LEWISTON — Growing up in rural Connecticut in a log house his parents built, Christopher Petrella didn’t have any particular reason to start mulling over the dynamics of race in America. A white guy in a nearly all-white town with working-class parents, Petrella enjoyed a loving family, sports and a wide-ranging curiosity that led him […]
racism
Posted inLetters
Disavow the racism
Streaming across the border, the poor rabble looked for a better life, looked for jobs. We resented them, they couldn’t speak English, tended to live in enclaves of their own and didn’t go to our churches. We were worried that they would overrun our culture. They were just so different. So we organized to counter […]
advertisement
Posted inLetters
Racial belligerence everywhere
It is clear to me that Gov. Paul LePage is a racist. Having said that, may I add that so am I and so, probably, is anyone reading this. It is almost impossible to grow up in America without absorbing the atmosphere of racism that is all around us. However, I am a repentant racist. […]
Posted inLewiston-Auburn
Speaker: Fighting prejudice takes more than being a good person
LEWISTON — When it comes to prejudice, everyone is biased, everyone has work to do — and what we learn from birth to age 5 is powerful, Dr. Eddie Moore Jr. told Lewiston High School Civil Rights Team students Wednesday. Moore, a national diversity speaker, is spending two days in Lewiston talking about how eliminating […]
Posted inMaine
Paul LePage says ‘white girl’ remark was mistake, not racial
Discussing the state’s growing opioid addiction problem LePage said, “Guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty … these types of guys. They come from Connecticut and New York; they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave, which is a […]
Posted inOp-Eds
Taking in all of the man
At Princeton University, the image and name of Woodrow Wilson could soon be erased. He was the school’s president from 1902 to 1910, reforming it, transforming it and setting it on the path to academic excellence. He left the school and soon became America’s 28th president — a great one, some people believe — but […]
Posted inOp-Eds
America still owes African America
We are gathered here today not to argue about some policy prescription, nor to excoriate some public figure. No, we are gathered because sometimes, you have no choice, sometimes, you simply have a duty to bear witness. A child was killed last week in Chicago. He was shot to death. It is a measure of […]
Posted inLetters
The stench of hypocrisy
The photos in the Sun Journal of the state champion Lewiston High School soccer team show most of the players are African-American. The photos of Lewiston’s opponents from Scarborough show a lily-white team. According to Bruce Noddin, in a letter to the editor (Nov. 7), which town is racist and which is a model of […]
Posted inOp-Eds
Reality of race bias well documented
I once read a question that went as follows: Two groups of young men are walking on opposite sides of the street. One group is black, the other, white. Both are loud and swaggering, both have baseball caps turned to the back, both are brandishing bats. Which one is the baseball team and which one, […]