who have moved to Oregon. On Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story about the not-so-friendly welcome Golden State refugees apparently are getting when they relocate to the Great North. The headline:. Oregonians worry about worsening traffic.
This subject is nothing new to Oregonians, who have been discouraging Californians from heading this way at least since the s. When Portlanders on the social-media platform Reddit picked up on the Chronicle's story, they seemed to zero in on one particular quote in the article:.
Traffic is horrendous. Air pollution is increasing. Nice waking up to sunny mornings most days and away from the unwelcoming Oregonians. My husband and I have been talking about moving to the Pacific Northwest, not specifically Portland but somewhere in Oregon, for some time now. I currently live in the southeast and, though I was born here, I am sadly met with the same attitude you faced in Portland. Hopefully I can find someplace to call home. Hi Savannah, thanks so much for reading and commenting.
I hope one day people can be more accepting, no matter where someone comes from or what their beliefs are. Wow — I had no idea this is why you stayed in Portland such a short time.
I like visiting, but I guess I got a similar sense: it could never feel like home, and I would never really know where or how to start building a life there. Yes, Portland was a tough one to settle into. On to the next, indeed!
I know, I was really surprised as well once I moved there. Change comes fast with it and it can be all to much to process, all at once. Thanks for your comment LC. There were a lot of positives to my life in Portland as well, but the lack of understanding or interest about cultures outside of Oregon was definitely disheartening. I think in general this world and the US specifically could use a more inclusive attitude — variety truly is the spice of life.
That is so surprising! I know, very Trump-like indeed… yet for the most part people in Portland consider themselves liberal and open-minded, which I found hypocritical. I loved this post. Thanks Marissa! Such a pity! For me, the problem seems to be the reverse of yours here — people rave about places that are great to live but boring to visit. You can take something positive out of every new place, absolutely. Thanks so much for your comment Helen.
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There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again. But you're not paranoid about the Californians: They really do move here in greater numbers than people from any other state. Nearly one in five Oregon residents were born in California.
The upshot: Calfornians love to move to Oregon, and Oregonians want to go just about anywhere else. She went on to list "unfair treatment and blatant prejudice" as important reasons why students who had come from California were dropping out of school. Or, consider the findings of Californian sociologist Glenn T. In the mids he took a standard survey designed to measure prejudice against African Americans, homosexuals, and other minorities, and inserted the word "Californians" for "blacks" or "gays.
Tsunokai found what could be described as a substantial amount of prejudice. A large majority of Oregonians expected that Californians would "create 'problems'" in their communities by moving there. Oregonians also tended to describe Californians with the same kind of adjectives that students in my courses have used—"shallow," "ruthless," "competitive.
Sixty-eight percent of Oregonians believed that Californians would bring about negative changes in their communities by moving there; only twenty-four percent of the respondents said the same thing about Washingtonians. When interviewed for a newspaper story, Tsunokai said that he was not so afraid of Oregonians that he would not move there.
However, he did think he would need to take a few precautions: "I would change my license plates real fast, and not wear any of those kinds of shirts that identify you as being from California. A Piece of the California Dream below. Claudia K. Jurmain and James J. Copyright, The Oakland Museum.
Now, speaking about California may not seem to be the most logical way of starting a course on the Pacific Northwest, but I find these recent attitudes toward California and Californians quite revealing. I do not think that we learn much from them about the people and society of California. After all, they are stereotypes that tell us more about the people who hold them than they do about those they are intended to depict.
I'd like to use them as a kind of mirror that reflects back to us something about the people who have expressed them. I propose to analyze these images for what they tell us about Pacific Northwesterners. In doing this, I aim to encourage, and "model," the historical and conceptual thinking that is a main focus of this course. That is, I want to suggest: that matters that seem simple on the surface are not so simple; that we need to examine both our own assumptions and the conventional wisdom around us, and not accept them uncritically; and that we can arrive at a better understanding of the present by placing it in historical perspective—that is, by seeing it as a continuation or modification of patterns of the past.
Let's look, then, at the recent anti-California attitudes from six different viewpoints. First, anti-California attitudes contradict our own perceptions of ourselves. People in the Pacific Northwest generally don't regard themselves as prejudiced. Indeed, the region has a reputation for being polite and friendly. The same Oregonians mentioned in the poll above, the ones who were so suspicious and distrustful of Californians, consider themselves to be "thoroughly decent people: charitable, trustworthy, law-abiding, considerate, cooperative, and neighborly"—their attitudes toward Californians apparently notwithstanding.
Moreover, they tend to see people from Washington as basically similar to them. Washingtonians return the favor. When I survey my classes about their attitudes toward Californians, I also ask what they think about Oregonians. My students from western Washington have looked upon Oregon and Oregonians rather favorably. The state of Oregon is reportedly more rural and "laid back" than Washington, and has more "hippies or, as one respondent said, more "crunchy granola types".
Oregon also allegedly has a duller "lifestyle. We ought to be suspicious of these kinds of generalizations, where one set of people is imagined to be the fairly exact opposite of another, where "we" appear as good and the other as bad. Yet there is much in the history of the Pacific Northwest—for example, in Indians' treatment at the hands of non-Indians, or in white attitudes toward immigrants from China and Japan—to suggest that this kind of dualistic and stereotypical thinking is not unique to the s.
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