RACISM in the Wild West - Cities You Should Know About_Travel USA
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TravelTranscript
00:00The South gets a bad reputation when it comes to racism, and let's be fair, with slavery,
00:05segregation, Jim Crow, and flying Confederate flags, it will likely forever be linked with
00:10its reputation.
00:12But that's not to say that the rest of the country is immune from the stain of racism.
00:16In fact, some people would say it's worse in other parts of the US.
00:20Who could forget the Martha's Vineyard incident?
00:22All those progressive Northerners claim that Texas was racist for not wanting illegal immigrants,
00:28so Texas sent them to Martha's Vineyard where they lasted a whole 48 hours before residents
00:33showed their true colors and sent them packing.
00:36Racism comes in many forms, and this video will show the eight cities in the West where
00:40racism is prevalent.
00:42Whether it's racism against black Americans, white Americans, or anti-Semitism, let's count
00:48down the West's worst places for race relations.
00:51This list will also look at recent incidents that have gained a certain city its notoriety.
00:56While a few anecdotes does not solely make a racist city, it's worth noting that these
01:00seemingly one-off incidents inevitably bring out the hidden underbelly of racism within
01:05a town.
01:068.
01:07Grants Pass, Oregon
01:09Grants Pass is a town about four hours south of Portland with a population of just under
01:1440,000 people.
01:15While Portland gets a lot of attention as being a liberal bastion, it is still the widest
01:20big city in the US.
01:21Although Grants Pass may not be a big city, it is following in Portland's footsteps.
01:26The racial makeup of the city is 90.9% white.
01:31Grants Pass was a former sundown town, meaning black people were not allowed to be out after
01:35dark.
01:36It's no surprise that less than 1% of the town is black.
01:40As recently as the early 2020s, protesters of racism have reported being heckled and
01:45threatened when marching in Grants Pass.
01:48The irony is that Grants Pass was named after Ulysses S. Grant, who fought for the Union
01:53during the Civil War.
01:54Grants Pass has been in the news, along with much of southern Oregon, as racist, with white
01:59supremacist recruitment posters having been found all over town.
02:03This, of course, blurs the line of free speech and hate speech that has left the town grappling
02:08with its racist legacy and questioning why this town is still a hotspot to promote hatred.
02:147.
02:15Berkeley, California
02:16This one may come as a shock, since Berkeley is the epicenter of the free speech movement.
02:21It touts itself as a liberal utopia and promotes its open-minded tolerance.
02:26That is, unless, of course, you're Jewish.
02:29After October 7th, anti-Semitic attacks have increased by 360%.
02:34Unless you've been living under a rock, you can see that college protests in support of
02:38Palestine have turned violent.
02:41Jewish students have been attacked and harassed over the past few weeks, and Berkeley is no
02:45exception.
02:46UC Berkeley is one of six universities nationwide facing an anti-Semitism probe from the House
02:52Education Committee.
02:54It's also under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's civil rights arm.
02:59Regardless of your political beliefs on the war in Gaza, there is no excuse for targeting
03:03Jewish people, particularly Jewish people who have no connection to Israel or its government.
03:08Assuming that all Jewish people are to blame is, in and of itself, a form of anti-Semitism.
03:136.
03:15is Baro, now known as Utqiagvik, Alaska, and it's not racism in the traditional sense.
03:21Many modern definitions of the word racism have included an element of power, meaning
03:26that it's impossible to be racist against white people.
03:29But classical definitions, and anyone who thinks judging someone based on their race
03:33is wrong, would likely harken back to the basic definition of the word, which is, the
03:38belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities.
03:44Simply so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.
03:49Baro has a history of racism against white people on the part of Native Alaskans.
03:53With a town of under 5,000 people, it's small, though it's large by Arctic standards.
03:59White people make up only 21.8% of the population, with Alaskan Natives making up 57.2%.
04:06There are long-standing tensions, and many Native Alaskans still see the whites as invaders
04:11to their indigenous land.
04:12While that may have been true many generations ago, those born there today also have called
04:17it home for generations.
04:19White people have been murdered and harassed, and students at Utqiagvik's middle and high
04:24school have reported feeling harassed and unwelcome.
04:28Number 5 is Glendale, California.
04:30Glendale is a city in the San Fernando Valley in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles.
04:35It has a population of 196,000 people, and despite it being a suburb of one of the most
04:41diverse cities in the country, white residents make up nearly 63% of the population, with
04:46black residents being only 1.7%.
04:50The only minority group that has a substantial percentage are Hispanic and Latino, at a mere
04:5517%.
04:57So how does a suburb of LA have such a sordid racial balance?
05:01Like many sundown towns, black people were harassed, intimidated, and murdered, making
05:06the thought of moving your family there suicidal.
05:09For decades, Glendale was a hub for the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan, and the KKK
05:15held rallies in Glendale as late as the 1980s.
05:19So while many people give the South the side-eye when it comes to racism, California has two
05:24cities on this list so far, and have targeted two different groups.
05:28According to Tara Peterson, the chief executive officer for the YWCA Glendale and Pasadena,
05:34the sundown practice in Glendale lasted until the 1990s.
05:39Number 4 is Bellingham, Washington.
05:42Bellingham is a picturesque town nestled in the Cascade Mountains, about an hour and a
05:46half north of Seattle, and just an hour and 20 minutes from Vancouver, Canada.
05:51Bellingham has about 92,000 residents, with 75% of them being white, and a mere 6% being
05:57Asian.
