By Rob Holbert Managing Editor

By Rob Holbert

Managing editor

The Alabama Legislature is in session, which means another opportunity for the state to embarrass itself is nigh.

Once again, it appears an effort to remove racist language from the Alabama Constitution is coming. And why shouldn’t we try it again? The measure failed narrowly in 2004 by just 1,846 votes statewide, leading the state’s Visitors and Tourism Board to run ads nationwide encouraging folks to visit Alabama because “We’re now 49.9 percent non-racist!” (Alright, maybe that didn’t happen, but it would have been a great slogan.)

If you’ve been asleep or are newly arrived to our area, you might be shocked, dismayed, disgusted and chagrinned to know Alabama’s beat-up, patched-together-with-bailing-wire constitution still has language requiring separate schools for “white and colored children” and references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks and the poor. Go ahead, run and check your calendar, I’ll wait. Yep. It is, in fact, 2006. What a disgrace.

It’s probably not surprising such language was written into the constitution – after all, it was begun a million years ago when people still had primordial ooze on their feet. (I’m sure that’s a violation of some part of the constitution outlawing sarcastic discussion of evolution.) Actually, a lot of the racist language was inserted during the Civil Rights years and reflected the fears and prejudices of those times. Now, of course, we’re enlightened. After all, wasn’t it just four years ago that we made it legal for crackers and coloreds to get married? Yay for us!

“What’s the big deal?” some rednecks might be asking. “It’s not like we have segregated schools or poll taxes anymore, although they ain’t bad ‘idears.’” True my toothless friend, just because the language is in the constitution doesn’t mean it’s law. It’s kind of like those stories you see every now and again where there are still idiotic ordinances on the books of different towns outlawing the driving of horseless carriages down Main Street or the hanging of rascals and rapscallions.

The only difference there, though, is a state’s constitution is supposed to set out the rules for fair treatment of its citizens. Regardless of practice, the continued inclusion of patently offensive and racist language can’t give anyone much hope that our constitution doesn’t have a wink-and-a-nod approach to “equal treatment under the law.”

Then again, maybe the problem isn’t so much the idiots on Goat Hill or the backward folks who voted against removing the language in 2004, but with the constitution itself. After all, Alabama’s constitution has been amended more than 740 times and has over 310,000 words, making it the world’s longest. It’s 40 times longer than the U.S. Constitution and more than twice as absorbent as Bounty, the quicker picker-upper.

Our constitution literally is what one might expect to get if one were to put an infinite number of chimpanzees (or legislators) in a room with an infinite number of typewriters. One of them is bound to write a Shakespeare play or a racist constitutional amendment.

But anytime we approach the issue of race in Alabama, things get tricky. In 2004, amendment opponents – including good ol’ Roy Moore – used fear-mongering to say removal of a passage declaring there is no right to an education at public expense would allow the courts to mandate tax increases. It worked, the racist language stayed and Alabamians got slammed worldwide for looking like a bunch of hillbilly hicks who secretly want separate schools and poll taxes.

Now, as another amendment wends its way through the state senate – sans the bit about no right to a public education – there are already rumblings that it’s going to run into trouble. Sen. Hank Sanders says he’ll fight any attempts to pass an amendment without the “public education” language, leading to a possible replay of what happened in 2004. Add to the fact that we’re in an election year, and some legislators are already getting weak-kneed and talking about taking care of this racist mess next year.

My God, is it really that difficult to remove a little bit of racist language from our Frankenstein constitution? Aren’t there just some things we as supposedly civilized Americans should be able to agree upon without partisanship or politics entering the process? Probably not in Alabama. After all, Amendment 579 to the constitution guarantees us that anytime there’s an opportunity to do something that would make us look not even progressive but just not backward, we’ll shoot ourselves in the foot.

I’m sure Roy Moore and others like him would love to have this issue in the upcoming election cycle. I can just imagine the Rebel-flag-loving Ben George of Semmes would find this a perfect redneck “wedge” issue to help rally the troops in his race for a seat in the legislature. He’d probably try to portray the racist language as having some kind of historical significance, him being a history buff and all.

Sooner or later we’re going to have to get past all these stupid issues like Rebel flags and racist constitutional language. I hope our woefully inept legislature can conjure the meager amount of intestinal fortitude required to put forth a “clean” amendment to wipe this embarrassing verbiage from our state’s ruling document, and that the disparate political factions can all get behind it and push for its passage.

Who knows, with that kind of support behind it, when the votes are counted, our Bureau of Travel and Tourism might be able to proudly print up bumper stickers saying: “Alabama – certified only 25 percent racist.”

Rob Holbert is Lagniappe managing editor. Contact him at rholbert@lagniappemobile.com.

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