Dear Alabama,
First, allow me to say that I like you.
I’ve lived here for nine years, and when I told my friends and family that I planned to make a home in Alabama, the most frequent response that I received was, “But why, though?” I must admit that I don’t remember much about the time I spent here as an undergraduate at Auburn University. (No, it wasn’t the alcohol. It was because ... ummm ... I was studying. And pledging. And ... OK, maybe it was the alcohol.)
But I love the fact that it only gets cold one week a year, not like those horrible New York winters where you can’t wear gym shorts in December or have Thanksgiving cookouts. I appreciate that I didn’t have to sell my soul to Satan’s credit union to buy a home. The college football is the best in the country (seven appearances in the nine years I’ve lived here), and even though tornadoes periodically appear to “reorganize” neighborhoods, I’ve always figured that there’s some shit everyone has to endure.
Florida has hurricanes. New York has snow. California has droughts. And wildfires. And earthquakes. And Kardashians. (Now that I think about it, why would anyone want to live in Cali? I think the Earth is trying to kill y’all.) Anyway, I figure the occasional Alabama tornado is worth not having to deal with the planet turning into a flame-throwing, vibrating ball filled with thirsty, surgically enhanced reality stars. But lately you’ve been tripping, Alabama.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
When I say “lately,” I’m not referring to your not-so-distant past when you were fracturing skulls on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, throwing Molotov cocktails into buses filled with young Freedom Riders or bombing Birmingham churches. I swear I’m not trying to bring up old shit. But you’ve been really showing your ass racist tendencies recently.
It’s like you’re trying to win the championship in some kind of single-elimination, white supremacist tournament of racism. I know you might be worried about Mississippi, Texas and South Carolina making the Final Four, but trust me—you won, bruh.
Let me just break down a few of those tendencies so you’ll know what I’m talking about:
You dismantled the Voting Rights Act.
Did you think we forgot that the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court case that stripped the 1965 Voting Rights Act began when you wanted to gerrymander the lines of a black voting district? It’s ironic that the state that was the heart of the civil rights movement and voting rights ended up starting the latest round of voter suppression.
And by “ironic,” I mean “fucked up.”
Jeff Sessions.
Only you could elect a racist Keebler elf to the Senate, somehow get him confirmed as attorney general and then find someone even more racist than he is to replace him. Only Alabama could ask the question “Can we find a senator worse than the guy who said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK?” and actually have an answer.
Don’t worry—we’ll get to Roy Moore later.
You are still segregating schools.
You allowed Gardendale to separate from the Jefferson County School District and effectively kick out its black students. It’s 2017, man! How did you let this happen?
The surprising part is not that the white parents weren’t ashamed to admit why they did it. I wasn’t even shocked when I learned that a judge ruled in favor of segregating the school district after noting how racist it was. I was just flabbergasted when I learned that this is apparently a thing you do all the time.
Stop doing this. Please?
You love Confederate shit.
I know you call it “preserving history,” but trust me, no one in Alabama will ever forget the Civil War or that Alabama is the “Heart of Dixie.” It’s literally on every license plate issued in the state. It wasn’t enough that you are only one of two states that still celebrate Confederate Memorial Day as an official holiday (although I still can’t believe you close down the Department of Motor Vehicles and all state government offices); now you’ve passed a law fining anyone or any jurisdiction $25,000 that tries to remove or rename a Confederate monument.
In the words of everyone who just read that last paragraph: What is y’all doing?
The “son of a bitch” thing.
When President Donald Trump said that he was holding a rally in September, I figured that it would be held in Alabama, because we are always a little behind the times. I thought Huntsville was the perfect place because there are people in Huntsville who probably don’t know that the presidential election already happened.
But why’d you have to applaud when Trump called the mothers of NFL players bitches, man?
I know you wanted to make him feel at home, but again, you’re Alabama. You cheer for everything. He could’ve just yelled “Roll Tide” and received the same applause. That was totally out of line.
Again, why are you like this?
Roy Moore.
This Roy Moore thing was my last straw.
The fact that Republicans selected a man who dresses like Woody from Toy Story to represent them is the most Alabama thing ever. I’m not even surprised that the “evangelical Christians” believe he is one of them—after all, they thought the same thing about Gov. George Wallace, Bull Connor and Trump. I didn’t even bother to call Sway and query him as to “how.”
But a child molester? A mall-trolling, high-school-stalking, yearbook-signing pedophile? (Allegedly. I always forget to say “allegedly,” in the same way that I sometimes forget to call George Zimmerman an “alleged murderer,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders an “alleged liar” or the countless chapters of Klansmen in the state “alleged racists.”)
There is no greater example of good vs. bad than a man who preyed on little girls being pitted against a man who literally prosecuted the evil racists who killed four little girls inside a house of worship. Only in Alabama could this even be a contested political race.
Even if we excused the Tuskegee experiment; the arrest of Rosa Parks; how you cracked Rep. John Lewis’ skull; Viola Liuzzo’s death; how you broke Art Bacon’s jaw because he was waiting in a waiting room; when your governor said, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”; how you still seek to disenfranchise voters; how you passed a law targeting Mexican immigrants; and how you are the state with the fifth-highest number of hate groups, I still wouldn’t call this Moore “thing” racist.
It’s just evil.
But you’re Alabama, so I should expect it. I’d just like to know:
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Love,
An Alabamian