A few days ago, I was scrolling on Facebook and came across a horrific and racist caricature of a wonderful public servant, Deqa Dhalac. The caricature was being circulated by Maine gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles, who decided to dig up an old video of now-state Rep. Dhalac when she became the first Somali-American mayor in the United States after being elected to serve as mayor South Portland, Maine. Charles took the video out of context and decided to stoke the fears of racism and xenophobia as part of his campaign strategy.
Videos and words taken out of context are nothing new, but Charles decided that when Dhalac referenced her home country of Somalia, that somehow as a naturalized citizen and elected official she was not American enough to his standards. The irony of course being that aside from Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans or the direct descendants of enslaved Africans, everyone else here is either an immigrant or the descendants of immigrants.
Of course, in the United States, whiteness has always decided who gets to be a
“proper” American and generally your legitimacy to being a good ole ‘Murican is based on your proximity to whiteness—or if you will be allowed entry into whiteness. Remember, the Irish and Italians weren’t originally considered white when they first came to the United States, though they were eventually allowed to morph into white, thus becoming proper Americans in the eyes of whiteness.
Robert Bruce Charles, who goes by the moniker Bobby Charles, is a lawyer and Republican political figure, according to Wikipedia, who served as assistant secretary of state at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement under George W. Bush. Judging from his campaign website and other tidbits I have come across, he is an old white guy who wants to bring America back to the past along with it bring the state of Maine back to its old “glory days” of when the state was 97% white instead of the 91% white that it is now.
Charles is playing in the tradition of other Maine GOP folks I have seen in my 23 years here, who use demographic shifts to stoke the flames and fire up their base. I saw it in the LePage years, when then-Gov. Paul LePage regularly made the national news for talking about the imaginary drug dealers of color who were coming into Maine to destroy the pure Maine people and deflower the Maine women. Or in 2012, when he was adamant that busloads of Black folks had been bussed into Maine to vote—that was the year that, thanks to his outrageous claims, yours truly got national recognition for refuting his asinine allegations.
In the years since I have moved here, I have watched politicians scapegoat recent arrivals who have generally been Black immigrants from African nations. In fact, in the fall of my first year in Maine back in 2002, then-Lewiston Mayor Laurier T. Raymond wrote an open letter to Somalis in the city asking them to stop coming to his town because the city was overwhelmed due to their arrival. This was amidst rumors amongst white folks that the new arrivals were getting free cars, grants, groceries, and even air conditioners. None of which was true. However, the mayor’s open letter made it to the national news and brought in a tide of regressive racists supporting the mayor’s stance
The irony, of course, being that a hundred years previously when the French Canadians started to arrive in Maine, they were also met with bigotry and the KKK but eventually were allowed to settle in and become Mainers.
Fast forward to the current day and Lewiston apparently has become a hot but accessible real estate market in the state, and many of those same people that the former mayor maligned in 2002 have created businesses and become a vital part of the community fabric.
However, there are those who still refuse to see the humanity of those they deem different than them and in the modern day era of social media and a country immersed in fascism with an openly racist administration and a reality TV show president who lives and governs on social media, the attacks on Dhalac risk receiving an amplification that wasn’t possible even a decade ago. We already saw it earlier this year in Maine, when state Rep. Laurel Libby decided to bully teenage transgender athletes and, while she was censured for her immature and hateful actions by the Maine House, she was also rewarded by the administration in D.C. with attention that included rubbing shoulders with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Looking at Charles’ background, I suspect he is hoping for a Libby-style win, whereby creating vile racist and xenophobic caricatures of Deqato to circulate in his Facebook stories will catch the attention of 47 and crew. As it is, local right-wing rag, The Maine Wire, is already giving him plenty attention and I know from personal experience with that publication—and being targeted with attention from them—regardless of whether they are targeting you or lifting you up, it tends to leads to national coverage.
Already in the last week, right wing activist and media personality Charlie Kirk was in Maine speaking and talked about issues in Maine, including our “problems” with mass migration. He spoke about recently driving through Lewiston and South Portland and how they are unrecognizable from 10 to 20 years ago and he talked about how people in Maine shouldn’t have the values of Mogadishu. A clear reference to Deqa, without using her name.
I am quite curious, though, how Kirk knows anything about what Maine looked like 20 years ago, since he was a 12-year-old kid back then, who grew up in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb of my hometown of Chicago. In fact, Charlie was born a year after my eldest child, in 1993 and raised in Arlington Heights, and nothing in his publicly available bio alludes to any connection to Maine. I mean it’s possible he did see Maine as a kid, but I hardly doubt a child would remember that level of detail.
Here’s the thing: In 2002, the year that I moved to Maine, Maine was 97% white, and according to the most recent census, Maine is now 91% white and is still holding its place among the top three of whitest states in the nation, which also includes Vermont and New Hampshire. Maine has the distinct honor of being the oldest state in the union; we are a geographically large and sparsely populated state and what migration has occurred has frankly been needed.
Over the last two decades, we have seen people arrive here who have worked tirelessly to become Mainers and Deqa personifies that. From her time on the South Portland City Council to becoming the first Somali-American mayor in the country to her current position in the Maine legislature. Aside from her day job and family, she exemplifies the spirit of Maine and doesn’t deserve to be attacked by a guy clinging to hate as a brand.
Maine’s Black community is a small one, and Deqa and I have crossed paths on occasion; we share a number of friends and colleagues in common. I also know as a Black public figure and former elected official in this state that there are stressors that come with being in the public eye because, while there are many who embrace a change in Maine, there are still too many who don’t—and, well, I know what the attacks feel like. I know what it is like to be written about unfairly and negatively, which is what prompted me to write this.
Deqa, you are loved and beloved. I, like many others, are holding you up and celebrating you and the work you do for our beloved state. You are the embodiment of Maine, and we are so grateful for you and your hard work. Give a shout if there is anything I can do or write and keep that crown on your head, sis.
As for those who seek to stoke the flames of racism, bigotry, and xenophobia, I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry that you are so stunted that you think you can only succeed by clinging to your white skin as proof somehow of your superiority. That you lack the ability to embrace a changing world and are stuck pining away for a world that has gone with the wind.
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Image (Deqa Dhalac posing for a headshot at the offices of Cross Cultural Community Services in 2024) is by Edward1983, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
