Category Archives: Racism

Art Peterson Is Not Quite Done Being Vermont’s #1 Elected Bigot

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When state Rep. Art Peterson leaves the House at the end of his current term (words that should be sung aloud or shouted from the rooftops, not merely written in digital form), the unofficial title of Worst Person In the Legislature will be up for grabs.

Peterson, shown above in a slightly retouched version of his official picture, has once again figuratively pulled down his drawers and shown his ass to the world in a hateful and unnecessary response to a routine announcement from Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas.

She sent an email last Wednesday to members of the Rutland County delegation announcing that her office would be staffing a table at the Rutland Pride Celebration on Saturday, and inviting the county’s electeds to stop by.

Peterson, being who he is, took this like a rabid bull seeing a rainbow flag in front of his nose. His response, which he cc’d to members of the county delegation:

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“Stay to Stay,” Not So Much

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So the person pictured above, Jacq Posley, recently caused a bit of a stir (but honestly, not enough of a stir) with a blistering farewell-to-Vermont letter entitled “My Last Plea As a Black Vermonter,” in which she laid out, in painful detail, all the racism she’s encountered in her five years living in Vermont. Which she found to be no less racist than, uh, Mississippi.

Five years since I left my life in Mississippi thinking NO PLACE could be more racist (tuh). Five years of serving on multiple civic boards that claim they want equity, but build walls in the face of progression. Five years of being called racial slurs with no one to protect me from it and no one to check their white supremacist friends. Five years of confederate flags, don’t tread on me flags, and strategically placed Donald Dump paraphernalia. Five years of watching MANY of my friends and their very young Black children suffer from the same mental anguish I have experienced while existing as a Black person in Vermont. September 16, 2023 should be a time for celebration. Instead, it is a time for reflection as I leave the state to pursue equity work in a place that actually wants it.

She’s right, of course, and we’ll get to that. But first, a note of bitter irony. Posley was one of those attracted to Vermont by Gov. Phil Scott’s much-touted “Stay to Stay” program in which vacationers were connected with potential employers and other resources. The governor is great at this sort of thing: Catchy ideas that ultimately have little to no real impact, but provide some feel-good headlines. See also: the late unlamented remote worker grant program. (“Stay to Stay” now seems to be a shell of its former self. It still has a website, but the content is simply a list of links to available resources. No sign of the special weekends that used to attract such positive press.)

In fact, Posley is the focus of a brief promotional video for “Stay to Stay,” still viewable on YouTube. “No matter which side of the spectrum you land on, you’re welcome in Vermont,” she said in the video. “You’re allowed to be who you are.”

Yeah, that didn’t age well.

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Return of the Guy Who’s Definitely Not Racist, Not Even a Little Tiny Bit, How Dare You Suggest Otherwise

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This is kinda-sorta another installment of “Dregs of the Ballot” except, well, this one’s an incumbent. But what an incumbent he is.

Chris Viens is running for another term on the Waterbury Selectboard, where he currently serves as vice chair — having resigned as chair in November 2020 after suggesting, at a public event, that maybe we should segregate the police so we could, you know, have Black cops police Black people and white cops watch over The Rest Of Us.

I mean, that’d take care of the whole Black Lives Matter problem, wouldn’t it?

(Pay no attention to Memphis.)

All right, you might be thinking, he made one gaffe and took responsibility. That’s settled.

Well, except for two things. First, it’s not the only questionable thing he’s said. And two, his resignation announcement was an absolute disasterpiece of self-pity and blame shifting that, to my ears, was far worse than his original segregate-the-police remark. And although it’s more than two years old, it warrants a trip down Memory Lane.

Now the good people of Waterbury can make up their own minds on Town Meeting Day, but I’ll just note that there are three candidates on the ballot for two selectboard seats and Viens is the only one I know of who’s said some truly ignorant things in public spaces.

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Oh Boy, What Are the Canaan Schools Up To Now? (UPDATED)

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Update! Canaan Superintendent Nathan Freeman sent me an email saying that the “Civil Rights Day’ designation was a mistake that’s now been corrected. His full explanation can be found below.

Hey, everybody! Three-day weekend! Monday is Civil Rights Day!

Uhhh… what’s that again?

Yeah, “Civil Rights Day,” the preferred appellation among those who aren’t quite sure about that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. guy. Kind of a commie, wasn’t he? Definitely a troublemaker. I guess we have to give “them” a holiday, though.

The above image is from the calendar of the Canaan School District, which apparently cannot abide Dr. King’s name. Yes, Canaan, the former employer of Education Secretary Dan French and, lest we forget, the only district in Vermont that never adopted a mask mandate, even during the worst of the pandemic.

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This Isn’t Gonna End Well

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VTDigger greets us with a happy little tale from Rutland of a vigilante band taking the law into their own hands. The story is pretty thorough and goes on at some length. It’s alarming stuff, although the local cops and county prosecutor seem to be just fine with it. I mean, this could be nothing more than Neighborhood Watch on steroids, but the story leads with a shoplifter being confronted and assaulted by members of the “Rutland City Patrol.” Not a good sign.

Especially when you look at the above photo, which accompanied the Digger story. There’s the cheap-looking “Rutland City Patrol” magnetic sign. And then there’s a second sign that’s clearly associated with Blue Lives Matter.

The article doesn’t mention that. Kind of an important point, don’t you think?

“I got your six” means “I’ve got your back.” It’s used in many contexts. On its own, it’s benign. But when it’s paired with the black, white and blue flag, it’s Blue Lives Matter. And that creates a whole different context for the story and for the City Patrol.

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Did WCAX Get the Holiday Wrong? (Plus, Bonus Racist Comments!!!)

