Asian-American woman asks white residents of Portland to pay for her therapy

A Portland native of Thai-Cambodian ethnicity has set up a fundraising page asking the city’s white residents to pay for her mental health care support, saying her problems have been caused by pervasive racism in Rip City.

Willamette Week’s Walker MacMurdo points us to a page on YouCaring.com set up by a woman named Rinna Rem called, “White Friends, Pay For My Therapy.”

“Dear white friends,” it begins…

I grew up in and live in the PDX area. The stress of living as a Thai-Cambodian woman in such a white city replete with constant interpersonal and institutional racism has a big toll on my health and wellbeing.*…Now it’s your turn to pay!”

The asterix directs to this and…she makes a decent point:

If you’re asking “why doesn’t she just move away from Portland?”, you’re no different to me than the people who tell me “go back to your own country!” I shouldn’t have to deal with racism anywhere and I shouldn’t be expected to abandon my hometown and family either.

Rem, 29, says she has had to overcome liver disease and lives with Marfan’s Syndrome, a heart disease. “The more stress I feel, the more I put my heart condition at risk,” she writes. “Please don’t let racism shorten my life or kill me.

Rem says she is seeing “an amazing therapist to cope with this shit” at a cost of $100 a month for bi-weekly appointments. She is hoping to raise $2,400, and since the beginning of September has raised $1,465 from 75 donors.

If you want to contribute, go here.

Rob covers business, economics and the environment for Fusion. He previously worked at Business Insider. He grew up in Chicago.