Editorial: Of Vermont and systemic racism

Our challenge in a predominatly white state is to promote a culture that accepts others as equals. Vermont did that recently, and with a fair amount of grace, by being the first state to legalize civil unions and later gay marriage in the late 1990s. But it was not without a struggle. The gay community worked for 30 tortutous years before a breakthrough. America’s Black community has faced worse discrimination and for far longer. One can understand their frustration and anger. We can only hope that in Vermo … (read more)

There is nothing new under the sun, the saying goes. It’s all been done before. In the case of racial inequality in the United States, the death of a Black man in police custody has happened so many times that people became apathetic — until George Floyd. … (read more)

MIDDLEBURY — Marissel Hernández-Romero, a Black professor from Puerto Rico, began a three-year appointment at Middlebury College in the Department of Luso-Hispanic Studies in 2017. She arrived with a “positive attitude,” she has said, but at the end of he … (read more)

BRANDON — A Black man who was ordered by Middlebury police to “raise his hands” after an erroneous report that he had been detaining a woman at gunpoint off Mary Hogan Drive is now talking about the incident. Bashiru Abdulaziz, a 38-year-old man who lives … (read more)

This week’s writer is Kemi Fuentes-George, a professor of political science at Middlebury College. This piece originally appeared in The Middlebury Campus newspaper. The most recent time I was stopped and harassed by police was shortly after I moved into … (read more)

Thank you for the “Not in Our Town?” article (June 25). I read with interest Chief Hanley’s assessment that the “video of the incident, taken from the two police cars at the scene, shows no evidence of racism.”  Let’s not let ourselves off the hook so eas … (read more)

As our community and country wrestle with individual and systemic racism, it is critical for each white Vermonter to acknowledge the racism within ourselves and the ways we benefit from it each day while this same system brutally murders and denies resour … (read more)

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” — Martin Luther King Jr.   Many years ago my husband and I attended a music bash that was organized and hosted by some friends of ours. It was an annual event tha … (read more)

“A common danger unites even the bitterest of enemies,” said the philosopher Aristotle. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed fault lines that separate people of color and whites, and it continues to shine a light on the terrible effect that white su … (read more)

VERGENNES — The Vergennes Union High School’s Racial and Social Justice Alliance has organized an anti-racism event on the Vergennes green for this coming Saturday, June 20, that will consist of a series of discussion groups. From 4 to 5 p.m. attendees ca … (read more)

When Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida in 2012, Joanna Colwell’s daughter was 11 years old. Just old enough, Colwell recalled, to walk by herself to the store in East Middlebury for a Snapple. “It was not in my consciousness that she could be the victi … (read more)

In this unique moment in the national debate over racial justice, particularly as it is being portrayed through acts of police brutality, we are all asked to do the hard work of looking within, to examine our own wells of systemic racism and flush them ou … (read more)

ADDISON COUNTY AND BRANDON — People started gathering in College Park, the former site of the Middlebury town offices, a little before 6 p.m. on Saturday. As the numbers swelled it became obvious that pandemic or not many Vermonters were so upset that the … (read more)

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott gave these remarks at a Monday press conference: I want to start by addressing the tragic death of George Floyd in Minnesota. The reactions, justifiable outrage, that it sparked across the nation … I also want to remind everyone of … (read more)

Editor’s note: This is the 58th in a series of essays on the history and meaning of the American political tradition. Racism is a prejudice, and prejudices are antithetical to truth. Therefore, the expression “scientific racism” is a contradiction of term … (read more)