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WCAX-TV posted this lovely graphic on its Facebook page today. It’s a nice effort to celebrate Not Columbus Day. But how much time did they spend on it, and did they get it wrong?

Today is not “Day of Indigenous People.” It’s “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

That might seem like a niggle, but two other points. First, there’s a United Nations “International Day of the World’s Indigenous People,” which could easily be shortened to “Day of Indigenous People.” It tracks closer than “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Second, is that a Native American pattern? It looks more like a West African kente cloth. Which would fit in with the UN’s day, but not this holiday. Did a higher-up tell some backroom gofer to grab an Indigenous Peoples’ Day graphic and post it on Facebook without giving it another thought? That’d be my guess. If someone from WCAX can prove this is a graphic produced for this day, I’ll happily post a correction.

Meanwhile, let’s have some fun with the inevitable flood of racist comments below WCAX’s Facebook post.

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Here’s a New One: Juneteenth is a Holiday for White Republicans

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Man, oh Manischevitz. Paul Dame has outdone himself.

Last time it was implying that the schools are the root cause of school shootings because of whatever they’re doing to alienate young white men. Now? He’s spun a twisted tale of slavery’s end that puts white Republicans at the center of Juneteenth and elides the unrelenting grimness of post-slavery life for black Americans.

And, of course, omits the GOP’s own complicity in abandoning the newly-freed Black folk for the sake of short-term political advantage.

For those just joining us, VTGOP chair Dame puts out a brief weekly email blast that makes you yearn for the clear thinking and deathless prose of Ben Shapiro. The latest edition is entitled “Juneteenth: A Promise Kept,” which gives you a foretaste of what’s to come.

It’s deeply, offensively stupid.

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Wanted: Local Officials With Guts

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We’ve got a disturbing trend on our hands: Small-town officials coming under heavy pressure from small groups of loud people. Or even one single person.

I’ve written at length about stealth conservatives running for local office, rabble-rousing over critical race theory and Black Lives Matter, and arguing over school mascots. But three more incidents have recently come to the fore: the Chester library board suspending Drag Queen Story Hour, the Canaan school board facing demands to remove books from the school library, and the Randolph school board voting to take down a “Black Lives Matter” flag.

This isn’t going away anytime soon. The American Library Association says it’s getting more reports of attempted book banning than ever before. The head of the ALA, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, says “It’s a volume of challenges I’ve never seen” in her 20 years in the organization.

“When you have organizations like Heritage Foundation and Family Policy Alliance publishing materials that instruct parents on how to challenge books in the school library or the public library, right down to a challenge form enclosed in the booklet so they can just fill it out, you’re seeing a challenge to our democratic values of free speech, freedom of thought, freedom of belief.”

It’s never been easy to be a local official. It’s a lot of work. You’re always on call. When things go wrong, you get the blame. But these organized movements present a new level of difficulty. Local boards of all kinds are facing loud, insistent demands from tiny cohorts of The Aggrieved.

Our local public servants don’t need any more headaches. But they’ve got ’em, and they’ll have to respond.

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Turns Out, Jim Douglas’ Anger Was Entirely Performative. Shocking, I know.

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In my previous post, I expressed a bit of puzzlement about why former governor Jim Douglas chose the New York Sun as the place to express his sudden disdain for Middlebury College. Well, now I know why: Because any Vermont publication would have asked embarrassing questions.

Douglas, for those just tuning in, is upset over the college’s decision to take former governor John Mead’s name off a chapel building because Mead was a fervent and influential proponent of eugenics. In his essay, Douglas said he was staying away from his 50th class reunion because of the anesthetic-free Meadectomy.

I’ll miss seeing my classmates and reminiscing about our college days. My regret would be greater, however, if I were to pretend that I was happy to be there, in the shadow of Mead Chapel, the scene of the College’s expunction of the Governor’s legacy.

Time to call bullshit.

Douglas may have skipped his class reunion, but he gave no indication that he would give up the “Executive in Residence” title he’s enjoyed at Middlebury since 2011, or that he would cease his part-time teaching role. Apparently he’s not too upset about being “in the shadow of Mead Chapel” to completely absent himself from campus.

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Finally, Jim Douglas Has Found Something to be Mad About

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Ever notice how almost every photograph of former Vermont governor Jim Douglas looks the same? The not-quite-convincing smile, the middle-disance stare, the resolutely dead eyes? It’s almost as if he’s thinking to himself, “I wonder what puppy tastes like.”

Well, something has finally shattered that phlegmatic exterior. What, might you ask, is capable of piercing Douglas’ impregnable fortress of blanditude?

An alleged insult against a dead white guy.

Douglas, who could have had his pick of Vermont media outlets to carry his thoughts, took to the digital-only pages of the New York Sun, a conservative outlet that has nothing to do with the original city paper, to post his screed about why he’d decided to boycott his 50th class reunion at Middlebury College.

He did so because the college had the temerity to rename the Mead Memorial Chapel. It had borne the name of former Vermont governor John Mead, but the college took down his name because, uhh, Mead had been a proponent of eugenics.

Pish tush, says Douglas. A lot of people were pro-eugenics in the early 20th Century. And aside from that little flaw, Douglas says, Mead was “a decent man, as well as a generous benefactor” and a veteran of the Civil War to boot.

Problem is, John Mead wasn’t just some random dude who thought the gene pool needed a little purification. He used his platform as governor to call for an official policy of eugenics in Vermont, which led to one of the darkest periods in our history.

[In 1912,] Mead gave a farewell address to the Vermont Legislature in which he advocated for the use of eugenic theory in creating legislation and policy. His comments in that speech about marriage restrictions, segregation and sterilization inspired the research behind the Eugenics Survey of Vermont and led to the legalization of voluntary eugenical sterilization two decades later.

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