Comedian Conan O’Brien joked about the Northeast Portland controversy surrounding a planned-and-shelved Trader Joe’s project on his show Monday night. After taking on Olympic snowboarders and University of Missouri football player Michael Sam, O’Brien’s

turned toward Trader Joe’s.

“In Portland, Oregon, a group of African Americans are protesting a Trader Joe’s because they say it will attract too many white people,” O’Brien said, “which is ironic because Portland is the Native American word for too many white people.”

Then O’Brien did something between a jaunt and dance. “That’s my white person,” he said.

The Portland African-American Leadership Forum and the NAACP both criticized the Portland Development Commission’s process in attracting the national grocer to a vacant lot at Northeast Alberta Street and MLK.

The neighborhood that surrounds the lot has changed considerably over the past 20 years. Nearly three-fourths of the community was African-American in 1990, according to U.S. Census figures. By 2010, only a quarter of the area’s residents were African-American.

PAALF demanded last December the $8 million Trader Joe's project be halted or reconstituted with the addition of affordable housing. Their demands quickly spawned online discussions about gentrification and the changing face of the neighborhood.

While

did not mention “too many white people,” the group did write, "Given the long­standing list of promises made, and yet unfulfilled, by the PDC to prevent community displacement, PAALF is and will remain

opposed to any development in N/NE Portland that does not primarily benefit the Black community."

-- Casey Parks