It may seem tempting to become complacent now that Maine is once again a blue state. Paul LePage's second term is winding down, as the governor is apparently planning to flee the state (good riddance!) for Florida (you’re welcome to him!). Additionally, many state GOP hopefuls with similarly…
Shay is a Chicago-born, Chicago-raised chick by the name of Shay Stewart-Bouley who was forcibly relocated to Maine in 2002. She graduated from both DePaul University and Antioch University New England. http://blackgirlinmaine.com
Look, I’m all about women’s right. I support empowering women, pushing back against the inordinate amount of power wielded by men at the top levels of business and government, and urging feminists to embrace all women’s needs and not ignore or downplay those of Black women and other women of color.
One of the most frustrating things about experiencing discrimination on a frequent basis is that when you bring up the fact of it — for goodness sake, even when you have video proof of it — you're challenged about whether it was really racism.
We aren’t even two years into Trump’s presidency, yet somehow it feels like he's been president for ages. Every day brings a new horror, a new outrage. Just when you think he can’t go any lower, he manages it again.
It’s easy up here in Maine to think the controversies at our borders are far-away concepts. That they're issues that affect Maine only in the most peripheral way, arguments and discussions and pain that are “from away” and not really our own.
With change there is discomfort — those famous “growing pains” we often talk about. Teething. The terrible twos. The frightful fours. Much of adolescence.
Last month, a Black man in Biddeford was violently assaulted outside of a 7-Eleven convenience store by two white men who hurled racial epithets before physically attacking him. The victim, who has not been identified according to local media reports, suffered a broken jaw and significant ph…
Change is afoot! It seems the state of Maine might be more inclined to embrace immigrants going forward. Or they may have to, given its changing demographics, which are not conducive to building its workforce or its future.
Shay is a Chicago-born, Chicago-raised chick by the name of Shay Stewart-Bouley who was forcibly relocated to Maine in 2002. She graduated from both DePaul University and Antioch University New England.
For so many things in life, there's The Talk. Sometimes The Talk is when we sit our children down to discuss the birds and the bees. For Black parents, The Talk means having to coach their kids about how to deal with police officers in ways that white kids and parents never have to think about.
So, let me talk about electric cars and “green” power.C’mon, don’t look so shocked. I know I write about racial issues a lot — it’s my main focus — but longtime readers will (I hope) recall that I also care and discuss issues like food insecurity, supporting local agriculture, homelessness a…
I was out of town when the defecation hit the rotary oscillator about Tom Kawczynski, town manager — well, former town manager, now, thankfully — of Jackman, Maine. While I was vacationing in Chicago, city of my birth, my inbox and social media filled up with stuff about him. Being who I am …
During last year's presidential primaries, a lot of Black people soured quickly on Bernie Sanders. It wasn’t that Black people had, on the whole, endearing love for Hillary Clinton — despite the jokes about her husband, Bill, being the real first Black president, there are plenty of things t…
2017 should probably get classified as “the year America became a dumpster fire.” It's been the year in which our cultural norms have been tossed out the door and replaced with new ones that hearken back to the days when non-white people and women were seen and not heard. Except these are no…
In a recent NPR poll, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health revealed that 55 percent of white Americans believe that they are being discriminated against due to the color of their skin. Given that the clear majority of all wealth and power still…
I realize that many people think I’m ungrateful, or that I'm part of an effort to ruin Maine for white people. As I urge Maine to do and be better on sensitive and important issues (as I do also for people and organizations for which I have affection and connection — a perfectly natural and …