Mindy Haskins Rogers (mindyhaskinsrogers.com) writes and teaches in western Massachusetts.
NORTHAMPTON, MASS.-What does it mean to be a "real Vermonter?"
I was born and raised in Brattleboro, but I have generally eschewed the claim. Its parameters have always seemed murky, and I can't embrace the boast of inclusion when it is so often used to exclude.
I remember those "Take back Vermont" signs that emerged when Vermont introduced civil unions - the first measure in the country that offered legal recognition to same-sex couples. The message confused me: Take it back, from whom? And who has a right to claim such a proprietary interest in an entire state?
This is not to say that I don't love my home state. I do. I love the way Vermonters stop and offer help when they see a car broken down by the side of the road, and how they often have the tools and know-how to fix it. I love that the first time I heard the term "mutual aid" I realized it just meant neighbors helping neighbors as we always had - without naming it.
But recently, I have been hearing folks in Brattleboro talk about "taking back our town" - a new and more localized version of the old call.
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Nativist rhetoric contains inherent challenges. Most current residents are not indigenous - the Abenaki people were largely displaced when Vermont was settled by foreigners. So how deep do one's roots need to be to qualify as a "real Vermonter"? Is being born in Vermont enough? What about living there for decades?
There is an impactful history to Vermont's nativism. During the late 19th to early 20th centuries, Vermont Sen. William P. Dillingham worked tirelessly to limit U.S. and Vermont immigration to white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. At a time when rural Vermont was suffering from underpopulation, he arranged the printing of flyers to be sent to Sweden, hoping to entice Scandinavian immigrants rather than Irish Catholics, southern or eastern Europeans, or people from Asian countries.
The senator and his supporters were unabashed in their intent to preserve the racial and religious homogeneity of the state and the country, though they often cloaked that intent in arguments about education, language, and assimilation.
Dillingham's efforts resulted in a 1921 law that shaped U.S. immigration for decades. The law introduced quotas for immigrants from different countries based on the number of descendants of each country already living in the U.S. as of 1910 and effectively favored immigration from northern and western Europe. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed a law to make these changes even stronger.
"It closed the door on almost all new Asian immigration and shut out most European Jews and other refugees fleeing fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe," immigration scholars Muzaffar Chishti and Julia Gelatt write.
"One of the most restrictive immigration laws in U.S. history, it played a key role in ending the previous era of largely unrestricted immigration. Its numerical limits on annual arrivals and use of national-origins quotas, aided by Great Depression–era restrictions, limited religious, ethnic, and racial diversity, and sharply reduced the size of the country's foreign-born population for four decades," they note.
I wonder whether Vermonters who echo those "take back" sentiments are aware of this discriminatory history.
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Brattleboro has been afflicted with devastating hardships in recent years, from the housing crisis to the opioid epidemic to increasing crime. Rising taxes have exacerbated locals' stress.
Yet residents and representatives show up at Selectboard meetings and even at state-level committee meetings to oppose funding for programming that might alleviate those problems and make the town a better place for everyone.
Some have asserted that these problems have been brought by "outsiders." Some have expressed a belief that if affordable housing, a new shelter, or additional human services are available in town, it will attract more people who "aren't from around here."
Nativist sentiments like these often arise out of economic anxiety or out of fear, and these are scary times. Nativist movements are often backward-looking, conjuring up some past time its proponents consider to have been better, or maybe even "great."
I think of the last time my car broke down in Brattleboro, just a few years ago. I couldn't complete a call for a tow truck because so many people pulled over to help me, even with my Massachusetts license plates masking my Vermont pedigree.
If Brattleboro is going to harken back to some nostalgic image of its former self, I hope it will be the one I admire - the one in which people try to help each other whenever they can.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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