The mayor’s racial profiling committee watched a documentary about the history of racial inequality in the United States this morning, before breaking out into mixed-race discussion groups to discuss what they had learned.

REDLINING: Was legal in the US until Johnson passed the fair housing act in 1968…

The multi-part film, entitled Race, The Power of an Illusion, is available in Portland’s libraries. The group watched the third episode, which focused on government-instituted post-war policies, which created white-only suburbs and left inner cities to, predominantly, African Americans. In Portland, too. It focused on the city of Levittown in Pennsylvania, a white-only suburb.

When the groups came back together, Sergeant Dave Hendrie said: “I think the thing that was shocking to me and gave me a better understanding when people talk about white privilege, it’s offensive to me, it feels like a judgment term to me but having watched this specifically as it relates to housing practice and how that works, we talk about white suburbia and here it is, it was a policy that these were the only people allowed to move out there, was whites. So I have a better understanding of white privilege. If I was a G.I and I’d come out here I’d have been able to get a loan for a home, wheras that same advantage would not have been given to Chuck. And to see that as part of the government instituted process of giving loans was disturbing to me.”

Yes you did just hear a Portland Police Officer changing his perspective of white privilege. There’s plenty more discussion, all of it equally fascinating, and you get to find out who Chuck is, after the jump.

Hendrie was referring to Chuck Lovell, who is also a Portland Police Officer at Jefferson High School in NE Portland. Lovell, who came to Portland 6 years ago, grew up in Brooklyn, in an African American neighborhood. In their small group discussion, Lovell and Hendrie talked about property and power. Hendrie, who works in NE Portland, said he grew up in outer NE Portland, around 122nd Avenue. There, "everybody would have social gatherings in the back of their houses," he said. When he started working in NE, he noticed that the African American families were mostly out on their front porches.

Gentrification. Lovell mentioned that in SE, many black families are being forced out of their homes by wealthy whites, now. "It's the same thing that's happening in Brooklyn and Harlem," he added. During the group discussion, Lovell said "Race happened to be a tool to deny access to opportunity. In America in general, how long some of this stuff has been going on. Now it's no longer acceptable to deny someone opportunity based on race. But there's still a whole other set of rules in place that affect people's opportunity. Maybe 50 years from now we won't be talking in terms of race, but in terms of opportunity. That's always going to be the back story."

"It's like the history that you never hear about," said Police Chief, Rosie Sizer. "I personally thought about how much I was a recipient of all those laws, the GI bill, and actually my family benefited from urban renewal, and finally, in terms of providing context for the work that we're doing, I thought it was interesting when they showed the footage of the Japanese Internment Process. Congress wasn't there to see those folks on the buses, the police were. We come to be the most visible representation of all this stuff."

"It reinforced just how difficult the job is before us as a community, because it also showed just how inter-linked all these systems are over the years, to benefit one group over everyone else," said Sizer's co-chair, Jo Ann Bowman of Oregon Action. "Every time I see a film like this I get really pissed off again, because I don't see the white community being as pissed off as they need to be. When I sit at this table, and I'm like, we gotta do it now, it's really about the history. And the reason we've got to do it now is because it's been going on for so freaking long, that if not now, when?"

"Police were used in the civil rights movement to annihilate disobedience. We know that these forces that are in power are used to put down forces that continue to rise up against inequities in our structure. I know that the people who are in power today want to continue having a philosophical discussion about it, that I feel like if I don't yell, I won't be heard. And if I don't demand, then nothing will change," Bowman continued.

"My sister and I were both able to buy a house recently and we get this 'you're a sell-out' accusation," said Police Officer Deanna Wesson, who appears to be half-white, half-African American. "But this definition of whiteness is owning a home, being successful, having a home to pass on to your kids. I know that the PPB has work to do with changing attitudes, but the community also has to take responsibility for how we see ourselves. Changing that definition of whiteness as all this stuff that's successful. But any black person who becomes successful...that's crap. I feel like the police are still held to the responsibility that we were held to in the 1960s. We're not doing that any more. The police are not the major problem in the issue of racism in the City of Portland. There's so much other stuff going on. My thing all along has been training. I think this documentary would be great for in-service."

"I think the reason white people might not be so angry is that it's hard to be angry at yourself," Wesson added.