Today’s Groton presents true racial picture
In our current racially charged atmosphere, the term “white fragility” has come into vogue to denote a white person’s discomfort and defensiveness when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice.
Certainly, we’ve all seen recent horrific examples of police-instigated racial intolerance, which have spurred a nationwide call for equity and accountability.
The vast majority of Americans have condemned these violent – often lethal – acts, and want to see steps taken to prevent similar incidents in the future.
But some social-justice warriors, playing on that white fragility, want to assign that collective guilt for racist acts – no matter when or if they occurred – on people and communities that strive to respect individuals of every race, religion or background.
That’s the situation the bucolic town of Groton – home to two prestigious prep schools – recently experienced.
The town felt these accusations of past racist behavior required a formal rejection of those actual or alleged practices.
Article 1 on Groton’s recent Town Meeting warrant asked that the town “wholeheartedly” reject the designation as a “sundown town” and that it “welcomes people of all race(s).”
Sundown town refers to the term used for American communities in the early 20th century that were allwhite and banned black people from entering city limits after dark.
This issue first caught the attention of the town’s newly formed Groton Diversity
Task Force back in August, with member Josh Degen noting, apparently without attribution, that Groton is one of 10 communities in the state that has yet to rescind its “sundown” status.
Before Town Meeting passed the article unanimously, Degen, a longtime member of the select board, and fellow task force member Tim Manugian clarified Degen’s previous pronouncement, indicating that the article is meant to remove any label or association with the term “sundown town” Groton has or may have had in the past.
Town Meeting also voted to amend the article to include that the town’s rejection of the term applies “if such designation ever applied” to the town.
Manugian brought up both the good and bad of Groton’s past, noting how there was Ku Klux Klan activity recorded in Groton in the 1920s and how Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there in 1963.
“If there is a chance that Groton has ever participated in these kind of things, why would we not take the time now and make it clear that we are striking that legacy from the record and we do not and will not participate in that sort of thing moving forward? Manugian asked.
A Boston Globe article on Groton’s reckoning with its supposed racist past stated that an online database created by author and sociologist James Loewen listed Groton as one of 17 possible, though unconfirmed, “sundown towns” that once existed in Massachusetts.
The Globe account, which the paper deemed important and timely enough to display on its front page, also indicated that not one person its reporter interviewed actually knew if Groton was, in fact, a sundown town.
Yet the story pointed out that Groton remains more than 90% white, which, like many American suburbs, the paper surmised, may not be an accident. If Groton was looking for some sort of selfadministered general racism absolution, then we presume that Town Meeting article accomplished that purpose.
However, apologizing for events that either occurred a century ago or not at all does nothing to promote racial harmony, a cause for which we believe Groton — and virtually every other community – strives.