FRIDAY | MAY 24, 2013
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Seifert: Signs of Hope in Alabama
I went home for Thanksgiving this year, home being Birmingham, Alabama, Alabama being the state known for its history of hardheaded, mean hearted, and soulless racial politics.
After a century and a half of lynching and bombings, and institutionalized hatred of African Americans, things seemed to have been changing over the past fifty years. There are all sorts of signs of that. After the extraordinary Civil Rights’ Museum, my favorite sign of this change is the airport itself—named, now, for Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leader in the civil rights’ movement whose home had been dynamited in 1956 by fellow Birmingham citizens, and who had died just a month ago.
Recently, and alarmingly, Alabama’s racism has reinstitutionalized itself again, this time taking concrete form in a series of anti-immigrant laws that are impressive in their evil. In their essence, the laws make anyone even looking Latino a suspicious person.
There remain signs of hope, even in the midst of this enormous setback in the struggle to create a more human world order. The faith communities in Alabama immediately protested the laws (it took them quite a bit longer to get their act together during the first civil rights’ movement) and even the farmers chimed in at the stupidity of their state representatives.
The laws were that bad—the pure-hearted found themselves allied with the purely selfish.
I discovered my own favorite sign of hope as we were heading back to Texas. As I walked into Fred Shuttlesworth Airport, I found an eight year old girl parked right in front of the entrance. She was sitting on some luggage, and had on a white and green and red soccer shirt with the word “Mexico” blazing across the back.
I liked the innocence of that effrontery; I liked it all the more when her apparent father or grandfather or uncle came up and took her hand and they walked together down the aisle.
He was a tall African American man who was wearing a black jacket that had its own statement screaming across the back.
It said, in large, red letters: BLACK.
The two of them made their way through the holiday crowd slowly and confidently, and, I would say, as defiantly as the new future that is coming our way, whether the white Alabama legislators like it or not.
As that black man and that brown girl walked down the way, the air above them seemed to shimmer, just for a moment. It was as if Fred Shuttlesworth himself had spotted them and that they had given him cause for a heavenly shout of joy.
“Órale,” I thought to myself, in Mexican, or “Yeehaw,” as we say in Alabama.
2 Responses to Seifert: Signs of Hope in Alabama
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Pam Smith December 30, 2011 at 10:51 pm
You were right about Alabama coming along way from back when the bombings and killings of innocent blacks. I was born in 1961 and remember some that went on that was racial.
That being said I disagree with your statement that the immigration law is another era of racism.
I believe the laws were made to protect the rights of the American people of Alabama. We have been flooded with illegal Mexicans for the last few years and since we have had to endure hospitals closings, doctors leaving the area or not practicing in the hospitals because the hospitals are community hospitals because they are not being paid. We have Mexicans getting drivers license that cannot read English. If they cannot read English how can they read our street signs without the state spending money to redo all the signs that have the sign in Spanish also, we also have those that do not get license or auto insurance, of course when these people have wrecks that are their fault its the victims that have to pay with their insurance for medical, auto, liabilities and then the insurance companies go up on premiums because of their loss. We also have those Mexicans that come here not for a better life but to run drugs from Mexico. We are having more problems with drugs than ever before. Then there are those that work taking jobs from Americans in construction and other trades. The farmers doesn’t like the law because the Mexicans work under the table or for cash money to farm for them and they don’t have to have any type of insurance to cover him because this Mexican and is illegal and can’t turn him in to the IRS or the Workman’s Comp. That is also the case with the construction and trades that I mentioned before. We also have children going to our schools that do not speak English and because of our federal laws each and every child has to be in class rooms together. So if my 3rd grader is trying to learn to read with comprehension of the 3rd grade library of books, when the illegal child comes in with no knowledge of the English language, math, science, history, our children are stopped to teach the child simple English. I don’t want to think of this law as being racial, when we are stopped for speeding or running a red light we have to show our ID whether you are the driver or passenger. This law has been in effect for many years to have ID. The immigration law is not new, it’s been on books for along time but never upheld. It was only changed a little to state that our law enforcement has the authority to look at students records. We have had this law for the American children for many years also. I might add this law is not just for Mexicans, it’s also for Americans, Germans, Japanese and people of all different countries.
So when you say this is a reinstitutionalized hatred, I take offense to that statement. I believe it is preservation of the American Citizens of Alabama in the failing economy in which the president that we have has led us to.
Please understand I do not want to send these people back to their countries without reason such as criminals, Imp just saying our federal government needs to re-vamp our process to legalize these people in a more appropriate way. We need to push for that not to down Alabama for the laws that are being passed to preserve the Americans rights.
Helen Rivas December 30, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Thank you for sharing that sight. Having spent yesterday evening in the company of a diverse group of people working for justice in Alabama, I appreciate the word picture–and can think of several families that could have been the people described.
That they were at the airport is also a reminder, needed by some, that there are many citizen and documented residents of this state who can vote or will be able to do so soon.
Here’s to a happier, more just Alabama, ¡Pronto!