Forging an Anti-Racist Praxis: Housing Discrimination against Ottoman Greek Immigrants in Early-Twentieth-Century Portland and Seattle

Abstract

Whiteness provides its possessors with the privilege of homeownership without racial restrictions and obstructs black, brown, and Indigenous people. I examine that privilege for the Ottoman Greeks, an early-twentieth-century Southeastern European immigrant cohort to the United States. To conduct the examination, I analyze data from the Dictionary of Races or Peoples, the Segregated Seattle Project, and the Portland Restrictive Covenant Project. Racial formation theory and the concept of racial fluidity provide the framework for this study’s three main findings.1 First, housing discrimination impacted Ottoman Greeks less than other racialized groups. Second, Ottoman Greeks experienced this discrimination as racially fluid Greeks or Turks. Finally, Ottoman Greek housing discrimination occurred in elite white communities of Portland and Seattle. My findings illustrate an alternate knowledge of whiteness that, when harnessed by descendants of early-twentieth-century immigrants, can potentially lead them toward anti-racist political advocacy and activism.