{"id":40965,"date":"2015-04-24T15:01:12","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T15:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40965"},"modified":"2015-04-24T15:02:42","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T15:02:42","slug":"dont-portray-this-state-i-love-as-a-hotbed-of-racial-discontent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40965","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t portray this state I love as a hotbed of racial discontent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t portray this state I love as a hotbed of racial discontent<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Bangor Daily News<\/a>
\nBangor, Maine
\n2015-04-20<\/p>\n

Trish Callahan<\/strong>, Special to the BDN<\/p>\n

When I played high school basketball, we travelled up to The County to play a couple times. Because of the distance we would stay with host families, and we attended social events. Even though I had to be one of the only dark-skinned people to cross the threshold of some of those doors in the mid-1980s, I was treated like all the other players.<\/p>\n

I did foul out of every game I played up there. My father and I would bet on whether I\u2019d foul out in the end of the third or beginning of the fourth quarter. In the referee\u2019s defense, we did play a more physical game than was the norm for girl\u2019s ball, myself especially, so there\u2019s no evidence that fouling out was race-related.<\/p>\n

And that about sums up my experience as a mixed-race person in Maine<\/a> since 1973: At the worst I might sense some slight surprise at the sight of someone different, but most Mainers treat me just fine.<\/p>\n

Mainers are so polite; I can tell the ones who show that slight surprise are uncomfortable with their own reaction. I usually throw down a gentle good-natured poke at the whole race thing, and the discomfort becomes laughter. I like that about Mainers, and I don\u2019t want that to change in light of the current and necessary discussion about race in our state and across the nation.<\/p>\n

I also don\u2019t want Mainers portrayed as racist because that just hasn\u2019t been the majority of my experience. While I appreciate the sentiments of the protesters in Portland<\/a>, I kind of resent the fervor reaching such a pitch that people outside our state might perceive Maine as some racial hotbed…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t portray this state I love as a hotbed of racial discontent The Bangor Daily News Bangor, Maine 2015-04-20 Trish Callahan, Special to the BDN When I played high school basketball, we travelled up to The County to play a couple times. Because of the distance we would stay with host families, and we attended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,20],"tags":[19975,2381,19974,19976],"class_list":["post-40965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-bangor-daily-news","tag-maine","tag-the-bangor-daily-news","tag-trish-callahan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}