Attention Conservation Notice: This post is about Alabama politics and the use of American Indian imagery to score political points.
Spotted this billboard the other day in East Lake, Birmingham.
The three men on the right are Alabama Governor Bob Riley, John Tyson (current head of the Governor’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling) and David Barber (the first head of the task force). An Indian war bonnet adorns the space above the three mug shots. Continue reading
Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment.
— Huckleberry Finn
Ron Perlman as Pap Finn in a 1993 movie
Pap works out his anger by drinking and running riot whenever he can afford to. Or he takes it out on his son, lashing him without mercy as often as he can catch him. And when these fail him, he puts his anger into words. His rants are worthy of a comments thread on a 21st-century blog — and no less topical. He hated everyone he knew, but in his rants “he most always went for the govment.”
America wearing the star of empire. Detail from the painting “American Progress” (1872) by George Gast.
I’ve found some evidence of how the Anglo-Irish cleric George Berkeley’s verse, “Westward the course of empire takes its way,” became a “star of empire” on the cover of George Bancroft’s History of the United States. The connecting link seems to be John Quincy Adams, with an assist from Massachusetts poet Sarah Wentworth Morton.
George Berkeley (1685-1753) — the minister, mathematician, philosopher, Rhode Island planter, and namesake of Berkeley, California — was what we’d call a fan of Britain’s American colonies. So the last four lines of his “Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America” were frequently quoted on this side of the Atlantic — especially the first:
Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four Acts already past,
A fifth shall close the Drama with the day;
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.
Gambling proprietors in Alabama have been trying to pass off their slot machines (prohibited under state law) as a form of bingo (legal in some counties). Gov. Bob Riley is trying to stop them with a special task force and mostly successful lawsuits. Warnings of impending raids have recently forced the shutdown of several giant bingo farms that siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars a year from customers.
The gambling industry is fighting back with a barrage of TV ads lampooning the governor and calling for a statewide referendum to legalize gambling. Naturally, this would be done on terms favorable to the big establishments, protecting them from competition.
One of the industry’s favorite tactics is to portray Riley as a pawn of the Mississippi Choctaws, whose casinos lure customers from Alabama. The ads imply, without actually saying so, that Riley is trying to kill off Alabama bingo farms because they would compete with established Choctaw casinos. The inference is that Riley must have taken bribes from the Indians. Continue reading
Obama’s election set off a predictable round of inconclusive wondering about whether, or when, we’d become a “post-racial America.” Well, I have a benchmark to propose. Maybe it’s more like a precondition, but to me it’s a large and obvious one.
The United States of America will not overcome its obsession with race until Benjamin Tillman’s statue at the South Carolina State Capitol is pulled down, like a statue of Lenin in Berlin or Prague. In case you don’t know the former governor and United States senator, known fondly as “Pitchfork Ben,” here is a choice passage from his long career of violence, fraud, and windy speech-making on behalf of white supremacy:
In my State there were 135,000 negro voters, or negroes of voting age, and some 90,000 or 95,000 white voters. … Now, I want to ask you, with a free vote and a fair count, how are you going to beat 135,000 by 95,000? How are you going to do it? … We were sorry we had the necessity forced upon us, but we could not help it, and as white men we are not sorry for it, and we do not propose to apologize for anything we have done in connection with it. We took the government away from them in 1876. We did take it. … Then [in 1895] we had a constitutional convention convened which took the matter up calmly, deliberately, and avowedly with the purpose of disfranchising as many of them as we could under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. We adopted the educational qualification as the only means left to us, and the negro is as contented and as prosperous and as well protected in South Carolina to-day as in any State of the Union south of the Potomac. He is not meddling with politics, for he found that the more he meddled with them the worse off he got. As to his “rights”—I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him. I would to God the last one of them was in Africa and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores. But I will not pursue the subject further.
Thus Senator Ben Tillman to his U.S. Senate colleagues, in what he apparently considered to be a moderate statement of reasonable views. His statue stands on the grounds of the South Carolina State Capitol. One of these days it will come down.
I don’t mean that a narrow majority in the state legislature will manage to order the statue dismantled while crowds of white folks fume about the insult to our heritage. What I hope is that throngs of people come together to pull down that statue, and they’ll celebrate together while they’re doing it. They won’t do it out of guilt, or to make a statement. They’ll do it because they’re so glad to be out from under the thumb of the dead god of Race, and because “Pitchfork Ben,” and the bloviating fears and hatreds he embodied, have finally lost all their power.
Until that day comes, and I hope it’s soon, but until that day I’d just as soon have the lawmakers leave that statue alone. Once the statue is down, they can decide what to do with the bronze. (They might try selling it to someone in Fremont in Seattle. Folks there could probably think of some way to have fun with Pitchfork Ben.)
Ought to mention: For the second year in a row, I’ve received a membership card from the Alabama Republican Party. I didn’t ask for it.
Of course, I’m supposed to send in a donation in exchange for the wallet-sized card. I never have donated to the Republicans, yet here I am lodged on their mailing list.
It dramatizes for me just how dysfunctional the Alabama Democrats are. I’ve volunteered for Democratic candidates at the county and state levels, been involved with the party’s “progressive” faction, corresponded with the current party chairman, and logged time on the Obama campaign. I don’t consider myself a party member, and I also support Republican and third-party candidates. But it seems odd that I merit a spot on the Alabama Republicans’ mailing list, yet never hear a peep from the Democrats.
