A Quote by W. Kamau Bell
Portland is often trumpeted as being one of America's coolest, hippest cities. I've been to Portland many times, and I'm always like, "Yeah it's cool and hip, but also, where are all the black people? Why is this city so cool and hip, and also keeping the black people away?"
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I have always had a strange relationship to Portland, Oregon. It's a great city. The people who live there love it openly and loudly, and it regularly appears on the lists of best American cities. But something has always felt weird to me about Portland. And not in the way Portlanders mean 'weird' in their slogan 'Keep Portland weird.'
Is Portland worse off than other cities? Is Portland really 'Tent City U.S.A.?' I want to be clear: The answer is no. While the homeless situation in Portland is significant and unacceptable, it is not unique.
In 'Losing My Cool,' I argue repeatedly that it is a terrible lie, which has been foisted on us and sold to us for decades now, that hip-hop culture equals black culture, that being authentically black means keeping it real.
In America there's lot of cool cities, but in Canada there's, like, well, Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax may be cool, but they're so expensive. Montreal is the only city that's affordable but also has buses and culture.
I love everything black, because black is cool. When something crosses over, people are like, "Oh, this is a crossover." First of all, there is no urban anymore. Pop culture is black. White kids are dressing like black kids. It's all crossed the lines now. The way I understand it is, everything black is cool. When it crosses over to white, that means it's going from cool to uncool. That's what crossover is.
I moved to Portland because Modest Mouse is there. I didn't necessarily mean to live there permanently, but I've got a really good feeling for it. The sensibility there really suits me. I happened to have grown up in Manchester, a city that was a pretty cool place to be a musician. It's close to Portland in a lot of ways.
Awkwardness gives me great comfort. I've never been cool, but I've felt cool. I've been in the cool place, but I wasn't really cool - I was trying to pass for hip or cool. It's the awkwardness that's nice.
Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.
A lot of times, black people were extremely cool, and that's how we've been commodified in TV and film. But now we're starting to see an upswing of material where we're like, 'It's cool to be quirky and weird and smart.'
When people meet me, many times they're very surprised because they expect someone who is kind of wacky with seven piercings and very hip and cool and New York City, and I'm not.
I grew up around hip-hop so I didn't think it was about being cool or being black or being white or whatever.
Violence and hatefulness have never been - nor will they ever be - who we are. This is the city I was born in, the city I was raised in and the city I love. Portland is also a united city.
I would like a ship for the hips, please. Ships and hips. Hipsters to stir with their hips on the hip ships. And, of course, hips. Yeah, hip. That's me. I also like sips. I'm a slow drinker. A sipster. I'm a sipster hipster comedian. Yeah, sips. But more hips. Hip, hipster, hip star, hiptard. Definitely.
Socially, hip-hop has done more for racial camaraderie in this country than any one thing. 'Cause guys like me, my kids - everyone under 45 either grew up loving hip-hop or hating hip-hop, but everyone under 45 grew up very aware of hip-hop. So when you're a white kid and you're listening to this music and you're being exposed to it every day on MTV, black people become less frightening. This is just a reality. What hip-hop has done bringing people together is enormous.
I'd lived in Portland on and off for a decade before I'd even heard of Vanport. It was this town of 20,000 people that washed away from north Portland.
Portland is the perfect weekend getaway. I studied acting in Portland and lived there for five years. It's a small city with so much to do. There's beautiful scenery, a great bar scene, and so many fabulous restaurants.
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