By Marisol Rivera
The flood of Somalian refugees into Lewiston, Maine, took the city’s citizens by surprise. For some, the extreme differences of their new neighbors, the financial dependency they were in need of, and the immigrants’ values, beliefs and culture, created responses of tension and disunity in Maines’ citizens and the community. In a matter of months, the town morphed into a laboratory for what happens when culture suddenly shifts, in Maine with a population that is 94% white. Tabitha Beauchesne, a previous student at Lewiston High School, grew up in a struggling family in housing projects downtown. While her new classmates didn’t have financial stability, Tabitha and her family did not either. It felt to her now and still feels to her that the refugees received more help than her own family as U.S. citizens. While she doesn’t consider herself a racist, Beauchesne acknowledges that race and religion play a role in the sense that the refugees overwhelmed her community. The African-Muslims stand out far more than her own French-Canadian ancestors when they arrived, the Somalian refugees are easily distinguished as the majority of them wear hijabs and speak little English. The perception of being inundated by a culture so drastically different than her own, ingrained in her a deep sense of injustice. She now is a stay-at-home mother of two and has moved out of Lewiston to move to another school district, she believes the refugee students monopolize the teacher’s attention, not dedicating time and energy into students like her own children. While she was once an Obama supporter, she now cheers Trump’s efforts to curb the flow of refugees in the U.S., Beauchesne hopes the Trump Administration will create a tax system that funnels less of her money to aiding those from other countries. In the beginning of the immigration influx, in 2002, Lewiston handed out about $343,000 in General Assistance funds. According to city records, the funds were almost split evenly between native-born Mainers and refugees. But largely unfounded rumors began to spread that refugees were given free cars and apartments, locals began demanding answers from City Hall. Mayor Laurier T. Raymond Jr., then penned an open letter to the Somali community, that they divert friends and family away from Lewiston. As he describes the city as “maxed-out financially, physically and emotionally.”
The letter plunged the city into a global political cauldron. Deputy city administrator, Phil Nadeau, expressed that was the moment tides seemed to change, even more immigrants came in. Somali refugees gave way to those seeking asylum, from Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, a dozen nations in all. According to a tally by the Immigrant Resource Center of Maine, the immigrant population exploded from a handful of families to more than 7,000 people. Joyce Badeau lives just outside Livermore Falls, though she has little interaction with the immigrants, her political views have been shifted because of their impact. She believes our country is becoming poor because the country is being overloaded with those looking for refuge. Badeau has watched the paper mills close down and her neighbors losing good-paying jobs. She fears that someone who wants to hurt Americans can easily slip through the porous borders. “Because they’re leaving one country of problems and coming into another country of problems,” she said.
Citizens of Lewiston had responses to the immigration in accordance with their nature, often with curiosity and suspicion, although for some of Maine’s citizens, their new neighbors sparked attitudes of hostility. Fathiya Hussein, a 15-year-old at Edward Little Highschool had become unphased by classmates using the n-word. Although Hussein, who immigrated to Maine from Kenya at the age of 2, had grown accustomed to being called out for her differences by her peers, she never expected the racial slur to be used by someone she considered a friend. In February 2018, the friend’s use of the derogatory term led to an angry confrontation in the school hallway between the two students, Fathiya claimed her classmate tripped her and tried to strike her face, touching Hussein’s hijab in the process. When the students fell to the floor hitting one another, they both got a five day in-school suspension, but a year and a half later, Hussein still has trouble accepting that both her and her classmate got the same punishment. She felt it unjust that school administrators didn’t even bother to look into the reason the fight was instigated.
According to several parents, similar racial incidents captured in videos, including in classroom taunts that have occasionally ended in fights, have become commonplace at Edward Little. Of 14 immigrant students asked, 8 have experienced racism directly, many of them say it has gone unchecked and festered within the nearly 1,000-person student body. Some Somali students describe classmates jeering “build the wall!”, “ban Muslims”, “boom boom” or “Allahu akbar” as they walked through hallways. Administrators and students believe there’s been an increase since the election of Trump two and a half years ago. “Racial discrimination is often worst in those schools that have experienced the most recent and rapid changes in student demographics,” says Emma LeBlanc, a senior researcher at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. The racial tension is most acute in cities where historically white schools are becoming less white and more diverse, at Edward Little the number of students of color has grown largely due to immigrants from Somalia, Iraq, and other countries. Still, students of color only make up 14% of the student body.
Brandon Baldwin directs a civil rights team project at the Maine’s attorney general office, he’s received more reports of racism in Maine schools during the 2018-2019 school year, than during any of his 12 years in the position. In most cases, “the targeted youth have been black”, added Baldwin. Some citizens of Maine feel threatened by the “increased visibility and voice of people of color and immigrants,” Baldwin says. “This has led to an increase in racist and xenophobic rhetoric.” The conflicts that erupted between students after the 2016 election felt like a “punch in the gut,” said Edward Little’s principal, Scott Annear, pushing racial tension to its worst point since the arrival of its first Somali refugees two decades ago
References:
Elsen-Rooney, Mike, and Ashley Okwuosa. “Immigrant Students Learn Hard Lessons about Racism at a Historically White High School in Maine – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.com, The Boston Globe, 14 Aug. 2019, www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2019/08/14/immigrant-students-learn-hard-lessons-about-racism-historically-white-high-school-maine/FdnY3NDbw2OoTF8sT5SGtL/story.html.
Galofaro, Claire. “How a Community Changed by Refugees Came to Embrace Trump.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 19 Apr. 2017, apnews.com/7f2b534b80674596875980b9b6e701c9/How-a-community-changed-by-refugees-came-to-embrace-Trump.