The decision last week by those members of the Legislature to not support Penobscot Nation Representative Donna Loring’s bill to allow a handful of slot machines on Indian Island defies logic and, sorrowfully, smacks of racism. If allowed, the action would merely have allowed the Penobscot Nation to more fairly compete with the monstrosity that is the major gambling enterprise on Main Street in Bangor called Hollywood Slots. Whatever happened to the concept of “free enterprise”?

As the author of a book on Penobscot legend Louis Sockalexis, the first American Indian to play major league baseball, I know that even though American Indians were allowed to play baseball in its earliest days (while other people of color were definitely not allowed to play), they were the victims of a more subtle form of racism, a more “quiet” but equally insidious form of racism. Are we seeing that kind of racism, here in Maine, right now, again?

We have gambling in every convenience store and supermarket in the state of Maine; we have gambling in churches and gambling on The Cat and gambling at racetracks; we have half the West Side of the downtown area Bangor being ripped up for a gambling empire (even as the gambling empire executives there develop lengthy lists of people who must be protected from themselves and placed on alert lists for the authorities for their out-of-control addictions); and we have Internet gambling online where students (plus God only knows how many private citizens) on every campus in this state are developing their addictions. Yet, here come the governor, the Maine Legislature and Dennis Bailey and his hypocrite crowd, time and again, to “save” us all from tribal gaming! Have we lost all sense of perspective?

This is evil beyond words, beyond actions. This is the face of racism, clear and simple.

Ed Rice

Orono