Red State Values

By John Amato — November 29, 2004

Red State Values Mark A. R. Kleiman

You probably missed this in the rest of the Election Day disasters, but Alabama, as it was voting overhwhelmingly for George W. Bush, also rejected an attempt to remove two frankly racist provisions of the state constitution. One would have repealed the constitutional guarantee of racial segregation in the schools, and the other would have repealed a provision (passed in reaction to Brown v. Board of Ed.) explicitly denying that Alabamians have a right to public education.

I know we're trying to bring about national unity here, but don't you think it would help, just a little bit, if the white inhabitants of the Red states behaved a little bit less like lunatics? Since Alabama is about 25% African-American, and since the black vote presumably was fairly solid for the amendment, it looks as if whites must have voted against it by something between 2:1 and 3:1.

Note that it's considered perfectly acceptable for the President of the United States to pronounce "Massachusetts" as if it were the name of something slimy he'd just turned up under a rock, but it would be considered rude to suggest that the white population of Alabama is numerically dominated by the ignorant and bigoted.

Update: A reader points out that the Alabama Christian Coalition led the charge against the amendment. When, exactly, did "Christian" become a synonmym for "bigoted"? Or, as it is written in the Gospel According to St. John, 11th chapter, 35th verse:

Jesus wept.

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