Protests continue throughout Portland for a 52nd night

I've lived in both Portland and Eugene, and there is a definitely a difference between the two. Portland is a much bigger city with more national and (some) international traffic. It has a much more diversified economy, with a wide variety of professions, neighborhoods, and microcultures, while Eugene is mostly a just a mid-sized college town. This means that Portland is much more diverse demographically (though not as much as other large cities), and there's more of a variety of people with different backgrounds, careers, ages, opinions, etc.

IMO, Eugene feels much more isolated and homogenous than Portland which leaves a lot of room for that covert racism. Portland, while also suffering from that problem, has also had a strong activist history since the 60s, and left-wing politics still shapes the culture as we're seeing now.

That said, there's also a lot of "faux"-progressivism here in Portland, with well-off people claiming to be left wing, but also having a disconnect between their political stances and their lifestyles (like not seeing the irony of putting up a BLM sign while living in a luxury apartment in a recently gentrified, historically black neighborhood).

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