Yep. There certainly is real racism is Maine, like a lot of the right-wing rhetoric your hear about Somalians. And every once in a while some fucked up story will make the headlines, like the time a guy in lewiston thought he was being funny when he threw a severed pigs head into the open door of a mosque a few years ago. But even at it's worst, it's nothing like racism you see in other parts of the country. People aren't immediately dismissed as readily as in other places because of their skin color or culture.

I have family in the south and visiting them really opened my eyes about how serious racism really is. I didn't think it was really still a problem any more before then. I don't mean to dismiss it outright but racism in Maine seems... almost innocent in comparison to racism elsewhere. It's, like, mostly your grandmother saying "wow I cant believe that black woman is a lawyer" than it is black women being less likely to be hired by a firm because of her race. Like, say a black man and a man from Massachusetts were both applying for a delivery job where they had to drive. Assuming they had the same qualifications and experience, the guy from Mass would be far more likely to be discriminated against than the black guy. Not even joking.

I think it has a lot to do with poverty in Maine. In other parts of the country, the majority of blacks live in poverty, but Maine, being 95% white, has a lot of poor white people so we don't naturally associate black people with the types of things you see in poverty-stricken areas. We're a pretty chill state compared to other places and we don't as readily judge people based on what they look like, unless some action of theirs gives us reason to judge them.