I’ve pretty much lived in Northeast Portland my entire life. Growing up, from the ages of 3 to 14, it was an extremely black community and there were a lot of people of color everywhere you looked. People helping out each other as far as African-Americans go and Mexicans, Asians in general. Over the course of the gentrification that started around when I was 16 up ‘til now, they started to push us out of our neighborhoods to rebuild structures for more out-of-towners and more Caucasian people to move into.

As a black man, I feel like I’m in a zoo when I’m in Portland now. Like, “Oh my gosh, he’s black but he’s not a gang member? He has good manners? He actually went to college? Are you really from here?” Shit like that. And it’s funny but it’s very appalling and hurts my feelings at the same time, that I can’t truly be myself without fitting the standards of some white person.

I hate walking down the street that I grew up on with all of my friends, my uncles, all the stuff that made me who I am, and then looking around and seeing that none of that’s there except maybe a few houses and all these white people looking at me like I don’t belong here. And it’s funny because a lot of the shit that Portland has built upon started from African-American-owned businesses and things that we set as seeds in the soil to grow.

[With X-RAY] me and [series writer and director] Seena [Haddad] wanted to give a feel for the arts scene here as far as hip-hop goes, how hard it is just being in the scene in general. That’s why we only had [local] artists play certain parts, so we could showcase what’s exactly going. His whole goal was to show what was truly going on in the scene and show how a lot of things dictate that [arts community] based upon white privilege or gentrification or poverty or just anything that has to do with the struggle.

It was to the point where you couldn’t even do a hip-hop show in Portland. I mean, it still is to that point, but it’s a little more lenient than it was. We’re getting more artists and more shows and more people to be comfortable with what we are doing. People like We Out Here Magazine, DUG (Deep Under Ground), YGB (Young, Gifted, and Black), those types of people [and groups] are creating communities for African Americans and African-American artists to showcase their skills in a place where people can come and commune and have an understanding of what exactly is going on. And for the most part, it’s not really a huge change, but it’s a step through the door. Our people have been through so much, you know. We aren’t going to just stop because of this shit.