05:59Bellingham became notorious for its racism against Asians going back to the Bellingham
06:03riots of 1907.
06:05On September 4, 1907, the demands of white workers came to a vicious head, resulting
06:11in a riot.
06:12White workers broke into lumber mills and pulled South Asians from their work, then
06:16entered their bunkhouses, destroying property and stealing valuables.
06:20Within days, the Asian community was gone, having been, in the approving words of one
06:25local newspaper, wiped off the map.
06:28In 2023, four teenagers were arrested in Bellingham for alleged hate crimes, as they followed
06:34a man home from work, whipped him with their t-shirts, and threw rocks at him.
06:38What was most shocking was that the teens were only 14, which has the town questioning
06:43how kids so young could have learned that hate.
06:46It's worth noting that Bellingham was also a sundown town.
06:50Number 3 is Honolulu, Hawaii, which is about as far west as we'll get.
06:55It's also the only state capital on this list.
06:58Hawaii has long been hailed as a racial utopia, where whites are not the majority, despite
07:03making up about 75% of the U.S. as a whole.
07:07Asians hold the clear majority of the city, but in spite of this, Native Hawaiians still
07:11report racism at alarming rates, and in ways that can often be considered invisible.
07:17For example, Honolulu has a chronic homeless crisis, and it affects Native Hawaiians at
07:21a staggeringly high rate.
07:23A disproportionate 28% of the homeless population identified as Native Hawaiian, despite making
07:29up only 8% of the city's population.
07:33Additionally, Native Hawaiian women and girls experience violence at rates disproportionate
07:38to their population size, as more than a quarter of missing girls in Hawaii are Native Hawaiian.
07:44Calling the island chain a racial utopia is part of the erasure of Native peoples and
07:49their plight for equality.
07:51Number 2 is Albuquerque, New Mexico.
07:53While New Mexico is often criticized for racism against Native Americans, Albuquerque has
07:58faced an alarming amount of Islamophobia.
08:01Like antisemitism, Islamophobia isn't racism in the sense that it isn't about a person's
08:06racial background, but the results are the same for the marginalized group.
08:10With Muslims making up only 1% of the city, it's no surprise that fear swept across the
08:15Muslim community.
08:16And it seems there was a serial killer or killers in the area specifically targeting
08:22Muslims.
08:23In the span of a week in August of 2022, four Muslims were brutally murdered.
08:28Islamophobic attacks spiked after 9-11 and seem to have hit another uptick since the
08:32October 7 terrorist attack against Israel.
08:36Many Muslims in Albuquerque have reported feeling unsafe, particularly while the killer
08:40remained at large.
08:42Muslim businesses closed their doors, people stayed inside, and women wouldn't venture
08:46out alone.
08:47The twist in this case is that when the killer was caught, he himself turned out to be Muslim.
08:53One would think that this is case closed, and no Islamophobia was actually lurking in
08:57the city.
08:58But this revelation exacerbated the scenario, as many of the city's residents lashed out
09:03by claiming that Muslims are all violent.
09:06One Muslim resident said, it's sad they would label 25% of the world's population
09:11as all violent just because of the cowardly acts of one man.
09:15Muslim residents in Albuquerque faced a mixed bag of tricks.
09:18On the one hand, they weren't being hunted down on the basis of being Muslim.
09:22However, the revelation that the killer was Muslim exacerbated racial tensions between
09:27Muslims and their non-Muslim neighbors.
09:31Muslim residents now find themselves having to justify the murders as personal feuds rather
09:36than something inherently violent embedded in their community.
09:39As one resident said, when there is a white serial killer or a white person in Albuquerque
09:44commits a murder, no one blames all white people and accuse white people of being violent.
09:49But when it's a Muslim, they blame our entire community.
09:52And number one is Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
09:55Coeur d'Alene is a city seven hours north of Boise and just 40 minutes east of Spokane,
10:00Washington.
10:01The population is just under 57,000 residents, with 98.3% of the population being white.
10:08Native Americans are the only minority group making up over 1% of the population, coming
10:13in at a mere 1.2%.
10:16You may wonder how a city with virtually no black people could even have instances of
10:21racism.
10:22Let's start with why it's so white to begin with.
10:24In the early 1970s, Richard Butler established an Aryan Nations headquarters in rural Kootenai
10:30County on a 20-acre site just north of Coeur d'Alene.
10:34The group led parades that enticed large groups of young people in downtown Coeur d'Alene.
10:39As recently as the mid-1990s, the Aryan Nations began running its own website, one of the
10:45first websites specifically dedicated to recruiting white supremacists.
10:49Coeur d'Alene seemed to be following a path similar to Leith, North Dakota.
10:53See our video on the 10 Most Racist Towns in America for more information on Leith and
10:58its bizarre climb to notoriety.
11:00Many of Coeur d'Alene's residents have fought back against this group and have even led
11:04violent clashes.
11:06And while this may seem like progress, Coeur d'Alene made headlines in March of 2024 when
11:11a Utah basketball team experienced harassment and racial slurs while in the northern Idaho
11:16town for an NCAA tournament.
11:19According to police reports, as the team walked from the hotel to a restaurant downtown, they
11:24were followed by a driver who was shouting racial slurs at them.
11:28When they left dinner to return to their hotel, the driver and others who were recruited
11:32to harass the team followed them back to the hotel, revving their truck's engines and
11:37harassing them further.
11:39This proved that Coeur d'Alene's legacy of racism, while on the decline since the
11:431990s, is still lurking beneath the surface.