June 7, 2020
The 73rd Year
Day 80
Silent white voices kill!
Black lives are at risk in lily-white, deep-blue, politically correct Vermont. Racism is lurking in our communities and white voices here must loudly and forcibly speak out against racial injustice whenever it rears its ugly head.
I am an older white man and have benefitted from a lifetime of white privilege. No cop ever hassled me on the street even when I was a teenager and surely up to no good. No one ever assumed I was a criminal because I did not look like them.
I was raised in Rhode Island in the 1950s. It was diverse back then but it was also one of the most racially and ethnically segregated cities in the north.
Everyone I knew as a kid was an Irish catholic even though East Providence where I lived was 80 percent Portuguese. South Providence was black, federal hill was Italian. The only time we ever met was to play against each other on the basketball court in the CYO league because we were all Catholics.
Most of my adult life I have lived in rural Vermont, perhaps the whitest place in America.
Two years ago Vermont was a diversity punchline on Saturday Night Live. In the skit a “neo-confederate” was “looking for an agrarian community where everyone lives in harmony because every single person is white.” Another actor opined: “that sounds like Vermont.”
Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are about 93 percent caucasian making the trio the least diverse states in the nation according to the 2000 and 2010 census. Little has changed here in a decade and the next census will surely reaffirm northern New England’s dubious status as whitest, least diverse part of America.
Vermont’s tiny African American community is clustered around Burlington, the state’s largest city and home to the University of Vermont and other colleges. Rural areas are all white.
In the late 1970s as a young reporter, I wrote about Vermont’s lack of diversity and determined there were only about 1,000 African Americans across the state. When you eliminated the transient students at UVM, Middlebury and Bennington Colleges, the state was home to only a few hundred people of color, making it about 99 percent white.
The minority population has grown in the past two decades as Vermont welcomed refugees being placed by a federal resettlement program. Central Vermont became home to a number of Bosnians; the Burlington areas found homes for Vietnamese and Africans from Burundi, the Congo, Rwanda and Somalia.
Winooski, a city of 7,300 just east of Burlington is Vermont’s most diverse community. There is a large Somali population there, extended families living and socializing together as is their custom. Unfortunately the Covid-19 virus found the Somali community in Winooski this week as the Health Department reported dozens of community-spread cases there, the state’s worst outbreak outside nursing homes.
Vermonters are quietly racist. In the last election, the Democrat running for governor, declared uneqivocally that Vermont “has an underbelly of racism.“ Two years ago, an African American state representative, one of five in the 180 member legislature, resigned after facing racial harassment in her community. At the time, the Republican governor commented “this is not and cannot be who we are. We must do better.”
Not all Vermont communities want refugees and the opposition to the programs uncovered the racial and ethnic prejudice and hidden fear that is seething below the surface here. When the mayor of Rutland proposed accepting 100 Syrians for resettlement, the community was deeply divided almost overnight. Simply put, the opponents did not want Muslims as their neighbors and they prevailed.
As a white man I will never know what it is like to live as a black man in America. It would be offensive if I tried. I can however raise my voice and work to support dramatic structural change in my state and country to stomp out racial injustice.
Vermont needs more African Americans in leadership positions in all its institutions. We need more black legislators, people of color in the governor’s cabinet. We need more black reporters and broadcasters. We need more black policemen. Vermont has to get over itself and look out of state for quality minority candidates.
I will speak out about positive change when I see it. I applaud the city of Montpelier for this week hiring its first ever African American chief of police. He will be the first black police chief anywhere in Vermont. Predictably, the city had to hire a candidate from New Mexico as there are so few black policemen here.
Vermont needs more black teachers and a curriculum that teaches children about prejudice, racial injustice and racism. We must teach children to speak up and act out when they see racism.
We must do these things because:
Black Lives Matter.
Be safe
The 73rd Year
Day 80
Silent white voices kill!
Black lives are at risk in lily-white, deep-blue, politically correct Vermont. Racism is lurking in our communities and white voices here must loudly and forcibly speak out against racial injustice whenever it rears its ugly head.
I am an older white man and have benefitted from a lifetime of white privilege. No cop ever hassled me on the street even when I was a teenager and surely up to no good. No one ever assumed I was a criminal because I did not look like them.
I was raised in Rhode Island in the 1950s. It was diverse back then but it was also one of the most racially and ethnically segregated cities in the north.
Everyone I knew as a kid was an Irish catholic even though East Providence where I lived was 80 percent Portuguese. South Providence was black, federal hill was Italian. The only time we ever met was to play against each other on the basketball court in the CYO league because we were all Catholics.
Most of my adult life I have lived in rural Vermont, perhaps the whitest place in America.
Two years ago Vermont was a diversity punchline on Saturday Night Live. In the skit a “neo-confederate” was “looking for an agrarian community where everyone lives in harmony because every single person is white.” Another actor opined: “that sounds like Vermont.”
Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are about 93 percent caucasian making the trio the least diverse states in the nation according to the 2000 and 2010 census. Little has changed here in a decade and the next census will surely reaffirm northern New England’s dubious status as whitest, least diverse part of America.
Vermont’s tiny African American community is clustered around Burlington, the state’s largest city and home to the University of Vermont and other colleges. Rural areas are all white.
In the late 1970s as a young reporter, I wrote about Vermont’s lack of diversity and determined there were only about 1,000 African Americans across the state. When you eliminated the transient students at UVM, Middlebury and Bennington Colleges, the state was home to only a few hundred people of color, making it about 99 percent white.
The minority population has grown in the past two decades as Vermont welcomed refugees being placed by a federal resettlement program. Central Vermont became home to a number of Bosnians; the Burlington areas found homes for Vietnamese and Africans from Burundi, the Congo, Rwanda and Somalia.
Winooski, a city of 7,300 just east of Burlington is Vermont’s most diverse community. There is a large Somali population there, extended families living and socializing together as is their custom. Unfortunately the Covid-19 virus found the Somali community in Winooski this week as the Health Department reported dozens of community-spread cases there, the state’s worst outbreak outside nursing homes.
Vermonters are quietly racist. In the last election, the Democrat running for governor, declared uneqivocally that Vermont “has an underbelly of racism.“ Two years ago, an African American state representative, one of five in the 180 member legislature, resigned after facing racial harassment in her community. At the time, the Republican governor commented “this is not and cannot be who we are. We must do better.”
Not all Vermont communities want refugees and the opposition to the programs uncovered the racial and ethnic prejudice and hidden fear that is seething below the surface here. When the mayor of Rutland proposed accepting 100 Syrians for resettlement, the community was deeply divided almost overnight. Simply put, the opponents did not want Muslims as their neighbors and they prevailed.
As a white man I will never know what it is like to live as a black man in America. It would be offensive if I tried. I can however raise my voice and work to support dramatic structural change in my state and country to stomp out racial injustice.
Vermont needs more African Americans in leadership positions in all its institutions. We need more black legislators, people of color in the governor’s cabinet. We need more black reporters and broadcasters. We need more black policemen. Vermont has to get over itself and look out of state for quality minority candidates.
I will speak out about positive change when I see it. I applaud the city of Montpelier for this week hiring its first ever African American chief of police. He will be the first black police chief anywhere in Vermont. Predictably, the city had to hire a candidate from New Mexico as there are so few black policemen here.
Vermont needs more black teachers and a curriculum that teaches children about prejudice, racial injustice and racism. We must teach children to speak up and act out when they see racism.
We must do these things because:
Black Lives Matter.
Be safe
Beautiful
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