"Black Lives Matter" in Rural Upstate New York.

So yesterday my partner Janet and I drove an hour plus west of where we live in the Catskill Mountains to a "Black Lives Matter" rally held in the village of Delhi, in Delaware County NY. Usually we head a half hour east for protests, to Kingston NY; a small multi-racial city along the Hudson River. This time however we opted for the hopefully lower Covid-19 exposure risk that a smaller town might provide us with, since we are both in a high risk age group.

The part of western Ulster County where we live is overwhelmingly white. Delaware County is the same, so we expected the rally to be predominantly white, and it was. 97% Caucasian would be my guess. Even whiter than we expected but not that surprising. Because the Delhi area, although quite rural, is within three hours drive of NYC, we knew that enough assorted artists and progressives lived close enough nearby that a small crowd could be counted on to show up. We figured maybe 75 like minded protesters would be in attendance. Instead there were over 500. People of every age group were there; Youth, Families with Children, and Elders all in abundance. Lots of hand made signs enthusiastically hoisted. When the rally part of the even ended the crowd fanned out to stand on Main Street, standing six feet apart for blocks, hollering and hooting frequently when cars drove by rhythmically blasting their horns

Let me tell you a little about Delhi. Delhi is a village with a population just north of 3,000. The Township of the same name that it is located in has a population just north of 5,000. There are no nearby major population centers. In 2018 the Republican Candidate for Delhi Town Supervisor won over 98% of the vote and was unopposed by any Democrat. OK, that happens sometimes on the local level when an incumbent from one party is viewed as highly capable. Let's look a little larger then. The Village of Delhi is the County Seat for Delaware County. In 2018 the quite conservative Republican Party candidate for Governor won Delaware County by 9,934 votes to Democratic incumbent Governor Andrew Cuomo's 5,796 votes. By way of reference Cuomo was reelected Governor of New York that year with 59.6% of the statewide vote.

You know the so called "Silent Majority" that Tea Party types always love to reference? You can find them in Delaware County. I would never say that the majority of White America is free of the stain of racism. Far too much prejudice, both unconscious and semi-conscious, is still embedded in White communities to ever make that claim. But it increasingly is starting to seem that the "Silent Majority" of Americans, our White citizens included, now strongly oppose overt and fully conscious racism, and are beginning to speak up against it. And that, at the very least, is a foundation we can build on as we work to eradicate America's original sin.