# Someone please explain "Sweet Home Alabama" (not movie, but the song)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-please-explain-sweet-home-alabama-not-movie-but-the-song/197331>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [August 24, 2003, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-please-explain-sweet-home-alabama-not-movie-but-the-song/197331 "2003-08-24T15:51:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![dervinck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4bbf92/32.png) [@dervinck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dervinck)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-please-explain-sweet-home-alabama-not-movie-but-the-song/197331/21 "2003-08-25T08:29:44Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Krokodil \*  
> \*\*My view is that Southern racism differs from other regions’ in degree, but not in kind. It is worse down here, but our main crime is that we remind mainstream/Northern US of its own hidden sins and lamentable past. \*\*

Should anyone be interested- Another song to address this is ‘Rednecks’ by Randy Newman.

> [@](#):
>
> \*Rednecks, 2nd verse, by Randy Newman \*  
> \*\*Now your northern nigger’s a Negro  
> You see he’s got his dignity  
> Down here we’re too ignorant to realize  
> That the North has set the nigger free
> 
> Yes he’s free to be put in a cage  
> In Harlem in New York City  
> And he’s free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago  
> And the West-Side  
> And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland  
> And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis  
> And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco  
> And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston  
> They’re gatherin’ ‘em up from miles around  
> Keepin’ the niggers down \*\*

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**Author:** ![SolGrundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2003, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-please-explain-sweet-home-alabama-not-movie-but-the-song/197331/22 "2003-08-25T10:18:50Z")

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Just wanted to say well said, **krokodil**. Since I moved to the SF bay area, I’ve heard countless remarks insinuating that I’m just inherently racist since I came from Georgia. Not my fault, of course, it was obviously just the way I was raised. This condescending garbage usually coming from people who were reared in Marin County and Sonoma, the most segregated places I’ve ever seen in my life. And of course they’d usually make fun of me for being some kind of in-bred racist, and then in the same breath make some disparaging remark against Chinese or Mexican immigrants.

And thanks for the Randy Newman link, **dervinck**. I always thought Randy Newman did nothing but inconsequential gag music.

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