The Shock and Shame of Alabama History~Edit

Fist Dap College Spun

I don't care how many national college football championships Auburn or Alabama win, how many men and women NASA sends into outer space, or how many civil rights icons we honor in life and in death, the great state of Alabama is destined to be known not as Alabama the Beautiful, but Alabama the Racist.

We might as well embrace our past history as our future history and keep on moving, because we all know there is a mean spirit on the lose in Alabama and the country.

“I heard if the Republicans win the election, their first act of business was going to be sending this monkey back to his cage …” These words were posted on a web site (ala.com) in response to a robo ad I sent. There is a mean spirit on the loose.
I am a history buff of sorts. I have pondered how the meanest of spirits are sometimes unleashed when people become fearful. The meanness is most often directed at those on the bottom of the totem pole, but the least responsible for the situation that gives rise to the fear. When the Great Recession hit three years ago, a lot of people became scared. People are scared of losing everything for which they have worked. They are scared for themselves, their children, and their children’s children. They are scared for the present and scared for the future. Fear is on the loose, putting meanness on the loose as well.
I referred to this mean spirit in one of my robo calls. In response to this spirit, I said, “Hell no, I am not going back to cotton fields and Jim Crow days!” That apparently incensed the above mentioned person. It is not enough for him to take me back to Jim Crow days but he wants to take me back to a monkey cage, a place neither me nor my ancestors inhabited. This response is symptomatic of the mean spirit now on the loose.

The mean spirit of Jimmie Lee Jackson, the 16th Street Baptist Street Church Bombing, Kelly Ingram Park and Bull Conner, Confederate Memorial Day, and Bloody Sunday.

The mean spirit that requires all Alabama license plates to proudly display The Heart of Dixie as an official symbol, and flies the Confederate Flag on the grounds of the state capitol, the birthplace of the Confederacy. Hell no, they ain't fegittn!

The mean spirit that proudly passed the racist, controversial so called immigration bill, which is really a racial profiling bill.

The mean spirit that used political prosecutions for partisan political gain. Former Governor Don Siegelman, former state Representative Sue Schmitz, former Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, and a host of other black democrats were legally lynched by the republican controlled InJustice system. And yes, I tried to tell some of y'all it was political and not about ethics refrom, but again I was suppressed (not to be confused with oppressed).

The mean spirit whose first order of business was to wage war on public school teachers and the Alabama Education Association under the guise of ethics reform. This from a so called pro life party who doesn't care about the education of children once they emerge from the womb, or the health and life of the mother.

The Alabama republican party should be ashamed instead of proud. They could begin to erase the stain if they would do the right (pun intended) thing and strip Rep. Scott Beason of his power to exercise racism.

Beason is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules, which is the gatekeeper of legislation in the Senate and decides which bills come to the Senate floor for debate.

Shame on the Alabama Legislature for appointing someone who doesn't see anything wrong with calling black taxpayers illiterate, "aborigines" and speaks openly about emptying the clip on immigrants in charge of what legislation and bills come to the floor. Shudder

Again, the voters in Beason's district gave him the power to exercise racism, and they are the only ones with the power to snatch it away on election day. However,t he republican majority in the state legislature gave Beason the power to exercise racism in halls of Government. The question is will they continue to condone and excuse his behavior, or, will they do the right (pun intended) thing and strip him of the power to exercise racism?

Time will tell the truth about Alabama's history and the republican controlled state government, past, present and future.

And just because Herman Cain won the Mobile, Alabama republican straw poll and Governor Bentley is passionate about watermelons doesn't mean Alabama republicans are not racist.