Maybe one day

Over the last several months, the Marathon County Board of Supervisors has wrangled over issues of diversity and, in this self-inflicted torture, split into grumbling factions. County supervisors, echoing the high-minded aspirations of their comprehensive plan, all say they are dedicated to inclusion, diversity and racial harmony, but, asked to act on these principles, have stumbled.

Twice, the county board could not endorse a mere proclamation of inclusion in a “Community for All” resolution authored by the Diversity Affairs Commission. This past month, the board failed to adopt a plan suggested by the Human Resources, Finances and Property Committee to widen the county’s advertising area for recruitment and, in turn, hire more qualified minorities. The county board did adopt a Black History Month resolution, but only after a difficult debate. In this struggle, some supervisors have elected to play hardball. Rather than routinely approve county administrator Lance Leonard’s selections to fill two vacancies on the Diversity Affairs Commission, some supervisors this past meeting announced that the process relied upon for decades to choose citizens for county committees was suddenly “not transparent” and that another group of candidates, including some who oppose the current push for diversity, be considered.

In arguing for such a move, Becky Buch, a Wausau supervisor, said that Leonhard’s selections should be voided because a greater diversity of candidates, including someone from rural Marathon County, be considered.

Here we draw a line.

We, as a rural newspaper, wish the county board well as it wades into the national and highly political debate on race, but, please, don’t drag us, as rural residents, into that fight.

In the first place, we reject Buch’s possible underlying suggestion that a rural resident of Marathon County would likely disagree with the current Diversity Affairs Commission position on diversity, inclusion and race. Please don’t stereotype people who live outside of the Wausau metro corridor. We include people who are far right, far left and everything in between.

In the second instance, we reject the suggestion that rural Marathon County residents are a disadvantaged minority who need a place in the Diversity Affairs Commission’s choir along with the county’s Hmong, black, Hispanic and LGTBQ populations. Unlike these other groups, rural Marathon County is a powerhouse of county politics. Decades ago, the City of Wausau was the big dog, politically speaking, at the county board, but those times are long gone. In 1998, Keith Langenhahn, town of Marathon, became county board chair, serving for 14 straight years. He turned over the gavel to a close ally, Kurt Gibbs, town of Cassel, who has served as chairman for another nine years. Rural Marathon County is not a marginalized citizenry. It is in charge.

To be clear, we are not saying rural Marathon County doesn’t have its unique needs, wants, desires and ambitions. It does. We write about those very things each week in this column. But we, unlike other populations, are heard at the county board level. Take for instance the problem rural residents have with getting decent phone service to summon 911 emergency help. That need was communicated to the county board and supervisors listened. A task force has been set up to improve rural county broadband and phone service. Nothing we can say here will stop the county board from engaging in a conflicted, ugly, exasperating but probably necessary debate over diversity, inclusion and race. We hope for progress in both words and deeds. Maybe one day Marathon County will measure up to the high standard of its comprehensive plan and its racial and social minorities will enjoy the same respect and political pull that rural residents currently have in county politics.

Editorial by Peter Weinschenk, The Record-Review