I moved to Portland, ME from Boston, MA a month ago to study radio documentary. In Boston, I lived in a neighborhood with quite a few people of color. I didn’t really socialize too much with my neighbors though. Maybe it’s because Boston is a bigger city – you are not really encouraged to interact with your neighbors too much.
The first week in Portland really threw me off because of the amount of people who would look at me and say hi. At first, I was uncomfortable. I’m used to assuming that strangers who approach me only do so to catcall me. Then I realized that people just say hi to each other on the streets here, often with no hidden agenda. Portland has a much smaller population than Boston, and I could easily walk through the town in a day. These people see the same people pass them by every day. So maybe they said hi to me out of courtesy, understanding that I was new. Maybe they wanted to welcome me. Or maybe they were uncomfortable.
Right when I started telling people I was moving to Portland, they would tell me at least one of three things:
- It’s going to get so cold!
- The maples are beautiful in the Fall!
- Good luck finding people of color!
The population of Maine is ninety-five percent white, the whitest state in America. Portland itself is eighty-three percent white. I knew that statistic before moving here, but I didn’t really understand it until the strangers that I usually pass by, without giving them one critical thought, brought attention to themselves to say hello. Almost all of them were white.
I rarely walk a by a person of color who doesn’t seem to be from “away,” a Maine saying that Mainers use to classify people who aren’t from Maine. If you walk into Portland’s Hong Kong market, the primary language you’ll hear is Cantonese. I wouldn’t have known that some of the people in that market have been in Portland for over thirty years if my friend, a Cantonese speaker, hadn’t told me that. If you walk through a neighborhood with many central African families, the primary language you’ll hear is French. Again, some of these people have been here for a couple decades. But they’re still classified as from “away.” I’ve spoken to people in my apartment building who say that some of the people living in the complex seem “sketchy.” After asking them why, they say, “Oh, well they come from a different culture. People just act differently there.”
I’m a natural-born American citizen and simultaneously a person of color. I couldn’t help but speculate why these people “from away” were so feared. So I’ve been trying to do something in Portland that I didn’t really try to do in Boston – I’ve been trying to meet my neighbors. Specifically, I’ve been trying to meet my neighbors of color.
I’ve only been here a month, so I have a ways to go, but so far I’ve been to the Green Memorial AME Zion Church, a historically black church in Portland, the Hong Kong market, and I will be attending the mid-Autumn festival, hosted by the Chinese and American Friendship Association of Maine. Part of it is selfish. I took for granted the people of color I was surrounded by in Boston. However, I hope to immerse myself in these cultures “from away” and, at least for myself, reimagine these cultures as “from here.”