John Klar: Progressives exploit BIPOC migrants to slander Vermonters

Vermont is bashed incessantly for its crime of “being white,” yet the state’s black population multiplied nearly five-fold in the last three decades. This influx shifted Vermont’s demographic, especially in urban centers where undocumented visitors find resources. Now Vermont progressives point to disparities between the relative wealth of these new arrivals and that of surrounding white Vermonters, distorting statistics to label all Vermonters as white supremacists — and thus responsible for the impoverishment of these new arrivals. This is reminiscent of the equally “progressive” eugenics movement, which similarly abused science to target poor whites in the name of “civilizing” Vermont.

John Klar

A network of a dozen or more race-activist organizations have sprung up in Vermont. They demand the entire bureaucratic system be converted to serve the “public health emergency” of racism. As justification, they point to racial disparities in home ownership, incomes, homelessness, or credit approvals as proof that Vermont is, and has always been, “systemically racist.”

Through most of the last century, fewer than 600 black people resided in Vermont — hardly a massive slave workforce. The 1990 Census reflected 1,951 blacks, which by 2019 had increased to 8,774 — a 450% increase in 29 years. Those recent Vermont residents include foreign-born immigrants, impoverished inner city Americans, and others of modest means.

The data procured by “social justice activists” avoids analysis of what percentage of the poor, homeless, mentally ill, or criminally-charged BIPOC community arrived in that social condition prior to allegedly becoming victimized in the Green Mountains.

Progressive carpetbaggers scouring Vermont for hints of KKK-style hatred invoke these disparities between migrant relocations and natives as proof positive that Vermonters are vile racists. Black people in Vermont do have higher homeless rates, higher arrest and incarceration rates, and lower incomes and home ownership rates, than their white neighbors. But these true numbers are then contorted into false conclusions regarding causation.

In the midst of a fentanyl scourge, Vermont police have been excoriated as racists for arresting BIPOC drug dealers, but examining the residency of suspects is systematically excluded from analysis in reaching this judgment. A cursory glance at the 1910 Census (Table II) reveals comprehensive data on where people came to Vermont from. Yet, Vermont’s racial justice warriors have demanded a massive data-keeping system by the Vermont police — only, residency of suspects is omitted.

The biggest lie is that “race determines all.” For instance, Vermont’s white population is aging and old; black newcomers are younger. This is a better determinant of economic (and health) outcomes than race, but the age issue is unscrupulously avoided in examining racial disparity data (as is fatherlessness, also an important predictor). COVID vaccines are being provided for young people of color ahead of old white people — the opposite of what medical science would advise. Similarly, Vermont denied federal CARES Act funds to white male sole proprietors while granting monies to blacks — ignoring economic need in favor of the one-issue measurement of skin color.

Another example is H.210, a sweeping “health bill” that strives to make all issues BIPOC, invoking an endless list of “findings” about black poverty that consistently ignore Vermont residency. This is an ideological power-grab, at the expense of impoverished white Vermonters struggling in a COVID-crushed economy. A fuller examination of the data would reveal that the causes of, and solutions to, these problems are more complex and nuanced than simply “white man bad.”

H.210 alleges racial disparities without examining residency:

Disparities in the social determinants of health exist in Vermont. For example

(A) Just 21 percent of Black Vermonters own their own homes whereas 72 percent of White Vermonters own their own home. Nationally, 41 percent of Black Americans own their own home.

(B)  The median household income of Black Vermonters is $41,533.00 while the median household income of White Vermonters is $58,244.00.

(C)  In 2018, 23.8 percent of Black Vermonters were living in poverty while 10.7 percent of White Vermonters lived in poverty. In addition, 57 percent of Black Vermonters earned less than 80 percent of Vermont’s median income while 43 percent of White Vermonters earned less than 80 percent of Vermont’s median income.

It is reasonable to ask simply for accurate data with which to assess Vermont’s treatment of BIPOC.

Thomas Sowell argues progressives are undermining America with socially-regressive race-determinist dogma. Sowell reveals that social justice is, like the eugenics movement, backwards:

American Progressives took the lead in promoting genetic determinism in the United States then, as they later took the lead in promoting the opposite presumption that disparities imply discrimination in the second half of the twentieth century. (Discrimination and Disparities, p.25)

Vermonters are waking to an insidious, hate-fueled ideology that does not wish to liberate, but to enslave. The race-measuring stick is used to smack down white people on every issue — prostitution, the environment, land use, school discipline, farming, opioid use, health care. Every issue must now be falsely refracted through the racist-justice prism, displaying not a vibrant, inclusive rainbow, but a thought-numbing darkness.

Burlington, Vermont seeks voting rights for its 3,000 undocumented immigrants. Whether or not they vote, they have already been counted in the H.273 and H.210 legislation (which includes homeless statistics). If they are poor and demographically darker-skinned than Vermont citizens, comparing their bank balances and land ownership rates with white people would be an abuse of statistics. It is simple (even for white Vermont simpletons) to observe that immigrants’ pre-existing poverty is being manipulated to malign Vermont.

