The high rate of black incarceration in Vermont points more to the fact that there are hardly any black people in Vermont than that Vermont is racist. I wonder how many incarcerated blacks in Vermont were Vermont residents at the time of arrest, or miscreants from MA and NY.

Yup. This is a reckoning fifty years in the making. Every policymaker, with the exception of Volcker in raising rates in '82 and Clinton and Gingrich managing budget surpluses , has pursued policies that just kick the can down the road.