Identity politics and Eugene: The universal solvent to silence dissent

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by Ted M. Coopman

The poison of identity politics is proving lethal to the left. Here are three broad ideological trends driving Eugene’s approach to homelessness and housing policies:

• Identity politics—the idea that often-marginalized social groups share experiences of injustice.
• The fetish of marginality—the idea that elites can take on or champion a marginal identity and thus be absolved of responsibility for the excesses and mistakes of America’s culture and economy.
• The dichotomy of oppression—the simplistic idea that the world can be divided into two groups, the oppressors and the oppressed.

While abstract in nature, these ideas have real consequences for all the people of Eugene. In this article, I demonstrate how identity politics, the fetish of marginality, and the oppression dichotomy have led to poor outcomes for all but a few groups in Eugene.

The privilege of symbolic capitalists

Symbolic capitalists, sometimes called “creatives” or knowledge workers, often set the country’s norms through their dominance of the “symbolic economy,” which consists of media, academic, cultural, technological, legal, nonprofit, consulting, and financial institutions. (As a retired college professor, I was a member.)

Their incomes also tend to be twice that of an average American. These are the folks who live in a conceptual world where ideas and opinions reign. The activist progressive left primarily draws its power from this cadre who are largely unencumbered by the everyday survival demands of the messy physical world. The influence of this class in Eugene is evident with the domination of the University of Oregon and overrepresentation of nonprofit executives in city government.

Some are more equal than others

Equity is the word du jour. From an equity perspective, each individual or group has different circumstances and demands requiring the allocation of different resources and opportunities to produce an equal outcome. While this has a compelling ring of justice, in practice it requires that some person or entity makes the call of who get what, or, more accurately, who sacrifices for whom.

The “deciders” typically are from the highly-educated, overwhelmingly white, symbolic capitalist class. Conveniently, that group’s needs, desires, and financial well-being magically align with the equity outcomes they favor. The central problem with equity ideology is that most Americans, including those labeled marginalized groups, reject equity and favor old-fashioned universal equality.

Anti-racism, or the idea that identified privileged groups should be subject to “good” discrimination, fails the civil rights test as it validates a practice that many have fought and died to eradicate. Group discrimination, regardless of its intent or target, is irrational and endorses a dangerous ideological strategy.

Oppression Olympics: Homelessness

In Eugene, identity politics clearly manifests in how the activist progressive left approaches homelessness and its impacts. Unhoused people are portrayed as the oppressed—blameless victims whose actions, regardless of what they are, are justified. Thus, the impacts on people whose businesses are robbed or vandalized are inconsequential compared to the trauma of homelessness.

For example, the 2021 $100,000 loss from Hutch’s Bicycles, some of which turned up at the homeless camp in Washington Jefferson Park, was dismissed as “just property” that could be replaced easily.  How many reports of theft on NextDoor have been met with “I guess they just really needed it” responses?

Arresting and charging unhoused perpetrators of virtually any crime is argued as unjust and “making their situation worse.”

Homeowners and renters who complain of having their planting strips or alleys used as campsites, toilets, or drug dens are pilloried as lacking compassion. The belief that unhoused people are so traumatized that they can’t be expected to put their trash in trash bins or not destroy property is common in activist groups.

These groups profess that justice demands the unhoused should be allowed to sleep where they wish (as long as it is not too close to an advocate’s home). In addition, any group or individual who seeks to aid unhoused people should not be bound by any rules or regulations.

For example, Neighbors Feeding Neighbors (formerly the Breakfast Brigade) has repeatedly argued for the right to ignore the terms of the park permit the organization agreed to, as well as numerous other city regulations.

While some may claim “you don’t need permission to do the right thing,” when using public resources (NFN gets food from Food for Lane County) and public space, in fact, you do. If not, then you face the consequences.

Local media compound this with a relentless focus on the experience of unhoused people while ignoring the real and serious outcomes that homelessness activity has on housed residents, businesses, and public property. Property owners and businesses who endure these outcomes and speak out are vilified.

Of course, the critique ignores that these businesses, primarily on Eugene’s westside, largely employ the working class and provide the economic base that make everything possible, including social services. Moreover, street homelessness and its impacts overwhelmingly affect low-income, marginalized communities, and their neighborhoods.

But in the dichotomy of the oppressor/oppressed world the “most” marginalized wins. Homeowners, market-rate renters, and even low-income households are “privileged” and should accept any negative consequences in pursuit of equity.

It also means if you are not identified as the oppressed, then you are either an oppressor or a dupe. Of course, the finger-pointing pontificating homeowners, market-rate renters, and their elite college student offspring are somehow immune from the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy.

Home has some hate here

The fight for land use reform, especially eliminating single-family zoning and massively increasing density, is where Eugene’s progressive activists align with a clique of developers and realtors at the expense of almost everyone else.

More clearly than in any area, the land use debate is where the toxicity of identity politics and the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy comes into sharp display as the universal solvent to declare the unquestionable righteousness of maximum density and the unmitigated evil of any who would question it.

In its most simplistic formulation, single-family zoning was solely designed to keep poor people and people of color out of white neighborhoods. Therefore, questioning staff’s and advocates’ density strategy makes you a racist. Ergo, anyone who questions “the plan” is racist and should be vilified and silenced.

While it’s true “exclusionary” zoning (setting aside that all zoning is exclusionary in some sense) was used to keep poor people and people of color out of white neighborhoods in some circumstances, that was not universally the case. The development of separating different land uses by category emerged for a variety of reasons.

The “single-family zoning is racist” claim also fails to recognize that most poor people and people of color, like a majority of Americans, prefer living in single-family homes.

