Residents Urged To Get Active In Addressing Racism

ORLEANS – Look beyond the sandy beaches, cedar clapboard homes and the hustle and bustle of summer tourism, and you might find evidence of the harsher, if often less visible, realities of life on Cape Cod, especially for people of color.

It exists inside the region’s schools and on school buses. It presents itself in the workplace, at sporting events and in the local housing market. It exists in regional access to healthcare and local policing.

In one specific instance, Leslie Dominguez-Santos, human rights coordinator for Barnstable County, recalled to those in attendance of a community discussion at the Federated Church of Orleans Sunday an incident in which a child was followed and harassed with racial slurs while out trick or treating on his own for the first time.

“Does racism exist on Cape Cod? Yes. Yes it does,” she said.

As part of her job, Domingez-Santos receives “intakes” of reported human rights violations that occur on Cape. The majority of those intakes are related to race, she said. This summer, all of the intakes she’s received have involved a report of a “racial bias incident.”

Dominguez-Santos joined Orleans Police Chief Scott MacDonald, Cape and Islands District Attorney Rob Galibois and Leo Blandford, director of health equity and community impact for Outer Cape Health Services, on a panel held to discuss the issue of racism on the Cape, and what local and regional agencies are doing to proactively address the problem.

The community discussion was hosted by the church’s Interfaith Justice Committee and Am HaYam Cape Cod Havurah. Jeff Spalter, who moderated the panel conversation, said organizers put together the panel to focus the discussion around those in the community in positions of leadership.

“Our black and brown friends and colleagues have grown a bit weary of carrying the ball to address racism,” he said. “And despite the work that we’ve done and the sharing and teaching work that they’ve done, they still don’t see an impact on their daily lives.”

Dominguez-Santos said racism on the Cape is impacting everyone from adults to elementary-aged children. In schools, she said racial taunting is a “daily occurrence” for some students. In other cases, “differential” treatment from school officials toward students of color results in unequal punishment for students of different races.

“The problem kids are all students of color, where they get in trouble because they drop their pencil or they spill their milk, but their white counterparts do not,” she said.

Learning To Listen

The Orleans Police Department keeps “robust” records, MacDonald said, including information on all motor vehicle stops conducted by the department annually. That data is used to help assess the department’s performance and that of its individual officers.

“It’s important that we’re constantly monitoring the actions of our officers,” he said.

MacDonald said a 2004 study conducted through Northeastern University found that 92 percent of motor vehicle operators in Orleans are white. That figure serves as a “benchmark” for police to assess whether there is anything unusual about the stops that are being conducted in town, he said.

But MacDonald said that there is still room for police to improve upon their existing procedures. In recent years, he and other police chiefs on the Lower and Outer Cape have engaged in regular conversations with members of the MLK Action Team. The meetings have allowed police a better understanding of how their work impacts and is perceived by people of color in the region.

“Boy did I learn a lot,” he said.

While he admits he initially came into the meetings with the mindset of defending police, MacDonald said a prodcutive back-and-forth has developed between the chiefs and the action team members.

“Instead of being defensive, I listened,” he said. “I listened to the stories.”

MacDonald said the listening needs to work both ways, however. While police need to be more mindful of how some of their policies and procedures might impact some segments of their communities, he said there needs to be a willingness from the public to also understand the stresses and dangers that routinely come with police work.

Troubling Data

Blandford said healthcare statistics and data also show evidence of how racism exists on the Cape. Citing data from the Centers for Disease Control, he said that Black and Brown persons on the Cape die at a higher and faster rate than White/non-Hispanic people on Cape Cod. Specifically, Wampanoag tribal members and people of Indigenous descent, the smallest population of people on the Cape by percentage, are dying faster than any other population in the region, he said.

The various inequities that impact life for people of color on the Cape collectively can have an adverse impact on people’s health, Blandford said.

“What we are seeing more and more is that if somebody has stress around housing, if somebody has stress because they don’t have transportation to get to school or get to work, if they don’t have access to healthy foods and all these things that contribute to health, then it’s contributing negatively toward their health,” he said.

Outer Cape Health Services is working with state and local agencies to find a way to “maneuver” through data such as that presented by the CDC. He said effective solutions for combating racism need to come from the individual, community-wide and state and federal levels.

D.A. Pushing For More Funding

Galibois has been faced with a number of cases and incidents involving race in his 19 months in office, from the alleged attempted drowning of a Black teen at Chatham’s Goose Pond last July to racial signs that were found posted to telephone poles in Oak Bluffs.

But those are just some of the more “high profile” cases his office has dealt with, he said. The problem goes much deeper, he said, including into the schools.

“In my mind, we have a disproportionate amount of hate incidents in our schools across the district,” he said.

Galibois is working to boost his office’s annual budget to be in line with other districts of equal size in other parts of the state. The Northwestern District in Western Massachusetts, he said, has $3.2 million more to work with than he does on the Cape and Islands, this despite having approximately the same year-round populations.

That extra money could be used to hire licensed social workers to specifically work with school administrators, he said. And with the creation of the new position of community outreach coordinator, he hopes to create a “coalition” of citizen community groups in each of the Cape’s 15 towns.

“This allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of what’s going on in any particular community and allows us to delve deeply into each community as I promised that I would do,” he said.

Is Racism On The Rise?

Panelists also took questions from those in attendance of the discussion in person and online. One person asked if there is any evidence to indicate whether or not incidents of racism locally are trending upward.

MacDonald said police have not seen any data to indicate that such incidents are on the rise. Dominguez-Santos also said she didn’t have the data to say if incidents are increasing, but said it’s possible that more people are coming forward and sharing their experiences.

“Are there more incidents happening or are more people willing to speak up? We don’t know.”

Talking about racism is an important step in moving toward a solution, Blandford said, but stressed that there needs to be a willingness from people to have those hard, uncomfortable conversations.

“I think talking about race causes discomfort, and we as a culture don’t like discomfort,” he said. “We push it away.”

But some of those tackling those hard conversations head on are the younger people in the community, Dominguez-Santos said. She said discussions are routinely being had by students on social media, and older residents would be wise to meet them where they’re at.

“They’re talking about the hard stuff,” she said. “There are a lot of conversations happening about racism online. But you have to enter their space.”

A Call To Action

The healthy attendance Sunday afternoon was seen by some as a positive indicator that there is a willingness to address the problem of racism head-on. But Dominguez-Santos was forceful in stressing that the work cannot stop there.

“Please do not walk out of this church and pat yourself on the back for attending a racial justice talk and checking your ‘Oh yes, I care’ box. Instead, ask yourself ‘How can I do better? What can I do? How can I educate myself more? How can I make a difference?”

Lynne Rhodes, president of the Cape Cod chapter of the NAACP, said following the discussion that active engagement from the broader community beyond those most directly impacted by racism is needed.

“Where we have an issue is I can’t go into your house and tell you how to run it,” she said. “People who look like you, you’re more willing to hear feedback from. That’s what we need. My voice isn’t listened to. My voice is marginalized.”

Spalter said for attendees, the majority of whom were white, there is the option of whether or not to get involved in pursuit of a solution. But others in the community don’t have that choice, he said.

“For me, this is an example of where the term ‘privilege’ kicks in,” he said. “Because all of us in the white community can decide whether or not we want to do more, or do anything, to address racism or racial inequality.”

Email Ryan Bray at ryan@capecodchronicle.com