[Marxism] "Alabama clings to segregationist past"--Guardian

["Charlie Parks" <jcparks5550@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tomorrow's Guardian features the most recent bit of international bad press
my home state of Alabama has managed to have thrust upon itself (it seems to
have a special talent for this, going back to the bad ol' days of governor
George Wallace and his infamous reply to international condemnations of
segregation and racist violence in Alabama, to the effect of "your average
Asian or African probably doesn't know where *he* is, much less where
Alabama is").

For those interested in the recent political developments in this state,
some background: Alabama's state constitution, like so many other features
of its government and institutions, is thoroughly regressive, explicitly
calling for school segregation and specifically stating that citizens of the
state have no inherent right to education and public services. Finally a
referendum on reforming it was held during this past general election, but
it was defeated by a narrow margin. The reason why this embarassing and
hateful artifact was not consigned to the dustbin of Southern history by a
landslide? In two words, tax-bating. If you're a reactionary with power and
influence in Alabama and you wish to see something defeated, you need merely
play the tax card. This is what Alabama's chapter of the Christian Coalition
did, claiming that a revision of the constitution to state that public
services are a right, not a "gift," would open the door to vulturous
trial-lawyers and tax-hiking politicians. The article quotes a University of
Alabama law professor as saying that "In Alabama, if an opponent can label a
policy as a tax, then 99 times out of 100 the policy fails"--truer words
were never spoke.

This in turn points to the narrowness of the political spectrum in Alabama
and elsewhere in the South, even by American standards: for years now the
state has faced a budget crisis as bad as the recent one in California (in
proportion, not in scale, of course), and its schools were desperately
underfunded, so badly that teachers were being laid off all over the place
and kids in the poorest schools had to share textbooks. The "progressive" or
"liberal" solution to this was proferred by the recent former governor Don
Siegleman, a Democrat, who proposed a state lottery, which to me has always
seemed like a regressive flat-tax in disguise, except less "flat" because it
would be funded by the lower income brackets who are naturally going to be
more inclined toward wagering a few bucks in the hope of winning millions.
What is even more bizarre, though, is that the current Republican in office,
Bob Riley, who seemed in his campaign like a clone of Pat Robertson,
actually proposed a more objectively progressive solution than his
Democratic predecessor. He was willing to radically reform Alabama's
regressive tax system, which has one of the very worst tax burdens on the
poor in the US, and called a referendum on the proposal. He was supposedly
"converted" to this plan by an article by a UA law professor making a
"Judeo-Christian" case for progressive taxation, and it drew the ire of
practically everyone else in the Alabama Republican party, as well as
SouthTrust Bank, the major lumber companies (who enjoyed near give-aways on
property taxes) and, of course, the pharisaical Alabama Christian
Coalition--whenever I go home to visit my parents, I still see bumper
stickers proclaiming, "Bush giveth, Riley taketh away!" Needless to say, the
referendum was defeated. (I noted that Riley's more progressive stance on
taxes was bizarre, but it's actually a common phenomenon in the South.
Recently, in the race for the US congressional seat for Nashville,
Tennessee, where I live now, the Republican candidate pitched himself to the
left of the incumbent Democrat on environmental and energy policy--no Green
was in the race, unfortunately).

In any case, Alabama's narrow and skewed political spectrum is a glaring
symptom of its larger failure to meaningfully come to terms with the legacy
of slavery and segregation: the racial and economic inequality that are so
rampant in the state, approaching Third World levels in some counties (such
as Wilcox). Birmingham is known as the "Steel City of the South," but there
and elsewhere in the state, workers have never been able to organize as
effectively as in the North and Midwest because the owners, profiting from
segregation, could always use black workers as strike-breakers and thereby
pit the black and white workers against each other; as a result, the
"union-vote" has never been significant in Alabama, as with most of the
South. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are prepared to confront
these problems in Alabama, but until they are confronted, reforming a racist
and reactionary constitution will have little more than symbolic
significance. Anyway, here's the article:

Alabama clings to segregationist past

US state with racist history votes to keep 'separate schools for white and
coloured children' as part of constitution

Gary Younge in New York
Tuesday November 30, 2004
The Guardian

During his inaugural address in 1963, the then Alabama governor, George
Wallace, took to the steps of the state capitol and made a promise. Standing
on the spot where Jefferson Davis had declared an independent southern
confederacy just over 100 years before, he pledged: "In the name of the
greatest people that ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and
toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say: Segregation now,
segregation tomorrow, segregation for ever."
Yesterday it looked as if he might get his wish, after a referendum in the
state looked likely to keep segregation-era wording, requiring separate
schools for "white and coloured children" in its constitution as well as
references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.

A narrow margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million, or 0.13%, in a
referendum on November 2, meant the state was obliged to hold a recount,
which took place yesterday. But with no accusations of electoral fraud or
any other irregularities, nobody last night expected the result to change.

full:http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1362581,00.html



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