'Hasaan Hates Portland' humorously depicts the benevolent racism of the Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest is paved with good intentions. But so is the road to awkward, racially uncomfortable situations.

That’s the theme of filmmaker Mischa Webley’s new web series, “Hasaan Hates Portland,” starring Hasaan Thomas. The show satirically depicts the mundane, everyday experiences of a Black man living in America’s whitest (big) city.

Listen to Seattle Now's full interview with Mischa Webley about 'Hasaan Hates Portland

“Your life matters!” A group of white people aggressively shout at Hasaan in the show’s trailer.

In another scene, a barista tells Hasaan, “It’s reparations happy hour, bro…it’s how we give back — the white community supporting our Black brothers and sisters.”

Hasaan is also bombarded with seemingly out-of-context trivia about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and accosted by a man with a clipboard who asserts that the “children of Africa are in desperate need to join the digital age.”

These fictional encounters depict the way well-meaning white people sometimes impose on people of color who are just trying to live their lives — without being at the center of racial justice dialogue, Webley told KUOW’s Seattle Now.

“We're sort of seeing Portland through [Hasaan’s] eyes, and he's somewhat in the background, where he's experiencing these things, but a lot of them are happening at him,” he said.

“By focusing on the small scale, you sort of capture that these are things we all do every day…whether it's taking a walk or getting coffee,” he added. “And instead of that being a really simple transaction, sometimes that can turn into a whole thing that then lives rent-free in your mind for a long time.”

Webley, a Black man himself, said the social commentary in “Hasaan Hates Portland” is aimed at telling a more nuanced and complete narrative about the city.

“There’s a story around [Portland] that it puts out about itself, that also gets put on it,” he said. “It just always felt incomplete to me, whether it's ‘Portlandia’ or Fox News – they just seem to kind of be missing it, so I wanted to add to that.

“And I think Portland takes itself too seriously, and I wanted it to laugh at itself,” he added.

Webley also pointed to a common experience of people of color in the Northwest feeling regarded as abstractions in racial justice discourse.

“In a place like Portland that's so homogeneous, that [discourse]...creates a dynamic that I think kind of misses the boat,” he said. “It's not informed enough by people who look like me. It's kind of academic and that ends up putting us brown and Black folks in a situation where we're becoming more of an object and somebody else's idea than part of the conversation.”

That’s where good intentions veer into becoming self-righteous and self-serving, Webley said.

“You end up with this dynamic where [people of color] might have white folks — I've been in this experience — trying to explain racism to you.”

“If you go to a place that's really diverse…if you bring a certain kind of ignorance, you're going to hear about it,” he added. “But people who live in an echo chamber don't hear about it – it's reinforced.”

The reception to his new series has been overwhelmingly positive, Webley said.

“It's taken off online in the way I could only have hoped for,” he said. “And I think it reaffirmed that we were speaking to something that people were waiting [for] to be said. And that's kind of been a big note. I've heard back from a variety of different people online who’ve reached out just to say, ‘Thank you. I'm glad somebody said it.’”

Written for the web by Liz Brazile.