(Bumped to keep at top of page for today. – promoted by JulieWaters)
Another Martin Luther King Jr. day in Vermont. The one day out of the year when we Vermonters seem to allow ourselves to talk about race.
Or at least some of us. Even when discussions of King have arisen since I’ve moved here, they’ve almost always focused on his statements on class, rather than racial justice. And Dr. King’s thoughts on that subject were profound and well-spoken, of course.
Still, it seemed clear to me a long time ago that, given the opportunity, liberal Vermonters will invariably avoid discussions of race. Even when those issues are staring us in the face.
Consider the recent reports on improving the prison system. From the Rutland Herald:
Four Democratic leaders of the Vermont Senate said their plan to restructure major parts of the state’s prison system is still a work in progress, but that it could end up saving the state millions of dollars in a few years.??The proposal calls for the closure of Waterbury’s Dale State Correctional Facility, the renovation of St. Albans’ prison into a women-only facility, and using Windsor’s prison as a home for low-risk offenders and those with drug or alcohol problems.
But nowhere in these discussions does anyone address the most shocking statistic in our prison system – one that should shame all of us.
According to the Sentencing Project’s data from 2005, Vermont is 4th in the nation in incarceration rates for African Americans (only following South Dakota, Wisconsin and Iowa). Even more damning – when looking at the ratio of white incarceration rates to black incarceration rates, Vermont comes in second only to Iowa. And there’s no sugarcoating the numbers:
In seven states – Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, Wisconsin,
North Dakota, and South Dakota – the black-to-white ratio of incarceration
is greater than 10-to-1.
In some states – Vermont, Wisconsin, South Dakota – the more
than ten-fold difference in rates of incarceration is largely due to a
high black rate of incarceration, double that of the national
average.
There is no way you can account for this disparity, even taking into account class, without looking at some ugly realities. Consider issues in Burlington:
As Vermont’s minority populations expand, citizens are complaining with increasing fervor about being racially profiled by local cops.
…and Brattleboro…
BRATTLEBORO – Racial or ethnic minorities in this southern Vermont town have had a disproportionate amount of contact with local police, and more than 80 percent of respondents to a survey released Monday said they believe racial profiling is a problem.??The 2-year-old survey was based on interviews with one-fifth of the community’s minority residents conducted by ALANA Community Organization in late 2004.??About 79 percent of minority households interviewed for the survey reported having contacts with members of the Brattleboro Police Department in the prior year.
These numbers were recently brought to my attention by a local African-American activist who was bemoaning the challenges of being black in lily white Vermont, currently the whitest state in the union. In a state where people consistently use terms like “The Vermont Way” to suggest a monolithic cultural identity, it is especially challenging for people who clearly are different from the overwhelming majority to find themselves reflected within that monochromatic “way.” How could it not be?
And yet we do not talk about race. We don’t make it an issue, because we don’t want it to be an issue. In many cases it simply takes us good liberals out of our comfort zone, and for many of us coming from outside the state, Vermont is all about comfort zone. How many of us from elsewhere have really asked ourselves if any of our relief upon discovering the Vermont “lifestyle” isn’t at least somewhat rooted in the relief of coming to a place where so many people talk, walk, think – and yes, look – just like us? Almost everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve had my built-in prejudices challenged every day – and that’s a good thing. A healthy thing.
How often do we enlightened white folk in the Green Mountains find our prejudices – the fear of “the other” we all have as our human birthright – so challenged?
And what happens to us as individuals if we remove ourselves from those daily challenges?
By extension, then – what happens to us as a people?
And there is no limit to how vigorously will we defend our comfort zones, once we have settled into them. Pride, denial – these are the tools we use to project those things in human nature that aren’t pretty onto others. It’s so easy to settle in among like-minded, like-looking people and decide that prejudice is a problem of the less-enlightened. We can even come to define prejudiced as something inherently the opposite of ourselves. And when that happens, real trouble can start all over again.
I experienced this, of course, when I blogged on the Vermont connections to the neo-confederacy movement, specifically to the League of The South, classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The LoS, of course, is a radical white supremacist organization whose founder, leaders and members have spoken out against segregation, mixed marriages, etc. Some of these same members, of course, maintain close ties with the Second Vermont Republic – serving in official capacities on their Board of Advisors, and given a platform to spread their message through SVR’s so-dubbed “sister organization,” Vermont Commons. Although I, and anonymous blogger “Thomas Rowley” are referred to as having “exposed” SVR and VC, or making “allegations” – the truth remains, of course, that we merely shared our distaste for what these organizations themselves made no secret of. The result was a campaign of intimidation against me, as well as threats against the family of SPLC Spokesperson (and Vermont native) Mark Potok.
But what I found was odd at the time I now consider the real scandal to the whole ugly affair; the fact that these ties were in the open for all to see, and yet few cared. Worse than that, some who consider themselves to be among the Vermont left embraced these organizations.
I was dumbstruck at the time, and attempted to reach out to anti-racism and pro-diversity organizations in the state. What I discovered was that the ones I found were all virtually useless. The high-profile Peace and Justice Center in Burlington, while purporting to maintain a racial justice program, had none to speak of. UVM based organizations might as well not have existed. I approached three and heard back from one person, who basically told me “well, gee, that sounds terrible.” And of course, the media was mostly AWOL.
In addition, since these revelations, high profile Vermont activists continue to add their names – and by extension their own reputations and credibility – to this developing Vermont Neo-Confederate movement.
And developing it is trying to do in two ways: one, by regaining some semblance of credibility through bringing in other, untarnished activists.
And two: by dropping any pretense of their allegiances. SVR Founder and VT Commons guru Thomas Naylor has been shamelessly appearing nationally with League of the South founder Michael (“Southern culture under attack today is the Anglo-Celtic culture of the South . . . People should be free to socialize or not socialize within or without various ethnic groups with no government intervention…Parents ought to set up their own neighborhood schools and pay for them. They ought to be able to say who comes and who doesn’t.” ) Hill, and has been gleefully labelled “a good confederate” by hate radio celebrity James Edwards during his repeated appearances on that show, lending his name by association to the most horrific kind of race hatred and anti-semitism routinely displayed on their website.
And in the latest travesty, a week ago today – one week before the rest of the nation was to celebrate the life, death and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – Naylor has his friends from the League of the South on display in Vermont for a so-called “North South Secession Summit”, culminating with a banquet in Montpelier.
Can’t beat that for timing, eh?
At the end of the day, there is one inescapable paradigm in this state. We have so little acknowledgment and understanding of our own built in prejudices, both individually and institutionally, that we don’t address them. And in not addressing them, we have let them fester in our midst. The very people that King’s efforts were successful in taking power from, many supposedly enlightened Vermonters are giving power back to – by lending to them their own reputations, resources, platforms and credibility. And those that work to continue King’s legacy – such as the Southern Poverty Law Center – are being treated by these Vermonters the way the racists have always treated people who theaten their power; with scorn and derision.
Only now, these racists have many of the supposedly enlightened white folk of Vermont backing them up.
Meanwhile, from recent news reports, it would seem that hate crimes in Vermont are once again on the upswing, and African Americans in the state can expect to be incarcerated at better than 4 times the per capita national rate.
Coincidence?
Dr. King, we’ve still got a long, long climb ahead of us…