Maine Gov. Paul LePage's confusing remarks on racial profiling

[Matthew Cline]

Quoting from this article:

Earlier this week, he said he keeps a binder with mugshots of all the drug dealers arrested in Maine, and he claimed that 90 percent of the people in that binder were black or Hispanic.

...

On Friday, LePage first denied that Maine police officers were racially profiling people ...

...

“Look, a bad guy is a bad guy, I don’t care what color it 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, don’t you?” he said. “You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy. And the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority right now coming in are people of color or people of Hispanic origin. I can’t help that. I just can’t help it. Those are the facts.”

So, from the context, I'd take "war" to be the "War on Drugs", "enemies" to be "drug dealers" and "shoot" to be "arrest". But using that metaphorical framework, his remarks about "uniforms" would be racial profiling... which he claims the police don't do.

 

[marplots]

I wonder what percentage of those in the binder are men. Because if I were a cop looking for drug dealers I'd go after males.

 

[logger]

I wonder what percentage of those in the binder are men. Because if I were a cop looking for drug dealers I'd go after males.

Agreed but there has to be some racial profiling somewhere, pretty please.

 

[marplots]

Agreed but there has to be some racial profiling somewhere, pretty please.

Is gang tat a race? I think it might be culturally linked and hereditary...

 

[Madalch]

Agreed but there has to be some racial profiling somewhere, pretty please.

If he's decided that 90% of drug dealers are black or Hispanic, and sends the cops after blacks and Hispanics because of that, that's the textbook definition of racial profiling.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Be real easy to prove this. I'm sure Judicial Watch will be filing suit to see the binders he's been viewing. 90% are black or Hispanic. He can tell by looking at them? Or he's got race/origin statistics?

This should be very easy to prove. Just show us the binder. No, not the summary. We want to see the long form. I'm sure the Tea Party, Judicial Watch and the AP Crackerjack Investigation Unit will be right on it.

This, of course, is Lying Paul LePage, noted bigot and Tea Party darling, the guy who says out-of-state dark-skinned drug dealers go up to Maine to impregnate their white women folk. He may have confused his casual reading, Mandingo, with his government reports.

 

[shemp]

The best thing that Paul LePage could do for the people of Maine would be to affix a mast and sail to his corpulent torso, sail himself far out to sea, and scuttle himself.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Racists don't always know what a racist they are. That explains LePage.

 

[Stacko]

Racists don't always know what a racist they are. That explains LePage.

That's a generous position to take on a man that basically said people of color are the enemy that should be shot. His racism is cartoonish in it's overtness.

 

[catsmate]

The governor also left a charming voicemail for a Democrat state Representative, Drew Gattine, calling him a
"snot Nosed Little Runt" and saying that he'd "spent my life helping black people and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist **********".

 

[Stacko]

The governor also left a charming voicemail for a Democrat state Representative, Drew Gattine, calling him a
"snot Nosed Little Runt" and saying that he'd "spent my life helping black people and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist **********".

He's now whining about Gattine making the recording public even though he literally said, "I want you to record this and make it public."

 

[Craig4]

I wonder what percentage of those in the binder are men. Because if I were a cop looking for drug dealers I'd go after males.

Then you'd miss out on arresting a lot of drug dealers. I arrested all kinds of people for smuggling drugs. All the major genders were represented. Lot's of white people too.

 

[aleCcowaN]

If we are talking of this governor



that's not the worst thing he's said.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Be real easy to prove this. I'm sure Judicial Watch will be filing suit to see the binders he's been viewing. 90% are black or Hispanic. He can tell by looking at them? Or he's got race/origin statistics?

This BBC article contains the following bit of information:

The Portland Press Herald published FBI statistics which show that 1,211 people were arrested on charges of drug sales or manufacturing in Maine in 2014. Of those, 170 - 14.1% - were black, and almost all the rest were white.

 

[Babbylonian]

This BBC article contains the following bit of information:

Wait, wait, wait. You mean to say that most of the drug crimes in Maine are committed by white people? I am shocked. Only 94+% of the population is white!

Seriously, though, it's a pretty awesome feat to become that racist in a state with so few non-white folks living in it.

 

[Matthew Cline]

That's a generous position to take on a man that basically said people of color are the enemy that should be shot. His racism is cartoonish in it's overtness.

To be fair, he was using "shoot" as a metaphor for "arrest", since "war" was a metaphor for "war on drugs" and "enemies" for "drug dealers".

 

[fuelair]

He's now whining about Gattine making the recording public even though he literally said, "I want you to record this and make it public."

Racist and a liar!!! Trump warning!!!!!

 

[Mumbles]

Okay, the guy has been a racist and a bit irrational ever since he's appeared on the national stage. As far as I care, he was never an acceptable governor.

Um...is he okay?

I don't remember him leaving threatening voicemails, calling for people of other skin colors "the enemy" to be shot, and so on.

He seems to getting a bit up there in years, are we sure he isn't being hit by dementia or something?

 

[TragicMonkey]

When my grandpa lost the plot he went to live in a special home, we didn't let him be governor of a state. Not even one of the silly states like Maine.

 

[fuelair]

As Maine goes, so goes the Nation!!!




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Maine_goes,_so_goes_the_nation