It happened at a strip mall in McMinnville. At a hotel in Portland. At a chamber of commerce meeting.

Three racially charged incidents sparked outrage in the week before Christmas, underscoring how bigotry seeps into every level of civic life in the Portland area – from a confrontation in a shopping center’s parking lot to a meeting of powerful city business leaders.

The pervasiveness of smartphones coupled with the multiplier of social media make it plain that such incidents remain common and traumatic, and visible to people who might never have experienced overt prejudice themselves.

As Jermaine Massey said in an Instagram video after being kicked out of the DoubleTree Portland, “Judging someone based on the color of their skin, you never know how it feels until you’ve been there.”

Though there is little year-over-year tracking of racist incidents beyond headlines, Portland Public Schools officials said they saw more bullying and harassment of racial and ethnic minorities after the 2016 election. Initiatives like ProPublica’s Documenting Hate project have started to quantify such encounters, tallying 1,200 nationwide in its first year.

The Christmastime episodes are the latest to cast Portland in the national news for all the wrong reasons:

Still, the string of incidents generated little surprise within the city’s diverse communities.

“I think if you interviewed people of color, they would say, that’s just Tuesday,” said Stephen Green, a leader in Portland’s entrepreneurial community and director of WeWork’s new Portland startup incubator.

“That’s not out of the norm,” said Green, who is black. “It’s out of the norm that it got recorded.”

For example, someone reported African-American state Rep. Janelle Bynum to police in July while she was canvassing in a Clackamas neighborhood. The incident made national news.

In April, the state’s largest business association, Oregon Business & Industry, fired its chief executive after he made a racist joke about a state lawmaker.

In August, a Portland State University student posted a video of a driver spewing racist invectives after a traffic incident downtown.

Advocates for equity and inclusion say such episodes are unavoidable in a predominately white city that has pushed its diverse populations, especially African-Americans, to the fringes. Though the proportion of Asians and Latinos in Portland has grown in the past decade, the black population has decreased.

Isaac Dixon, a Portland State adjunct faculty member, who is an expert on human relations after working for companies such as Nike and in the public sector, has lived in Portland for 40 years. He said he’s seen a cycle develop that ties all three incidents together.

African-Americans grow up or move to Portland for job opportunities but soon become alienated by the corporate cultures, Dixon said. He cited a city of Portland study that found that black managers last only 36 months, on average, in the city, compared to much longer tenures for white people.

Often that is because of incidents like the one at the Portland Business Alliance, where the racist comments of a white man were not challenged and shut down immediately.

“These are all educated people. These are all people of tremendous power and privilege, and it took minutes before someone spoke up,” Dixon said. “It’s that absence of action on the part of people who are smart, responsible and powerful.”

Women and minorities have avoided the Portland Business Alliance for years because of attitudes like Hering’s, Dixon claimed.

But even when a company’s internal culture isn’t the problem, black people often feel the pressure of being among the few – sometimes only – people of color in a room. They are singled out in public, like Massey, for innocuous reasons or fear they can’t have a bad day because of the attention it might bring, Dixon said.

Their kids are among the few black children at school or in the neighborhood. Oregon is 87 percent white, 11 points higher than the nation as a whole. Just 2 percent of the state’s residents are African-American, one-sixth the national average.

It can be isolating, Dixon said. So black people leave for other jobs, the community they created is pushed beyond city limits through gentrification and the problem continues.

Dixon said he counsels his students and the companies he works with the same way he has advocated within the black community in Portland: The only way to solve the problem is to make diversity part of the fabric of a company and place.

There is now an opening on the Portland Business Alliance board, Dixon pointed out. Why not fill it and other spots with people of color, women and younger people?

The city of Portland created an office to do just that.

Since it was founded in 2012, the city’s share of diverse employees has climbed from 12 percent to 18 percent, said Koffi Dessou, director of the office of equity and human rights.

That might not seem like much, but Dessou said it takes years – sometimes decades – to undo the hundreds of years of a systemic racism.

Dessou said that he has run up against bigotry nearly every day – or if not him, then his family and community. But he sees a path to change – even among government institutions such as the city.

All city employees are required to undergo training and create plans to ensure equity is addressed in every policy, budget or conversation. That has now been extended to organizations that contract with the city.

