S3E4 Antiracist Public Policy in Maine: Reflecting on a Troubling Past for a Better Future

Trying to understand the history of race and public policy in Maine? Today we will be covering James Myall’s arguments on active antiracism to improve the lives of people of color and correct historic wrongs.

You can find Myall's article here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol29/iss2/4/

Transcript

Trying to understand the history of race and public policy in Maine? Today we will be covering James Myall’s arguments on active antiracism to improve the lives of people of color and correct historic wrongs.

This is the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine . I am Eric Miller, research associate at the Center.

On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. Today, we will be covering an article by James Myall, he is a policy analyst at the Maine Center for Economic Policy, who focuses on health care, education, and the inclusive economy. Myall gives us an inside perspective on  his article entitled “Race and Public Policy    in Maine: Past, Present, and Future.” This article was published in volume 29, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to James Myall’s article in Maine Policy Review.

Myall identifies four factors that contribute to racism and public policy. These are Constructing Whiteness, Second-Class Citizenship, Discriminatory Drug Policy, and School Segregation. First, let’s go back to 1867. In 1867, a heated debate raged in Maine’s legislature and filled newspaper columns across the state. Advocates for Black rights wanted to repeal the state’s long-standing ban on interracial marriages, but opponents rejected the “mixing of the races,” often citing racist theories of white genetic superiority. The Portland Daily Press in 1897 reported on February 4 that people who opposed the repeal were afraid that if families were allowed to have mixed children, that “there will be no Caucasian society left.”

Mainers like to think of themselves as being on the right side of history when it comes to racial justice. Maine entered the union in 1820 as a free state and was home to several abolitionists. Abraham Lincoln appointed one Mainer, Hannibal Hamlin, as his first vice president and

Another, Oliver Otis Howard, to lead the Freedman’s Bureau. The Maine legislature had just recently ratified the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution in the 1860s. Despite this progress, they stumbled at the idea of interracial marriage. The 1867 attempt to end the ban on interracial marriage failed, and Maine’s anti-miscegenation would not be repealed until almost a generation later in 1883.

Myall claims that “This episode is a stark reminder that Maine’s record on racial discrimination is not as clean as conventional wisdom would have us believe. It is easy for residents of northern and western states to assume that racism was largely, or even entirely, confined to the South.”

For example, between 1790 and 1970, the US decennial censuses recorded Maine’s population as at least 99 percent white. As recently as 2018 Maine has 93 percent of its residents identifying as white non-hispanic.

Myall identifies two ways that Maine has been harmful to nonwhites. The first is explicit racism. An example of this would be the prohibition on interracial marriage. The second is implicit discrimination and unintentional harm. Myall cites this discrimination affected not only Black and Indigenous populations, but also groups whose whiteness was questioned, such as Irish and French-Canadian immigrants, and Jewish peoples.

It is importa