To be fair, Maine’s not quite as white as Vermont, which is the whitest of states… I can’t remember if Maine is more white than Oregon, though, which was founded in the 19th century as a WHITE STATE… Yes, that Oregon… And we ALL know about Boston… racist as hell. Let’s not even get into western Mass (where I have family in fact). Rasicm is and always has been a national problem, but it’s always made the north feel better to say it was just a southern problem. It’s very much not, and there is no part of the country we can cut off to get rid of the racists. The only way forward to better education and more integration nationwide.
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You DO know that there were riots all across the north when it came to busing in the north. Like race riots aimed at ensuring that white children did not have to be sent across town to go to “those” schools.
Not one single inch of white American gets out of this legacy. None. It’s white America’s to understand, own up to, and to eventually do the hard work of fixing.
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According to the wikipedians, at least as of 2012, Maine had edged out Vermont by a tenth of a percent, 94.1% to 94.0%, in non-Hispanic white population. But back in 1990, the situation was reversed, with Vermont on top 98.1% to 98.0%. Regardless, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and West Virginia are pretty convincingly ahead of the also-rans.
Also much of upper New England (well, at least Maine and New Hampshire–I can’t really speak authoritatively about Vermont, where I’ve never spent any time) have prominent strains of the kind of simplistic bootstrappy libertarianism that, as we’re seeing elsewhere, likes to walk hand-in-hand with racist alt-right fringenuttery.
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My data is a little out of date (2009), but based on the black-white dissimilarity index the three most segregated states (statewide basis) are New York, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The three most integrated are Delaware, South Carolina, and Nevada. You get different states with the Hispanic-white index, but New York remains the most segregated. The order looks entirely different on the Asian index (New York is the second most integrated), but too many states have such low populations that the index is really meaningless. At the metro level Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania start looking really bad by either exposure or dissimilarity indices.
Whenever I run into someone downplaying northern racism I always point to the Birwood Wall or King’s Chicago trip. To quote King “I have seen many demonstrations in the south but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today”
Okay now it is rant time. Modern American zoning, not just in Connecticut, is heavily steeped in racism. When you look at the case, Euclid v. Ambler, which upheld the constitutionality of zoning in the US, the lower courts held the zoning to be an unconstitutional taking because it was implicity aimed at maintaining residential segregation. The Supreme court ended up upholding the zoning with some very nasty anti-apartment language (apartments are parasites). To this day, despite being a relatively low income suburb on the eastern border of Cleveland, Euclid remains 2/3 white. The techniques have gotten a lot more subtle, but one of the big red flags for intentionally racist zoning is large lot zoning. The definition for large lot zoning is fuzzy, but most people use a 1 acre minimums for single family residential. I find a good rule of thumb for judging the reasonable lot size minimums is if you can reasonably see someone living a good life in half the space. If someone could happily live in half the space, then they are being exclusionary as a primary goal.
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I have defended the south before by saying it’s a nice place and not everyone there is racist, so I’ll do the same with Boston. After living here for 25 years I’ve found it’s no more racist than other places in the US where I’ve lived, and as a whole is probably less racist than most American suburbs. The violent imagery of the 1970’s busing riots is still burned in everyone’s minds, but while the white perpetrator in that Pulitzer-winning photo moved to the suburbs, the victim stayed and has been a vital part of the community and government.
To be clear, I’m not saying it’s completely free of racism, just that the Boston of 1970 is not the Boston of today. If Boston was more racist than other US cities a generation ago it’s at least caught up to them now. (Ironically, gentrification in the infamous white ghetto of Southie is forcing the old school residents out, and into ethnically diverse neighborhoods like Dorchester or Quincy.)
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Indeed. I’m aware. I’m merely pointing out that racism is, always has been, and will be until white people do something about it, a national problem.
Yes, I’m aware.
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Maine is the South of New England. Thankfully they’ve ditched their idiot governor, so things might finally be looking up.
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