Dear Heart:
You are right. I may have smeared a lot of innocent people when I sent my regrets about the reunion breakfast. And then the ones who are not innocent may find what it's like to be lumped under labels simply because of their high school -- as so many Alabamians lump African Americans under scurrilous lies and assumptions because of the color of their skins.
As a child, in Wyoming, after we returned from our first trip to the South, I remember riding in the back seat of the Hudson Hornet going over the old railroad tracks, when Daddy said a word I had never heard, "nigger". I said, "Mother, what's a ""? And she said, "Honey, those are the dark-skinned people we saw down south. Nice people call them Negroes, ("Daddy!!") or colored people. But God made them, Dear Daughter, just like he made us and Jesus loves each one of us equally." ("Daddy!!") "Remember the song "Red and Yellow, Black and White, we are equal in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world." ? (To Daddy, "Honey, I don't ever want to hear that word come out of your mouth again.")
That's what I was taught. And what I have believed all my life because my Mother told me and her Mother, who taught Sunday School for fifty years, told her. I believed it in our high school and I believed it in Birmingham when the family was together, and I still believe it! Even though we white women had to simper and be silent when the men said something ugly about black people (or about women!)
If we contradicted any of that ugliness, we might get slammed up against the wall when we got home.
Honey, I hate Alabama because of all that. And now that all Mama's family are dead and gone, andthe remainder racist and right-wing as the hell that they created, I don't ever want to set foot in that hateful state again. No matter how kind somebody might think they are now. If I was eating my scrambled eggs and one of you used that loathsome word or if they somehow put down my beloved President because of his race, they might just end up with hot grits and gravy all over their face.
My e-mail may have been bad, but not nearly as bad as a hot grits attack followed by untrammeled violence that an apparently tame cowgirl has held in for all these years. Believe me. (You can believe me, I'm a Democrat.)
Please let me forget Alabama altogether and any one of you old classmates who were racist in the two years I spent in high school with you---
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Comments
Everyone I met was into the football game though ;0)
born Tuscaloosa 1945
Left for good 1968. Go back for funerals.
Even in the North I was punished severely for going with a black guy in the 60's. Thank God the open, legal ugliness is behind us.
Were you crying for joy when Obama annonced in the Chicago park that he had won? I was. I couln't believe that this could really happen.
Levin Sheridan, I loved that movie. I'm glad you love it more every day. I hope it's more loveable.
Dorinda, thank you for saying what I left out. It is a beautiful place. Birmingham is a beautiful city. Everybody seems to be rabid football fans.
William Allen, welcome out.
Kathy, I wept all through the campaign but when he was inaugurated my heart just flew like the dove of peace or a butterfly.
Perdidochas, my family was not at all wretched. I'm sure there are good people. There just aren't any guarantees.
Parts I and III are on my blog. Part II is on Faith Paulsen's blog . Your input and comment would be a welcome addition to the discourse. What you have posted here is an indication of the fact that we can move beyond our roots and develop well past the environment in which we were raised.....
How sad that you won't give it a chance.
Corgilover, you and me both. We'll stay away together separately, okay?
That said, however, we all like to think that where we live is great...better than other places, but I just have to point out that, although Alabama has a long, horrible history of racism, so does Georgia, North Carolina, and just about every other southern state.
I see the south, as a whole, moving past all that, slowly.
But, even after defending the south, when I occasionally do hear comments here, I feel like throwing things in people's faces, too.
P.S. Was wondering about comment you left on blog. Have you written about that incident?
The African American population forgave George Wallace after he begged them for forgiveness in the late 1970s. In fact, he was elected governor in 1982 primarily on the African American vote.
Delia, I agree. Racism exists everywhere. I remember going to school in south Florida in the late 1980s. Whenever I brought out the fact that I was from Alabama, a surprising number of people from the North confessed that they didn't like black people either. It personally irritated me, as I was raised in the New South, and feel that we should all be treated equally.
Charity,
I agree, that Penrose to some degree is closely associating the people that bothered her in Alabama with the whole state. In a way, that "geographism" is as bad as racism.