Oregon is one of the first states to jump to the cause of diversity, but we actually had racist laws on the books well into the 1920s. In fact, even though the laws were repealed, some of the language still existed in local statues and municipalities until the 1990s-2000s.
It's been blamed for Oregon's ridiculously low black population. I want to be sensitive to all that's going on in the country right now, but the old joke around Eugene was that if you saw a young black man, you knew he played for either the Ducks' football team or basketball team, because we just have such a low native population of African Americans.
en.wikipedia.org
The chart below is a percentage of the state's population that is African American / Black. Nebraska is 2.5x higher than Oregon, meaning that you essentially have a 250% higher chance of running into a black person in Nebraska compared with Oregon.
Montana | 0.40% |
Idaho | 0.60% |
Wyoming | 0.90% |
Maine | 1.20% |
Vermont | 1.20% |
Utah | 1.20% |
New Hampshire | 1.30% |
Hawaii | 1.60% |
Oregon | 1.80% |
New Mexico | 1.80% |
South Dakota | 1.90% |
Alaska | 2.90% |
North Dakota | 3.00% |
Iowa | 3.30% |
Washington | 3.50% |
West Virginia | 3.90% |
Colorado | 3.90% |
Arizona | 4.10% |
Nebraska | 4.50% |
Rhode Island | 5.40% |
Kansas | 5.50% |
California | 5.50% |
Wisconsin | 6.30% |
Minnesota | 6.40% |
Massachusetts | 7.00% |
Oklahoma | 7.20% |
Kentucky | 8.00% |
Nevada | 8.90% |
Indiana | 9.20% |
Connecticut | 9.90% |
Pennsylvania | 10.70% |
Missouri | 11.40% |
Texas | 11.80% |
Ohio | 12.20% |
New Jersey | 12.80% |
Michigan | 13.60% |
Illinois | 14.00% |
New York | 14.30% |
Arkansas | 15.20% |
Florida | 15.40% |
Tennessee | 16.60% |
Virginia | 18.80% |
North Carolina | 21.20% |
Delaware | 21.50% |
Alabama | 26.70% |
South Carolina | 26.80% |
Maryland | 29.40% |
Georgia | 31.10% |
Louisiana | 32.10% |
Mississippi | 37.90% |