Op-ed: Vermont is more diverse than depicted

Editor’s note: The public is invited to write and send in op-ed’s on a variety of topics that directly affect our communities. Mail them to cprairie@chestertelegraph.org.

By Sara Stowell
©2023 Telegraph Publishing LLC

The author critiques recent promotional videos commissioned by the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets that show only white Vermonters. She writes, “The production value is great, and what we’d expect from a professional firm. The slickness and quality is not what I was referring to when I called it a commercial for white people.  What I meant was that the absence of other cultural signifiers (in the videos) establishes whiteness as the norm. For decades, Vermont has been socially conditioning itself and others that our acceptable norm is dominantly white.”

She notes that the promotional videos erase by omission the work and lives of black and brown Vermonters, which is harmful to them, and to the goal of attracting more people of all backgrounds to Vermont as tourists or residence and members of our workforce and our community.

Several commentators have taken the time to express disdain for the piece, suggesting that the headline was exclusionary and the author didn’t recognize the hard work and age of our population (implying white Vermonters). Almost no one lead with the affirmation that our tax dollars should show more than the white farmers and producers and “traditional” Vermont milk and maple products. In fact, it would be both truthful to show the diversity in Vermont’s agricultural and food scenes, and important to continue to attract people to come live and work here.

It is important that we not hold up Vermont’s historic whiteness as an excuse. And we cannot hold historical or current whiteness harmless.

The VAAFM videos betray what we see around us. A quick look at Chester, Cavendish, Londonderry, Ludlow, Andover, Springfield and more will show you a much more diverse picture in farming, food service, road work, education, healthcare and within our schools.

Our area reflects the Vermont in which more than 1,000 Mexican and Guatemalan workers keep our dairy industry afloat. Hundreds of workers from Jamaica have been harvesting most of Vermont’s apples for over 30 years.

In addition to farmworkers, there are many farmers of color: The Clemmons Farm Pine Island Community Farm in Chittenden County, SUSU CommUNITYFarm and Magnetic Fields in Windham County, the Strattford Organic Creamery, they are all here. And so many others hope to follow in their footsteps, integrating Vermont’s iconic agricultural community with life, with different crops, foods and flavors.

It’s not just agriculture. The videos could have shown Jamaican Jewelz or Munchie Rollz or Masala Corner, or Chester’s own Maria’s Mexican food, all of whose amazing cuisine nourished us at our Chester Curbside Market during the pandemic and still do today.

They could have shown nurses and doctors, chefs and dishwashers, builders and roofers, quarry workers and road crews, teachers and retired neighbors who are not white. These folks are our neighbors; they are long-time Vermont residents: They are Vermonters.

Just a few of those images would begin to challenge the idea that Vermont is only white. Just a few of those images would give our neighbors and my children a chance to see themselves reflected in Vermont’s promotional images.

A new book available at the Vermont History Society, Vermont for the Vermonters, A History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State by Mercedes de Guardiola shows that we have a deep history of creating a white state – that it is not by nature, but by design. You can also find Repeopling of Vermont, the Paradox of Development in the Twentieth Century by Paul M. Searls at the VHS, which shows how some of our neighbors, through no fault of their own, were invited to Vermont to perpetuate its whiteness. This might help us to understand the historical policies that made it easier for hard working white people to create generational wealth when equally hard-working Indigenous and Black people had to struggle against institutional barriers that included outright extermination.

There is work to be done to acknowledge those wrongs. There is work to be done to change uninviting images like Green Mountain’s Chieftain sports team name.

There is work to be done to challenge the idea that Vermont will always be “just white.” When we do this work, Vermonters of all colors, generational and more recently arrived, can care for our families and elders and build a future of resilience in the face of racism and hurricanes, budget crisis and bigotry. We can all enjoy Vermont’s beauty.

One first step is to admit that using the “well, Vermont is white” excuse is a barrier that we must tear down.

Sara Stowell is a resident of Proctorsville.