Alabama is a fucked up state!

[Kenyth]

IN May 2001 I combined a business trip with pleasure and rode my bike down to Louisiana. I obviously covered several states, 'Bama being one of 'em, and thought the same as many here stated, it was beautiful. Lots of very nice people, but I did get some experience with the racism.

I stopped at a small gas station on the sid of a side road and when paying for the gas, was alone in the store with the clerk (a nice African-American gentleman about the age to retire). I was just trying to make small talk with him; asking about the weather, was he busy, nice area, yadda yadda and all through the one-sided (more or less) conversation, he seemed very nervous and kinda twitchy. I found this weird and passed it off. When I got to the plant site in Geismar I was visiting, I mentioned it to a couple of guys over lunch one day. They told me he was nervous because generally, white folk don't talk to "them" and he probably figured I was going to rob him. In my ignorance of racism and prejudice I asked who "them" was and I basically got laughed at.

I found this attitude a little disturbing and said how I thought this feeling towards humans of a different race died in the '60's and early '70's. Again they laughed at me and I allowed the subject to die there, but it always stays with me.

I guess I was lucky. Huntsville was a sizable city. Racism was no more prevalent than anywhere else I've been. The military being the melting pot it is, you practically NEVER see racism there.

[slcraiders]

I think Alabama gets some of it's bad rap from the days of old when George Wallace ran the place. It is sad how slowly things change.

Below is a lyrics snipet from a narrated track by the Alabama musicians: Drive-by-Truckers (bar none - one of the greatest rock and roll bands around today). They put out a double cd (Southern Rock Opera) a few years back which is an epic dedicated to Lynyrd Skynyrd and the state of Alabama as a whole. George Wallace was an interesting character to say the least:

The Three Great Alabama Icons
Drive-By Truckers
I grew up in North Alabama, back in the 1970's, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth…
Speaking of course of the Three Great Alabama Icons… George Wallace, Bear Bryant and Ronnie Van Zant… Now Ronnie Van Zant wasn't from Alabama, he was from Florida…He was a huge Neil Young fan… But in the tradition of Merle Haggard writin' Okie from Muskogee to tell his dad's point of view about the hippies ‘n Vietnam, Ronnie felt that the other side of the story should be told. And Neil Young always claimed that Sweet Home Alabama was one of his favorite songs. And legend has it that he was an honorary pall bearer at Ronnie's funeral… such is the Duality of the Southern Thing…And Bear Bryant wore a cool lookin' red checkered hat and won football games… and there are few things more loved in Alabama than football and the men who know how to win at it…So when the Bear would come to town, there'd be a parade. And me, I was one a' them pussy boys… cause I hated football, so I got a guitar… but a guitar was a poor substitute for a football with the girls in my high school…So my band hit the road… and we didn't play no Skynyrd either… I came of age rebellin' against the music in my high school parkin' lot… It wasn't till years later after leavin' the South for a while that I came to appreciate and understand the whole Skynyrd thing and its misunderstood glory…I left the South and learned how different people's perceptions of the Southern Thing were from what I'd seen in my life… Which leads us to George Wallace…Now Wallace was for all practical purposes the Governor of Alabama from 1962 until 1986… Once, when a law prevented him from succeeding himself, he ran his wife Lerline in his place and she won by a landslide… He's most famous as the belligerent racist voice of the segregationist South… Standing in the doorways of schools and waging a political war against a Federal Government that he decried as hypocritical… And Wallace had started out as a lawyer and a judge with a very progressive and humanitarian track record for a man of his time. But he lost his first bid for governor in 1958 by hedging on the race issue, against a man who spoke out against integration…Wallace ran again in '62 as a staunch segregationist and won big, and for the next decade spoke out loudly… He accused Kennedy and King of being communists. He was constantly on national news, representing the “good people of Alabama?”…And you know race was only an issue on TV in the house that I grew up in…Wallace was viewed as a man from another time and place… And when I first ventured out of the South, I was shocked at how strongly Wallace was associated with Alabama and its people… Ya know racism is a worldwide problem and it's been since the beginning of recorded history… and it ain't just white and black… But thanks to George Wallace, it's always a little more convenient to play it with a Southern accent.And bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd attempted to show another side of the South… One that certainly exists, but few saw beyond the rebel flag… And this applies not only to their critics and detractors, but also from their fans and followers. So for a while, when Neil Young would come to town, he'd get death-threats down in Alabama… Ironically, in 1971, after a particularly racially charged campaign, Wallace began backpedaling, and he opened up Alabama politics to minorities at a rate faster than most Northern states or the Federal Government. And Wallace spent the rest of his life trying to explain away his racist past, and in 1982 won his last term in office with over 90% of the black vote… Such is the Duality of the Southern Thing…And George Wallace died back in '98 and he's in Hell now, not because he's a racist… His track record as a judge and his late-life quest for redemption make a good argument for his being, at worst, no worse than most white men of his generation, North or South…But because of his blind ambition and his hunger for votes, he turned a blind eye to the suffering of Black America. And he became a pawn in the fight against the Civil Rights cause…Fortunately for him, the Devil is also a Southerner…

[sweet_yamz]

Hey guys, not to repeat any of the comments that have already been made, let me just say that I live in Alabama close to Birmingham, and I have literally grown up around racism from both sides ( although its not just the two sides, black and white, its all ethnic groups to be quite honest.) It is amazing to me that I went to an elementary without one black student, a middle school without one black student, and graduated from a high school that had not one black student. And not to give some autobiography, but just to set the picture, I played summer basketball with 12 other guys all through highschool with the vast majority of them being black. So even though I never attended high school with black people I lived with a few for months at a time for a few years. It was also amazing to see that not only did I know and encounter daily people who were racist against black people, but that I encountered and spent time with black people who were racist against white people.

I guess it is just more open down here in the south than elsewhere in this country, not that openness about being racist makes racism right. It is just an issue that has never been fully resolved and probably to the detriment of our society it never will be resolved. And not to get on some soap box, but how can we teach our children whether it be in school, or from TV, or from video games, or words we even use, or just society at large, that people are accidents of the cosmos and that we have no meaning or purpose and expect respect for everyone regardless of differences?

Again, not to repeat anything already that has been said, and not to threadjack either, but it pains me to see this great state of Alabama waste away in all the anger, bitterness, and hatred because of differences in skin color as well as all the other "mole hill" petty differences that people make into "mountains" Anyway I'm through. Sorry that this post is so lengthy.