Illaria Dana

Education Major

Governor Paul LePage made national headlines when he made a statement on January 6 that was racist and prejudiced against addicts and poverty. LePage said, “The traffickers—these aren’t people who take drugs. These are guys by the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty. These type of guys that come from Connecticut and New York. They come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave. Which is the real sad thing, because then we have another issue that we have to deal with down the road.”

This statement offended many people- and rightfully so. The first offense was his implication that drug traffickers are people of color. The words, “half of the time they impregnate a young, white girl,” implies that traffickers are non-white. This is a dangerous sentiment. In a climate where racial stereotypes dominate legal practices, government officials must be aware that their words have power. This is the power to condemn people based on their race and perpetuate racism in the justice system.

In The Reality of Racial Profiling released by The Leadership Conference, it is reported that, “Black drivers (4.5%) were twice as likely as White drivers (2.1%) to be arrested during a traffic stop, while Hispanic drivers (65%) were more likely than White (56.2%) or Black (55.8%) drivers to receive a ticket. In addition, Whites (9.7%) were more likely than Hispanics (5.9%) to receive a written warning, while Whites (18.6%) were more likely than Blacks (13.7%) to be verbally warned by police.” The biases reflected in these statistics show that even in street-level crimes, the color of your skin dictates the interactions you will have with police officers.

LePage’s use of the invented names, “D-Money,” “Smoothie,” and “Shifty,” are used to denigrate people of color. This use of language is meant to generate fear and to cast people in a stereotype. White people in the U.S. frequently fetishize aspects of African-American culture such as music, dance, and style, while political leaders think it is okay to conform all people of color to a negative stereotype. This reveals a deep sickness: the eagerness to benefit from a culture through appropriation that one systematically expresses through cultural practices, supremacy, and electing racist politicians. This has historical precedence when white rock-n-roll musicians would steal music made by African-Americans and continues to occur today.

The second offense has to do with the nature of consent. Less than 100 years have passed since lynching was a prominent practice in the U.S. White supremacists used the lie that African-American males were raping white women to condone the violent murder of innocent people. That these murders were often attended by mobs shows the dominance of white supremacy in our recent history. LePage’s statement reinforces the completely, irredeemably despicable lie that sex relations between adults generate unwanted children. This is the other, “issue that we have to deal with down the road.”

Which leads listeners to the third offense. LePage implies that children of mixed descent are both unwanted and have parents who are unable to provide for them. As a politician who has systematically striven to undo social services and funding for academic institutions, without generating jobs or other means for security for individuals, it is clear that LePage sees poverty and poor people as a burden that is beneath him.

The last offence in LePage’s statement is his failure to understand or empathize with addicts. Last year, Mercy Detox had to relocate and was greatly reduced in size. This was due to a budget cut pioneered by LePage. The facilities entrusted with the medical and mental treatment of addicts are too limited to meet the needs of the community. LePage fails to realize that addicts are suffering in Maine, that Mainers can be drug traffickers, and that addiction can affect someone who looks like him. His casting of drug traffickers as people of color is an incredible insult, for in one statement he stereotypes two groups of people that are already largely affected by stereotypes. He has completely diminished an entire race of people, and he isolates addicts from the support they need to recover.

Not only does he fail to provide any evidence to support his statements, LePage has remained unapologetic.