The bit was set at a community center meeting of the League of the South. During the meeting, a group member named Jim, played by Beck Bennett, bemoans a perceived lack of progress since the Unite the Right Rally in August 2017, when thousands of white supremacists marched on Charlottesville, Va.
Jim’s description rings familiar to Driver’s character, who raises hand and says, “Yeah, I know that place. That sounds like Vermont.”
After a brief back and forth, Jim explains his idea further. “I’m sorry, but you don’t seem to understand,” he says. “What I’m proposing is a whole new society going back to a time when a white man can take things that he grew from the ground and trade them with another white man who grew things from the ground.”
“Yeah,” says Driver. “That’s a farmers market and they’re all over Vermont.”
The bit continues as the white supremacist group excitedly riffs on all things Vermont-y: Subarus, dogs in bandanas, covered bridges, spiced apple compote, old farmhouses.
Then, a black security guard named William, played by Chris Redd, enters to inform the group to wrap up its “little Confederate pity party” and clear out for an A.A. meeting.
“William,” asks Jim. “Have you ever been to Vermont?”
“Vermont?” William replies. “Why would I want to go there? There’s no hip-hop on the radio, people to pay to run around in corn mazes and there’s not a black face for miles. Hell no.”
Watch the entire sketch below.
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If they think there are no immigrants or minorities in Vermont, they’ve obviously never been to Winooski. They’re a dime a dozen.
The cast better do some better research
I guess SNL is too out of touch to be aware of the diversity in Burlington. Silly skit. Lame.
I didn’t think that the skit reflected badly on Vermont so much as it did on the Southern white rights group’s mentality. I think that was their goal in doing it.
Not surprised about the several defensive comments.
There are *some* people of color in Burlington and surrounding counties, most of whom came here not by choice and to escape refugee camps. Very few are elected to public office or hired for prominent positions in the community/city departments. And if you go to Church Street or the Winooski Circ, outside of a handful of restaurants youd have no idea that Vermont was anything but 99% white. We are inclusive in the sense that most of us wont be your neighbor but will brag about letting you live in our communities; skin-deep diversity.
Wake up yall. Vermont is a paradise if youre white and wealthy and kind of mediocre for everyone else. But Im sure our high POC prison population and high levels of over-policing POC is entirely a coincidence.
A number of my Vermont friends asked if I currently wrote for SNL. I do not, but I found the skit to be -well, like a lot of humor- laced with locally grown truth… The Southern -based backdrop has led a number of commenters to launch into the “racism is just in the bad old South ” riff I heard more than once in the 802. No one can tell me that there arent people in Vt ( and elsewhere, sure) who moved there to get away from melanin matters . Nor can one deny that the racism which exists is deeply rooted…. It is the most formidable bigotry I have ever seen. In part because it is coupled with a fervent denial .
After reading thru these comments, I felt I had to weigh in. It was an SNL SKIT!!! I thought it was hilarious and in no way detrimental to VT. We do have diversity, we do have immigrants, we do have farmers’ markets. No we do not have a large diverse population. Hell we don’t HAVE a large population. People live where they can afford to live, and that is one of the biggest problems in our little state. It is twice as hard to afford heat, homes, food etc., in our isolated northern clime. That’s geography-not racism. Get a sense of humor people.
There is no historical reason for there to be a large proportion of colored people in Northern New England. Is this surprising? There was no plantation system, the colonists were from Northern European countries (England and France), and there are low levels of sunlight for 6 months per year (evolutionary biology). There’s no logical reason to be ashamed of this or to try to fix it. Trying to fix it would be worse, because dividing people into skin color groups is … RACIST (what a revelation, eh?). There’s nothing to fix except the racist view that diversity means nothing more than skin color.
Obviously the writers of this skit have never been to Burlington, Vermont or it’s sister communities. We (Vermont) may be one of the whitest States in the country, but we do have a large immigrant population, I have come to see many people of varying nationalites. Sudanese, Congolese, Vietnamese, Cote d’Ivore, (Ivory Coast) , so many African nations, and so many others that I can’t count on the fingers of both my hands or the toes of my feet. Most of these immigrants settle in the hubs of the Burlington area, where there are bus-lines, as there is not mass-transit in the rest of the state. So perhaps Vermont is very white, why is that? It’s cold and snowy here 7-9 months of the year. It’s so rural and heavily taxed that if you aren’t rich and weren’t born here – people don’t want to move here, and people are leaving in droves. We aren’t anti-black, ant-brown, We would love for people to come and live here, but it’s not our fault that they don’t want to. Shall we start kidnapping people of color to live here so our numbers of black vs white go up? Give me a break.