The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16443-2004Nov27.html) reports that on Nov. 2, Alabama voters narrowly defeated a constitutional amendment that would have repealed segregation. How does this result fit in with repeated lectures by southerners, conservatives, and Republicans, that southern politics and the Republican/conservative ascendancy are not driven by racism?
The site is registration-only. Can’t read the story. Does this CNN story jive with yours?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/04/alabama.segregation/
You’re mischaracterizing the objection to repealing that amendment. Included in the original amendment (which the new amendment would repeal and which enshrines segregation, but has no teeth) is a provision that public education is not a right.
An awful lot of people are hanging their objection to repeal off of that clause rather than the segregation clause (which they are, y’know, aware isn’t enforceable in any kind of foreseeable future). Apparently it involves taxes and things that a local would know more about than me.
But to characterize its retention as simply being a racist gesture is an incredible generalization and beyond the pale for GD without quite the cite…
An article in Salon today on the same topic.
It also pointed out that four years ago, the majority of white voters in the state voted to keep the state’s anti-miscegenation statute on the books. Perhaps that was also a tax issue.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. I don’t have a dog in the race here. I was just pointing out what I’d learned about the Alabama amendment issue here in the days just prior to the election.
Yeah, we’re a bunch of racists down here. Not like up north. Everybody loves each other up there. Out West, too – it’s all one big cuddle party. :rolleyes:
I think it was Andy Young who remarked that civil rights marchers saw more hate in Chicago than they did in Alabama.
I can’t read the Salon content, but I can tell you from memory that four years ago, the anti-miscengenation amendment was removed, not affirmed.
Yes, it was repealed, but by a ratio of about 60-40 and polling indicated that the majority of white voters voted to keep it on the books.
Well, you could find white people in any state that would vote for anti-miscegenation laws today.
You made an assertion in the OP that sothern, conservative politics was DRIVEN by racism. Prove it. [Hint: you haven’t proven **anything **so far.]
That’s an awfully big brush you have there.
When did Alabama come to represent all of the south?
BTW, do a “search” for a thread on this very issueshortly after the election. What apparently doomed the amendments eliminating the segregationist language was that they were “packaged” in one single ballot question with amendments about the Right-to-Education that the opposition (including the “illustrious” Roy Moore) claimed meant more taxes and less local control of schools.
Damn. Sometimes I’m just blown away by how fast ignorance can be stamped out on this message board. Not always, but sometimes.
Could you find a majority of white people? If so, it reflects poorly on those states as well, rather than justifying this attitude in Alabama.
60/40 is a landslide in anybody’s election terminology. I request additional information about your claim that the majority of white voters rejected the amendment.
Simply put, I don’t believe that the amendment could have passed with 60% approval if the majority of white voters had voted against it . Can you show me the money? What outfit did the polling? What was their axe to grind, if any?
Re: The recent amendment. For reasons known only to himself, the Good Judge Roy Moore decided to use this issue as a grandstand play, crowing about tax increases. That was possibly BS, but it got Ol’ Roy’s name in the papers.
The governor is already working on similar legislation, without the tax questions attached, and says he will present it to the state legislature soon.
C’mon down, if you hurry can move here in time to vote on it.
John Carter of Mars, were you also responsible for that cross buring on Long Island? You know what that means, don’t you? Everyone east of the Mississippi is racist.
What do you think the vote would be if the constitutional amendment were worded in such a way that it affirmed Auburn’s and Alabama’s rights to continue to integrate their football teams? 
That may sound shallow to some people who don’t understand what a healing influence these teams had all over the South.
When one attacks a group of people who are often the target of bigots, it’s a good idea to get the facts straight or that person will be seen as a bigot himself, perpetuating a stereotype. That holds true when the group attacked consists of Southerners.
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The vote has not yet been defeated. There are still votes to be counted.
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The margin of difference is so narrow at this point – approximately 2,500 votes out of 1.4 million cast – that more likely than not, there will be a recount.
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The constitutional amendment does not repeal segregation. It removes segregationist language from laws which have not been enforced for years.
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Even if all of the things you had said were true, Alabama is one of many Southern states. No one state represents all of us.
I cannot speak for conservatives or Republicans or even other Southern liberal Democrats like myself. I do think there are a number of issues that drive Southern politics. The biggest issue in Tennessee state government during our last election was taxes. That’s what people were demonstrating about for weeks on end at our capitol.
It is truly sad that you see attempts to fight ignorance as “lectures.”
I’ve lived in the south and the northeast and I’d say that first of all, neither group is very bigoted but I’d estimate that overall people in the northeast are about 5% more bigoted than people in the south. Among the educated upper classes I’d say it’s a bit worse in the northeast. but again, both groups are OK.
Nothing scientific here. It could easily be based on who I hung out with at different points in my life.
And FWIW I don’t think that you can draw a whole lot of conclusions about people based on the way they vote. There are so many things that affect a vote that it’s just not worth going there.
Um . . . a regions aren’t racist, people are. There are some people living in the south who are racist, just as there are some people living in the north who are racist. Perhaps the percentage is a bit higher in some places than others.
But to suggest that “the South” is racist (as you do by posing the question “South Not Racist?” with obvious skepticism) isn’t fair to the millions of non-racists living in the south. For example, my maternal grandparents live in Alabama (my grandmother was born and raised there), and my mother was born in Alabama. I can confidently say that none of them are racists. All of them happen to be liberal Democrats too, which I point out only to remind people of the fact that even in the red states there are lots of Democrats, just fewer than there are Republicans. But there are of course also millions of Republicans living in the south who aren’t racist, who I’m sure would be offended by that characterization of them.
I caught Timothy Tyson on C-SPAN the other day and he made a great analogy. Since white supremacy infects all of us calling people racists is like fish accusing each other of being wet.
Could someone please give the details of the “tax” aspect to this bill and how that could be the reason for its defeat?
Well, obviously, the assumption here is that the conservative Republican majority is the faction that is largely driven by racism. 
I don’t see any reason to (sic) “southerners” and “southern.” Maybe you prefer to capitalise them, but that’s still merely a stylistic choice, not a matter of error.
It’s mentioned in the last part of the first page:
Here’s the issue sheet of the Christian Coalition of Alabama on the amendment.
http://www.ccbama.org/EmailAlerts/ea102504.asp
Alabama is in the middle of a big battle over funding mechanisms for public education. Here’s a look at state and local education funding in Alabama: