loose one; she spent several decades in attempts to beat me down.
Why I’d feel some love for her unimaginable. She even tried to kill me a couple of times.
Do I love her? I try. Sometimes convince myself I do.
I like pro football more than I like college football. It’s her fault, her meanness.
I do like college football, but.
But I remember attending and hosting football parties, each person there rooted for the flagship college or university teams in their state.
I did not. I could not. I, born in Alabama, could not root for University of Alabama, or Auburn. I did root for Alabama A & M, but it was only regionally known then, rarely mentioned on national radio or television.
Black folk born in Michigan could root for their state team, so also New Yorkers rooted for theirs, so on, but I sat to watch the games and could not root.
Games in which Alabama played someone, I watched, could not root for Alabama. My friends, black and white, who knew the state of my birth remained silent about it. Those who didn’t know, asked, then knew, added to the silence.
Even now Alabama and Auburn remain not my favorite college teams. Only now they’re included, but Alabama A&M and several teams in other states come before.
Alabama the premier college team in my state falls below several teams state and private in other states.
The name Crimson Tide reminds me of the blood of some of my ancestors, some of the ancestors of other black folk, some white folk spilled while others did not interfere.
I know that Crimson Tide to white folk hereabouts dont have that association.
They dont share my associations which drench the flag of the Confederacy.
And most dont care.
Segregation and the violence and persecution which existed not only attacked the major features of my life; it attacked the minutia, the small daily pleasures others enjoyed, black and white, in other states.
I belonged to a group of more enlightened kids in north who were from Alabama, no dirt farmers among us. Some had last names you’d recognize, they, we left Alabama because we were black, and couldn’t stand it, white, and couldn’t stand it, gay, well, they suffered most, still do because as some racial tensions subside what you get is meld of black and white homophobes.
Add to the mix folk who could have passed, born white, but had the misfortune to turn out humane, kind, and differed in many good ways from most Alabamans.
Fifty, almost fifty of my 71 years I spent away from Alabama, only returned to care for my mother in her last days alive. I had to stay because of a house I dislike.
I can’t say I like most folk in Alabama; they vote against their own self interest.
I grew up in segregated Alabama. Never met my biological grandpa on father’s side; he died in an ambulance rushing to Chattanooga. No hospitals in my county took black patients, even through the back door.
Grandpa died from appendicitis.
Alabama owes me a grandpa. Pray all your might you can’t well, shite.
I can handle racism. Somehow. What I can’t handle is stupid. Okay,some racism benefits some white folk. That’s not that stupid for them, but it does nothing for the majority of white folk.
They vote race not for self interest. You can erode racist attitudes over time, but stupid seems almost hardwired in the brains of too many.
Stupid scares me shitless.
They support the wishes, desires, and interests of rich white folk,these poor white folk. They cheer on a black football player at Auburn or Alabama, yet murmur racial tropes at the black president.
One of my best friends now, white, I never met down here because of segregation; we met in a bar in Greenwich Village, two expatriate artists, had to meet in a freaking northern bar.
Another of the minor bitterness born in Alabama racism.
Then I figure that most whites in Alabama are reflexively racist, they dont think it, it’s just there from a social landscape imbued with it. They have black friends, yeah, yet still vote racist politician into office.
Some even mimic racists, they take on the attitudinal stances of folk around and near them.
To end this end of year ramble what give me hope for change, one I dont know that I like it; it’s mean spirited, murderous, and dangerous if it’s a real spontaneous beginning of a movement.
I saw the movie Django Unchained and every time Jamie Foxx’s character killed a white person a group of young whites downstairs cheered. I wrote a post at leftinalabama.com - hope I got the title right - “Old white folk your grandchildren may want to kill you.”
I silently cheer them on in my memory of the event, sometimes, then remember teachings of grands, and parents.
I am old, few years left probably, but younger blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos, and women will live longer, remember what some old folk did, mostly Republicans I guess, may feel the temptation to do to them what was done by them.
The emerging new majority nationally may scrap the Constitution and do good things in evil ways.
Instead of joining in, I warn, I say, change your evil ways old white, some young too, folk. You teach the new national majority your old way.
I heard this on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 12th Street, Manhattan, “Alabama gets more money than they send to the Federal government. They call us on the dole. We have to do...”
I was walking away, heard no more from them.
Happy new year.
(There's a dont should be doesnt, but I lack patience today. When you see it put doesnt in its place.)