I have nothing more than what’s on the webernets about this. Hoping commenters have some more information. Look for a more complete analysis (hopefully) from a GMD front pager with some expertise or knowledge of what’s in play (I hope). In the meantime, here’s from TPM:
The conservative-controlled U.S. Commission on Civil Rights ousted the chairman of the agency’s Vermont State Advisory Committee last week over an October column in which he wrote that the Republican gubernatorial candidate’s “Pure Vermont” slogan “raises the specter of Hilter’s Aryan Nation and the Khmer Rouge, where the purifying agent was genocide.”
The commission voted not to reauthorize the reappointment of Curtiss Reed Jr. as chair of the Vermont SAC, though he had the unanimous support of the rest of the Vermont committee. In an interview with TPM on Tuesday, Reed said his remarks were not intended to imply that former gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie was a racist.
“‘Pure Vermont’ had a double entendre there that I felt that the Dubie campaign needed to pay attention to and acknowledge,” Reed said. “In no way was I suggesting or stating that Dubie was in any way racist or in any way a bad person, my point was that given the changes of demographics in Vermont, his campaign people chose a poor choice of words to brand him.”
…and I was fairly critical of the sort of rhetoric which implied that “Pure Vermont” evoked historical racist overtones, even when not intended to suggest that Dubie himself or his campaign was racist. I stand by that criticism– I thought it trivialized racism and was counter productive.
That said, I find the decision to remove him from the advisory board to be far worse than the rhetoric which got him booted. Curtis is a strong and valuable anti-racism voice in Vermont and to have him removed for this is a very bad thing indeed.
What BS to remove him for this. I thought the Pure Vermont slogan was a poor choice having not only racial undertones but also the issue of only being a real Vermonter if you were born here!
And many people commented on it’s unsavory associations.
and carefully qualified. (Of course, I probably would, since the first associations that came to MY mind were the eugenics movement, the Klan burning a cross on the steps of St. Augustine’s in Montpelier, and the deservedly infamous incidents in Irasburg.)
The simple fact is that slogans hit us where they hit us, and they are DESIGNED to hit us below the rational level. To say HOW a slogan hits us is a truth. Mr. Reed was careful to differentiate between how HE felt (and how he knew others would feel) about that slogan and what Dubie INTENDED. He was hoping that the Dubie campaign would examine the slogan and look carefully at its effects — intended or otherwise.
Censuring someone for making a true and rational statement appropriate to his line of work is deeply wrong — and certainly suggests that the “national” conservative elements in Dubie’s campaign “intended” that slogan for reasons every bit as reprehensible as we feared they might.
But the GOP worships Fox News, where this kind of stuff is mandatory in order to even be on the air.
What double-standard hypocrites the Republicans are.
Curtis wasn’t even doing a Glenn Beck, making shit up out of this air…
“Pure Vermont” isn’t a racial thing, it’s cultural.
The separation of culture between old Vermont and new Vermont, (old being more rural, conservative and agricultural, the new being more adventurous, metropolitan, and progressive). Being mixed race, I really didn’t see any racial connotations to “Pure Vermont”, it really is just an extension of the cultural divide in Vermont that has existed since the 1840s.
So really, as a Vermonter born in New York that is of French-Canadian, afro-Puerto Rican ancestry with most of my family residing in Vermont – the slogan doesn’t really come off as racist.
Do I think he should have lost the advisory chair? Not at all. Opinions shouldn’t really be reprimanded.