YIYBY (Yes in Your Back Yard)

The self-serving moral bankruptcy of many housing activists, certain planning staff, and their political and developer allies clearly comes into focus with even the most cursory examination. The marketing campaign that has become the mythic missing middle housing mania rests on three pillars:

• Developers should be able to build hyperdense multifamily housing anywhere.
• Multifamily housing will create the housing we need.
• More multifamily housing will make housing more affordable.

Not only is there ZERO evidence that any of these claims are true, there is also a lot of evidence that the exact opposite is true. I will get into the weeds of this in a future column, but for our purposes here, I will focus on how YIYBY zealots and self-serving allies used identity-focused political strategies to stifle debate and silence critics.

Inconvenient truths

In 2009, years before middle housing became a thing and affordability became a political issue, the Jefferson Westside neighborhood carried out an extensive and inclusive process to create special area zones (SAZs) to manage development and provide ample opportunities for infill while protecting access to air and light and ensuring neighborhood livability.

The Eugene City Council unanimously approved the Jefferson Westside SAZs accompanied with a standing ovation.

These SAZs allowed for split lots, multiple dwelling units (including ADUs) on single lots, multiplexes, apartments, and alley-facing lots to provide smaller and less expensive units as well as providing “eyes” on the alleys for better security. All this with space for setbacks and trees.

These areas never were zone-restricted for single-family homes. Jefferson Westside was, and continues to be, a neighborhood with over twice the density as the Eugene average, 75% renters (many low-income), and the city’s largest concentration of middle housing in a walkable neighborhood with access to amenities and public transit.

In other words, exactly the type of neighborhood housing advocates say they want.

Fast-forward to 2019. The city’s Planning staff decide to massively expand on state-mandated density rules. Neighbors started asking inconvenient questions about the density push and the proposed gutting of our SAZs, such as the impact of infill on existing naturally-occurring affordable housing.

Moreover, neighbors wondered, with the high cost of urban land and new construction, how can new infill possibly be affordable? Who stands to financially benefit? What about the potential for redevelopment gentrification? Is it equitable that with the presence of CC&Rs, many wealthier suburban neighborhoods were effectively exempt?

Shouldn’t we do what Springfield, and most Oregon cities did, and adopt the state’s mandated rules and study how they work? And more importantly, how can we craft rules that allow for more density without the worst negative consequences?

Planning staff ignored the statutory role of neighborhood associations in the planning process and created a novel approach that ensured compliance. Instead of addressing real and relevant questions planning commissioners, the mayor and certain city councilors, planning management, and advocates engaged in character assassination to avoid the inconvenient truth. There was never a real debate of the details of the proposed policy.

Name, shame, and defame

Despite living in a dense, economically diverse neighborhood that already had the largest concentration of middle housing, critics were defamed as anti-poor, racist, anti-density, and accused of somehow protecting their “privilege” of single-family homeownership.

The broad support of the Eugene Realtors, developers, and AstroTurf front groups like Better Housing Together signaled a troubling degree of financial self-interest.

Planning Commissioners openly defamed opponents and suggested that those negative comments from “certain neighborhoods” should be ignored and that comments in opposition to the plan were “disrespectful” of Planning staff.

In the end, of those who participated in the highly-choreographed public outreach, ten times more people opposed the enhanced density rules than supported them. When invited to certain neighborhood association meetings to discuss the new housing rules, staff and planning commissioners refused to even attend.

The rationale was that staff and Planning Commissioners were somehow not advocating for the plan they devised and put forward to City Council and therefore should not have face a skeptical public in a venue they did not control to defend it.

Opponents of the new density rules were labeled as “oppressors” and therefore must be ignored and vilified. The hypocrisy of mostly white, upper-middle-class homeowners who live in exempt neighborhoods or where the cost of land made infill unlikely was epic in its scale.

Once again, the primary victims of mislabeled “progressive” policies purportedly to help the poor in fact hurt the poor while making certain already well-off advocates money. It was obvious these new rules were not about making housing; it was about making money and winning at any cost.

The purpose of process

At no point did critics declare an opposition to the idea of increased density or infill. The state mandate ensured such changes. The devil, as always, is in the details and the negotiation of those details is how public process is supposed to work.

But in this case, as is always the case in identity or oppressor/oppressed ideology, any dissent is unacceptable, opponents are evil and must be destroyed, and negotiation is capitulation. The national consequences are evident.

Locally, the result is an angry and disengaged citizenry, distrust in the competency of local government, and a series of expensive and time-wasting losses for the city at the Land Use Board of Appeals and State Appellate Court—all in service to a toxic “win at any cost” ideology that serves the interest of a ruling cadre of business and political elites that continues to hobble the city and makes Eugene synonymous with oblivious progressive excess and dysfunction.

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Planned housing developments often have their own special legal contracts (CC&Rs) that prohibit some land use, such as multiplexes and ADUs, and are therefore exempt from the zoning mandates.

Western Exposure is a semi-regular column that looks at issues and challenges from a West Eugene perspective – a perspective that is often ignored or trivialized by city leadership and influential groups and individuals largely based in south and east Eugene. 

Western Exposure rejects the fauxgressive party line, performative politics, and “unicorn ranching” policy in favor of pragmatism focused on the daily experiences of residents and small businesses in Eugene—and West Eugene in particular.

Ted has been involved in neighborhood issues since 2016 as an elected board member, and now chair, of Jefferson Westside Neighbors and has 30+ years experience as an activist and community organizer. He earned a Ph.D. in Communication (University of Washington) and served on the faculty at San Jose State University from 2007 to 2020.

Ted’s research on social movements, activist use of technology, media law and policy, and online pedagogy has been published and presented internationally and he taught classes ranging from research methodology to global media systems. He and his spouse live in Jefferson Westside with an energetic coltriever and some very demanding and prolific fruit trees.