Vasquez-Tokos, JessicaWoody, Ashley2021-09-132021-09-132021-09-13https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26629This dissertation examines how racism structures the lives and emotions of communities of color in Portland, Oregon. As the U.S. becomes more racially diverse, Portland remains the whitest U.S. city with a population over 500,000. It is also a site where African Americans, Latinxs, Indigenous groups, and Asian Americans have worked to build community despite the city's history of racial violence and exclusion. Even today, Portland is a magnet for white supremacist groups and right-wing militias. Simultaneously, the city is considered an oasis of liberal politics and a “bohemian millennial paradise”. Drawing primarily from in-depth interviews with Portlanders of color I ask: how are these contradictory realities reconciled in the lives of everyday Portlanders? As a person of color, what does it feel like to live and work in the whitest big city in America?Participant narratives demonstrate conceptual connections between racial structures and racialized emotions, as their emotions were deeply intertwined with Portland’s demographics and historical legacies of white supremacy in the city, highlighting complex emotional dimensions of everyday racism. I also show how demographics and spatial inequalities, such as gentrification, structure racialized lived experiences. I coin the concept of ambient racism which describes how legacies of racism are embedded in the social environment that racialized people emotionally contend with daily. The framework of ambient racism captures how various modes of racism (macro, micro, etc.) work together and manifest in the emotional worlds of racialized individuals. Even though Portland is considered a politically progressive city, the experiences and perspectives of racially marginalized groups disrupts popular notions about what it means for a place to be “progressive”. I argue that understandings of racism must also incorporate modes of resistance and self-preservation to better understand the relationship between inequality and resistance in society.en-USAll Rights Reserved.EmotionsPlacePortlandRacismElectronic Thesis or Dissertation