Vermont was ranked the No. 1 state in the country for racial equity by U.S. News & World Report. As recently as 2016, it boasted a unique statistical status in America:

Vermont is the only state in which a larger share of African American adults have graduated from college than white adults. Across the state, 37.0% of African American adults have at least a bachelor’s degree — the highest share of any state — and higher than the 35.1% of white residents with similar educational attainment. Additionally, the difference in incomes between white and black residents is the smallest in the country. The typical African American household in Vermont earns $50,933 annually, the third most of any state and about $4,000 less than the state’s typical white household. By comparison, the national income gap between white and black Americans is roughly $24,000.

Note how these income numbers shifted from 2016 to the statutory language of H.210 (above) in 2021 stating blacks’ median income is now $41,533.00 — did the median income of black Vermonters really drop nearly $9,000 in four years, caused by historic white supremacy?

Three years (of welcoming poor immigrants to Vermont) later, in 2019, Vermont’s population was nearly the slowest-growing nationally — except for its immigrants:

Many of the states with the highest rates of net domestic out-migration also had the highest per capita rates of international immigration. Some Northeastern states including Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Connecticut would have had negative or near-negative population growth if not for international migrants.

Governor Phil Scott recently called for more refugees to relocate to Vermont — is it not common sense that their arrival impacts demographics?

The numbers do not lie — racial justice advocates lie about the numbers. As I wrote nearly two years ago: A handful of recent carpetbagger émigrés have discovered that “People of Color” enjoy special status in white-guilt Vermont, including direct access to a legislature that will rubber-stamp (and fund!) anything proffered, like white-bread deer in the race-card headlights.

“Racial justice” is the new eugenics movement — every bit as nasty and harmful. Legislating slanderous lies against one’s neighbors is the badge of loyalty to the New Racist State. Migrant relocations to Vermont are being manipulated to shamelessly “whitewash” Vermont’s proud abolitionist history as instead one of sharecropping and enslavement — the opposite of the truth. Vermonters will not be slandered as racists, or otherwise emasculated or lobotomized, by “enlightened” lying invaders — of any race, creed, sexuality or color.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield, and the former pastor of the First Congregational Church of Westfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2021. All rights reserved.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

6 thoughts on “John Klar: Progressives exploit BIPOC migrants to slander Vermonters

  1. When will the liberals get it through their heads that most black folks don’t like cold weather.

    • Just as Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and other terrorists ally with the Democrat Party, so did Anarchists, Social Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks ally with the Bolsheviks until the Bolsheviks had enough power and these allies were exterminated in 1918.
      There can be only one party rule under this totalitarianism, whether it is called Democrat Party or Communist Party.
      Race is the new class warfare under the Left now, but it is the same old hatred, destruction of any authority but the Left, and theft of property for redistribution to the Left.

  2. John is absolutely correct when he points out the glaring analytical deficiencies in data presented by social justice activists. This same issue is present in official reports prepared by State entities. These deficiencies render reports presented essentially useless at best and potentially damaging to society, race relations and implementation of effective remedies at worse.

    Since January 20, 2020 there have been three official reports on Racial Equity made to the Governor and the Legislature by the State’s Executive Director of Racial Equity and a special Vermont Racial Equity Task Force. The one thing that all three official reports have in common is an absence of analysis and specifics in defining exactly what elements constitute systemic racism in Vermont.

    The reports make many unsubstantiated charges, describe how people feel, present inflammatory language, repeat national talking points on racial issues from other parts of the country and provide speculation. The reports are light or absent of analysis and specifics to support the often heard charges of systemic racism. Charges that are easily tossed around, but not easily or maybe even impossible to document because they simply do not exist.

    Much more work needs to be done in Montpelier before the wholesale charges of systemic racism are are fit to be accepted and acted upon in Vermont…….The presence of individual bias, which is present in all races, is not the same as systemic racism and should not be accepted as such without concrete proof of existence.

    Below are the reports on racial equity submitted to the Governor and Legislature …….You read them and decide if a case of systemic racism in Vermont has been made:

    https://racialequity.vermont.gov/sites/reap/files/doc_library/RETF%20Report%201%20FINAL.pdf

    https://racialequity.vermont.gov/sites/reap/files/doc_library/EDRE%20Report%20to%20GA%202020%20-%20REVISED_0.pdf

    https://racialequity.vermont.gov/sites/reap/files/doc_library/EDRE%20Report%20to%20GA%202020%20-%20REVISED_0.pdf

  3. Vermont will always be an activist state for the Left. The last 60 years and more. The good old Politicians like George Aiken and R. Stafford are hard to find now..They loved their Country.
    It’s all socialism, communists and democrats selling out our country to them …

  4. Where do I sign up for the class action lawsuit – defamation of character and violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? All that is needed is a Lin Wood type lawyer to make it happen.

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