Even the Libertarians and Greens get in touch with me more often than the Democrats. (To be fair, I have a sort of official post with the Green Party.)
One relevant fact about the Alabama Democrats is that they have an insulated, hereditary leadership caste and a byzantine organizational structure that effectively thwarts challenges from below. I’ve seen friends who are party loyalists but who seethe with resentment of the Democratic hierarchy in Alabama, and at the county level.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that there’s too much continuity between the present leadership and the old guard, who remember when Alabama was still governed by a single party devoted to white supremacy above all. Instead of denouncing its legacy of white rule, Alabama Democrats practice the crudest kind of racial apportionment. (“Separate but equal,” anyone?) In Montgomery it’s often been said that Alabama has a three-party system: Republicans, white Democrats, and black Democrats.
For all these reasons, I guess it’s no surprise that Alabama Democrats make no discernible effort to reach out to Alabama citizens. Nor is it surprising that our current Republican governor, who earned a perfect score from the Christian Coalition back when he was in Congress, has turned out to be more progressive than any Democrat since Albert Brewer briefly became governor by a fluke.
It’s been 144 years since Dixie was defeated, but the Alabama Democratic Party has never stopped waging war on the future.
Friends of mine have been wailing and wringing hands over the success of California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage. I just can’t get worked up over it.
It’s not that I’m indifferent about gay rights. Far from it; I’ve been a straight activist on these issues for years now. Some of my nearest relatives are gay, and I worked for a while at a southern college that has a quiet reputation as a refuge for homosexual students. During the Clinton era of “don’t ask, don’t tell” I was a guest on Birmingham talk radio to advocate for equality in the military. (The station never did let me have a tape of that show.)
I usually walk with friends in the annual Gay Pride parade. I’ve done public speaking and private arguing for equality, and have sent letters on behalf of jailed homosexuals in eastern Europe. Now and then I’ve sat and just listened for a long time to a man who hated himself for desiring men and not women. I’ve interviewed gay Christians who preach, or who want to. I’ve tried to find consoling words to say to a woman whose brother was murdered for being a queer. I’ve nursed a baby girl who has two mommies; she’s my niece. This stuff matters to me.
Still, I don’t much care about Prop 8. Sure, it stings to have a majority of California voters say they don’t want same-sex couples to get married. But take a closer look. The vote doesn’t mean what you think it does.
First of all, if you’re gay and want to marry, you can find plenty of ministers who will oblige you right now. Even here in Birmingham, in the Heart of Dixie, I can give you a list of churches (and a synagogue) who are fully committed to celebrating gay marriages equally. It’s true that a larger number of congregations will flatly refuse you because they think that homosexuality is a sin. But you only need one church.
The real problem, which this issue has brought to light, is the hybrid status of “marriage” as both legal and sacred. The U.S. Constitution prohibits government from either promoting or discouraging any religion, or discriminating between individuals on the basis of creed. Our legal tradition defines the principle of “separation of church and state” as a constitutional doctrine.
So how come we ask ministers to fill out marriage licenses on behalf of the state? This confusion of roles opens the door to the political exploitation of religious faith.
In the long run, I’d like to see “marriage” defined solely as a sacrament or religious rite (Baptist, Hindu, Roman Catholic, etc.) and the legal status of marriage redefined as “civil union” for any two or more people who choose to live together, married or unmarried, as sexual partners or not.
Regardless of what voters decide at the polls, and no matter what legislatures do, this will remain true: Some ministers will marry gay couples with their congregations’ support, some would do so if only their congregations didn’t object, and some will never agree to gay marriages and don’t care what anyone else thinks. As a pluralistic society, we should be fine with that.
What we must not do is insist that the power of the state be used to compel people to comply with an interpretation of religious doctrine. The state’s business is to ensure equal justice, not to impose religious values or police bedrooms (except in the interest of minors). Instead of waging political struggles over the “definition of marriage,” we should be taking the state out of the debate and letting the followers of each religion define marriage in accordance with their conscience.
P.S.: Because this is America, and because of the perception that African Americans disproportionately oppose gay marriage, there’s a tendency to do a two-bit “gays vs. blacks” analysis of the politics around this issue. Elle, Ph.D. wrote last month about how this approach benefits no one.
Danner at 9 numbers built a thoughtful post on the Langford case around a comment of mine. Worth reading if you’re a fellow Birminghamster.
Langford was grand marshal of the city Christmas parade yesterday and put a cheerful face on his arrest and indictment. Judging from comments that people in the crowd made to TV reporters, some are willing to reserve judgment until the trial (which will occur at least half a year into the Obama presidency), while others are openly skeptical about the feds’ motives.
The manner of Langford’s arrest — he was handcuffed by FBI agents while his two (white) co-suspects were permitted to turn themselves in — has become an issue, implying discriminatory treatment. The U.S. Attorney’s office would probably argue that Langford was the one holding a position of public trust, so it was appropriate to publicly arrest him. But it does seem that they were obtuse about the racial overtones of seizing the one black indictee, and not the two whites. It would have been wiser to treat all three alike.
Langford was not shy about playing blacker-than-thou politics when he ran successfully for mayor. Fortunately he hasn’t (yet) tried to imply that his indictment was motivated by racism. As Danner noted, Langford’s trial will occur under the ultimate authority of an African American president and attorney general.
