"A bad guy is a bad guy. I don’t care what color he is. When you go to war, if you know the enemy, the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, you shoot at red. … You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy. And the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in are people of color or people of Hispanic origin."
--Paul LePage, Republican Governor of Maine
So, what I'm asking myself is when was the last time you were dressed in a blue uniform and the enemy was wearing a red uniform? Was that the Revolutionary War?
Governor LePage, who was duly elected by the citizens of Maine is saying that most crime in Maine is committed by colored people. Actually, Maine has one of the lowest rates of crime in the country, and one of the lowest incarceration rates, at 350 people per 100,000. But, it is true Blacks are imprisoned at 1,553/ 100,000, Indians at 747/100.000, HIspanics 407/100,000 and whites at 259/100,000. How that math works out, I'm not sure.
There are 15,707 Blacks living in Maine, out of a population of 1,300,000 people. The Internet is a wonderful thing. If Blacks are imprisoned at a rate of 1,553/100,000, one might calculate all 15,000 are in jail, given the fact that there are 1.3 million Mainers, which seems to be a hard and verifiable number.
Does this number refer to the number of Blacks in jail per 100,000 Maine citizens of all colors? Or does this mean 1,553 Blacks of every 100,000 Blacks in Maine are in jail? Somewhere, somebody will know these things. I'll ask Gov. LePage. He might consult his notebooks with the mug shots.
Somehow, I think I must have got my arithmetic wrong. Or Gov. LePage has his arithmetic wrong. Or maybe his sampling methodology leaves something to be desired. Or someone does.
Presumably, these numbers refer to the number of Blacks per 100,000 of all Mainers who are in jail. Since Blacks are a tiny percentage of the Maine population, that means a fairly high proportion of the small number of Black Mainers are in jail. Why the Governor did not include Indians, who appear to wind up in jail more often than Hispanics, is another question.
Wait,! A Hispanic in blue? |
Presumably, none of those 259 white men wore red uniforms. Then again, there are no photos.
Was Governor LePage saying all those Black drug dealers were wearing red uniforms? Had he just seen "Hamilton?" There were Blacks wearing red uniforms in "Hamilton." But the, Gov. LePage would have had to have traveled to New York City, which seems highly unlikely. Gov. LePage listening to Hip Hop for two hours? Seems unlikely. Unless it was "opposition research." Remains to be seen.
The governor has expressed concern about all those out of state colored men who come to Maine, sell drugs and then impregnate a white girl before leaving. He has a loose leaf binder with all the cases. What the governor does not tell us is how many colored girls get impregnated by those out of state drug sellers of color. Do these men prefer to impregnate white women?
It is an interesting question.