Mayor Ted Wheeler reflected part of that mindset in his response to the Portland Business Alliance, when he said that not only were the racist comments unacceptable, but condemned that it took so long for anyone to rebut them.

Dessou, though, said that even within city government, it is hard for people of color to speak up against racism, especially to superiors. That means that white people must speak up when they witness less overt instances of prejudice.

“That will make me feel I live here, I belong here, I can contribute to the society of this city that is my home now,” Dessou said.

As institutions such as the civic-minded City Club and governmental bodies like the city’s development agency Prosper Portland grapple with institutionalized inequities, Portland has already earned a reputation in popular culture.

Racist incidents in Portland consistently make national news, from white nationalist rallies downtown to the deadly 2017 attack on a MAX light-rail train in which a man directed a racist rant at two teenage girls, then stabbed three people who tried to intervene.

When last month’s DoubleTree incident made national headlines, Green said, it reinforced stereotypes about Portland being the whitest big city in America.

But Green said those stories overlook how rapidly the city is changing. Portland-area schools are far more diverse today than in the past – a reflection of how the city will look in the years to come.

When he was an Aloha High School student in the 1990s, Green said he was among a handful of African-Americans in his graduating class. When he visits the school west of Beaverton today, Green said, he sees students from myriad backgrounds.

Though Portland itself remains overwhelmingly white, its schools look more like the nation as a whole. More than 16 percent of its students are Latino – on par with the national population. And more than 8.9 percent are African-American – compared with just 5.7 percent for all city residents.

The district is led by Guadalupe Guerrero, who is Latino. African-American women serve as the Portland’s police chief and on the city council. Green said they’re emblematic of a community that is, haltingly, growing more inclusive and understanding – a story that often gets lost in the national view of Portland.

“You have a greatly diversifying city,” he said.

Though it’s true Portland is becoming more diverse, that by itself won’t stamp out disparate treatment, said Hanif Fazal, chief executive of the Center for Equity & Inclusion, a Portland business that trains people and organizations to foster diverse, welcoming work environments.

“We’re not built to be inclusive. We’re built to say we are, but Portland’s history, Oregon’s history, is one that’s based in exclusion,” Fazal said.

In the 19th century, Oregon law first banned African-Americans from the territory, and then from the state. And while a more diverse population arrived in the 1940s for wartime work, scores left after the Vanport flood wiped out the north Portland community where many lived. Some left because they couldn’t find jobs or were discriminated against by property owners and the police, historians say. Others were segregated into a few areas in North and Northeast Portland.

Today’s institutions were formed by a white, homogenous population that Fazal said has never done the hard work of assessing what it takes to nurture a more inclusive city.

Every decision made by a school board, chamber of commerce or business either promotes inclusion or perpetuates disparities, according to Fazal. He said that making decisions to promote more equitable treatment requires listening to underrepresented communities, giving those voices priority and making a commitment to respond to their needs.

“We’re going to have to believe that communities of color know what’s best for communities of color,” Fazal said.

Social media and smartphone video are highlighting an epidemic of incidents like the one at the DoubleTree, said E.D. Mondainé, president of the NAACP’s Portland chapter and pastor at Celebration Tabernacle Church.

“When we turn on the light in a filthy kitchen, we understand we have roaches,” Mondainé said.

The NAACP contacted DoubleTree executives after last month’s incident and – after the hotel chain’s initial public equivocation – Mondainé said the company has been responsive to his requests.

DoubleTree fired the two employees responsible for the incident, apologized, and pledged to educate its staff.

That’s just one incident, though, and Mondainé said stamping out racial profiling requires a concerted effort across the city and across the country. The first step, he said, is acknowledging the problem.

Portland then needs an open dialogue on where, and why, it’s falling short, he said. Mondainé called on companies to establish formal rules against racial profiling and procedures to promote diversity and inclusion.

“We have to come and reason together and say we have an opportunity to show what can be done through communication,” Mondainé said.

Though the city falls short in many ways, Mondainé said, it has been a great place for him and his family. And he wants to see it do better.

“I think it’s worth making Portland right,” he said, “because there are some good people here.”

– Molly Harbarger and Mike Rogoway