In Stowe, panel discusses diversity, awareness, inclusivity

Said the Rev. Rick Swanson, rector of St. John’s in the Mountains Episcopal Church, “We in the coalition felt it a moral imperative in holding positive conversations surround diversity.”

Moderator Amy Noyes, a Vermont Public Radio staffer who lives in Wolcott, began the discussion with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s letter from the Birmingham jail in 1963: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Panelists were asked about experiences in their youth, and how those experiences shaped who they are today.

Jennifer Echarte, a first-generation Cuban-American and special educator at Stowe Middle school, remembers growing up in Miami and playing baseball with her grandfather, who “trained with me as if I were a boy. He always used to say that in this country, a woman can do whatever a man can do. Most Cuban women were raised to be mothers and stay at home.”

Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux recalls moving to Vermont as a young child in a French Canadian family, and experiencing some discrimination before he could speak English in school. “After that,” he said, “I would get embarrassed when my mother would speak French to me in public.”

Growing up in New Jersey, panelist Marlena Tucker-Fishman “felt like that there was more of an embrace of the different cultures in the neighborhood,” where children were offered a window into a different way of life by visiting a friend’s house.

The panelists shed light on how the term diversity can be present in different forms.

For Francine Del Colle, who grew up in Lynn, Mass., “there was a diversity in nationality, not necessarily race.” For her, the experience of discrimination came later in life when she decided to transition to being female. “After coming out as trans, out of a community of nearly 60 people who I considered friends, only one person has remained close.”

After leaving Lynn to move to Vermont, Del Colle said she had to re-examine the place where she grew up. “I came to realize that I was brought up as a bigot. People are very narrow-minded in Lynn.”

Roger Murphy, a teacher at Stowe High School, noted that while there is an increased diversity of ethnicity in Stowe, there is lack of socioeconomic diversity, which affects how the student body is perceived by other schools, and how they respond to other students of different communities.

Former Pastor Pat Thompson is a native Vermonter who grew up within the Methodist Church. Her disagreement with the church’s active role in segregation was underlined by her belief that a good Christian always followed the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. In her career as a pastor, Thompson “remembered that ‘aha’ moment in realizing that all of the teachings were from a white male perspective. Ever since, I have tried to change that with researching ethnic history.”

Thompson plays an active role with the Vermont African-American History Trail by providing her research of George S. Brown, an African American who founded the Wolcott Methodist Church. Her work helps form a curriculum for fifth-graders to learn about the history of African-Americans in the state of Vermont.

“At first, my family questioned why I would want to live in Vermont,” said Tucker-Fishman, who is African-American. “Vermont is culturally diverse, not necessarily ethnically.”

An audience member raising biracial children asked Tucker-Fishman how she addresses the issue of race when talking with her children about what their peers might say to them.

“I tell them that sometimes they have to step into the role of educator,” she replied, “and to try to understand, and help others understand, where the questions are coming from. I tell them you have to remember to question the questions.”

Tucker-Fishman was also asked if she had experienced any racial profiling in Vermont. “I was pulled over once for passing a car on a stretch of road where it was OK to pass,” she said. “I also used to carpool with a friend from Senegal, and was pulled over by the same cop every time when we were driving from Waterbury to Montpelier.”

When asked where law enforcement stands on racial profiling, Sheriff Marcoux responded, “There is a fair and impartial policing commission in Royalton. Vermont law enforcement is talking about racial profiling and what we can do. I am on that commission, and attend forums.

“We also have new race data collection, where officers are asked to write about what their perception was of the person they pulled over.”

Marcoux noted that “current data shows Latinos are being pulled over more often than other ethnicities.” He added that there’s an active effort actively seeking to fill open positions in the police force with people of different ethnicities.

How did the Rev. Swanson imagine the outcome of the panel discussion?

“My hope for the day was that we would bring awareness that we are and have a large population of individuals and families who are not the typical expected Stowe family, who are both welcome and face some challenges,” he said.