Racist

A former mayor of Lewiston invited Somalians to come here, much as several cities are inviting Muslim immigrants to come to their cities, legal or illegal. The idea, I think, was to fill some of the empty buildings in Lewiston and to score some political correctness points that Southern Mainers trade in. A few years later, he begged Catholic Services not to send any more Somalians to Lewiston because the welfare system was overrun and the school system wasn't able to deal with so many people who didn't speak English. Rather than doing so, someone at Catholic Service leaked the letter to the press and the mayor, who had invited them to begin with, was made out to be a racist who didn't want Somalians in Lewiston. He was drummed out of office, and the problem has been getting worse. I am told that a lot of the Somalians who were born here aren't speaking English and more of them keep coming. A year ago, Catholic Services and one of the colleges were sponsoring a tour of Maine's northernmost county, Aroostook County, for more Somalians who they were hoping to move to Northern Maine. So far, I haven't heard of anything happening on that, and I hope not to. I don't even want people from Massachusetts to move to Northern Maine.

 

In my opinion, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with someone having a preference for living in an area where their neighbors are of the same race, and I don't think anyone here is implying that. Many black people prefer to live in black neighborhoods, and I think you'll find that in people of most races, particularly in the first generations that are in this country. But many of these neighborhoods have continued to be primarily one race or another for several generations.

Millinocket has a "Little Italy" neighborhood that even shows up as a dot on some maps, although it's always been a part of Millinocket. Even today, most of the people who live in Little Italy are Italian, although I doubt that very many of them speak the language or have ever been to the country, and I think that someone who was not Italian could buy a house there and be welcomed. That wasn't always the case, however. Older people who grew up here say that when they were kids, they avoided Little Italy unless they were Italian. Throughout the country, you'll find cities with neighborhoods made up of people who are primarily of one race or another.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone preferring to live amongst people who look like them or, perhaps more importantly, who share the same language, culture, experiences, and religious values. Some people enjoy the diversity, while others don't.

This doesn't become a bad thing until someone acts on it to prevent others from moving in, or by not making them feel welcome because they are of another race. That is something that I can understand, but that doesn't make it right.

I moved to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and lived in one town there where I was the only person not of Mexican ancestry, but I wasn't made to feel unwelcome. Wherever you go, you'll come across some rude or hateful people, and they might use race or language to express the hate that is within them, but there weren't very many of them. Oh, there were people who would refuse to speak English to me although they were quite capable of speaking English, but why should I expect everyone to change their language because I decided to move there? I don't think this implied that they hated me for being there. Instead, the message was that I was the one who decided to move to a place where people spoke Spanish so it's for me to learn Spanish. I never did learn to speak fluent Spanish, but once I had made a few steps in that direction, they were more willing to help me along with English.

I moved to Maine because I wanted to move back to a place that had four seasons, like where I grew up in the UP of Michigan, not because the people here are white.

It's nice to be around people who speak English but I don't really care much about anyone's skin tone. I spent a year and a half in North Carolina, and I felt more comfortable with the black people there than with some of the overtly racist white people who were there. I am not saying that most of the white people there were racist but some of them were clearly so, and I'm not interested in hearing anyone's racist jokes or any of that kind of thing.

I did not, in the part of North Carolina where I lived, at the time that I was there, come across black people who hated whites. We were there mostly to work, as we each working two jobs while we were there, so we didn't have time for a lot of socializing, but most of the people I worked with were black, I think, and I never got the idea that they hated me because I was white.

Obviously, I wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood where the people around me hated me because I was white, or where I had to fear being beaten or killed, but I don't think that makes me a racist.