by Johnny Norris
After our legislature finally enacted a pitifully inadequate General Fund budget and as we collectively observe the national implosion of the Republican Party with all the fascination of a movie audience watching a slow-motion train wreck, I have a few things to say about conservative ideology and how it contributes to the crippling of Alabama.
White Alabamians by and large self-identify as politically conservative. White Alabamians like me who self-identify as liberal are rare. Hell, I think most of them are friends of mine on Facebook.
But what does it mean to be conservative in Alabama?
There are three answers to that question, depending on how deeply you look at it. At the most surface level, the level in the heads of most Alabamians when they self-identify as conservative, the notion of being conservative embraces such ideals as self-reliance, personal responsibility, and fiscal good sense. At this level, Alabama conservatism finds its roots in the ideals of the 19th century Jacksonian Democrats, who proclaimed themselves to be self-reliant frontiersmen who disdained dependence on government or any other large institution.
Also at the surface level, you have a few specific policy positions that are generally associated with conservative ideology. Conservatives do not believe in spending money on a social safety net, believing instead that poor people should “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” rather than relying on “government handouts.” Conservatives are hawkish, supporting America’s use of military force in most contexts. Conservatives do not believe in criminal rehabilitation or addressing the social and economic roots of criminal behavior. The conservative answer to crime is more jail time.
Conservatives also have well-defined views about social issues. To be conservative is to be against a woman’s right to choose an abortion, against equality of gays and lesbians, and in favor of liberal or no restrictions on firearms.
A deeper, second level of being conservative in Alabama has to do with race. Many self-professed Alabama conservatives will deny it, but it cannot be seriously questioned that conservative ideology in Alabama includes strong streaks of racism.
Accusations of racism are almost always met with denial and indignation, so let’s talk honestly about racism in our state. I came of age in the 1980’s, not so long ago, and until I became friends with a black classmate in the seventh grade in Talladega I was myself an unthinking racist who never questioned the discriminatory ideas handed down to me from the previous generations of central Alabama family and friends. I am ashamed to admit that I often used the word ****** to describe African-Americans, just as my family and white friends did. It was how I was raised. Sadly, I was far from alone in being taught to think this way about blacks in Alabama.
Later, I went to law school and went to work for a large, and largely white, corporate defense law firm here in Birmingham. This was a bastion of Alabama conservatism, and it took a long time before the white lawyers with whom I worked learned that I was not part of their little racist club, and would not tolerate casual racist comments and jokes in my presence. Again, I am sad to report that this “club” of white conservative lawyers constituted the majority of defense lawyers with whom I dealt in my first 10 years of law practice.
So spare me protestations that Alabamians have changed and that racism is in the past. I know better, and so do you. To steal a quote from George Wallace himself, anyone who thinks racism is dead in Alabama should have their head bored for a hollow horn. Racism drove thousands of Alabamians to go see Donald Trump give a campaign speech just a few weeks ago after he labelled Mexican immigrants as murderers and rapists. Racism is behind opposition to social programs like food stamps and aid to families with dependent children, because such programs are seen as primarily benefiting “them.” Racism is why our Republican-led government passed stringent voter identification laws and then shuttered every single facility for getting new driver’s licenses in every single majority-black Alabama county.
Racism is why conservatives care nothing about public education except in affluent white suburban areas.
There is an even darker third level to understanding Alabama conservatism, a level working-class Alabama conservatives do not grasp at all. That is the level of what Alabama’s conservative government actually does, and what it does is to place most of the tax burden on the very working-class folks that most ardently support them, refuse to so much as consider imposing fair and equitable taxes on large corporate land-owners, and struggle to provide even minimally adequate state governmental services.
These facts (and they are facts) are familiar to anyone who has read my blog, but unfortunately that is a tiny fraction of the Alabama electorate.
The great political scam pulled by conservatives on white Alabama voters is, first, to openly appeal to the first level of conservatism. Candidates for Alabama office hawk their opposition to legal abortions and gay marriage, advocate ever-longer jail terms for convicted criminals, and oppose any reasonable restrictions for firearms. This openly appeals to the conservative base.
Second, Alabama conservatives make more subtle, often coded, appeals to Alabama white racism. Lately, the easiest code word for racism has been the word “Obama.” If Obama is associated with it, the implicit message goes, it has to be something that favors blacks to the detriment of whites. In the 80’s and 90’s the code words included the phrase “welfare queens,” which was understood to be “blacks on welfare.” In the recent ongoing debate over white police officers using deadly force in their encounters with black citizens, the code word has been the word “thug.”
These two appeals, to open and acknowledged conservative ideals and coded (and thus deniable) appeals to white racism, serve to distract the electorate from what our government is really doing.
Which is making sure rich people and corporations pay next to nothing in taxes while the poor and working classes shoulder an immoral share of the tax burden.
Which is crippling our state, trapping us in a third world economy, a third-rate infrastructure, a pitiful public education system, inadequate health care for the poor and mentally ill, and overcrowded prisons.
So next time you describe yourself as a conservative, ask yourself what you mean by that.
Unfortunately, most Alabama white conservatives think they are for one thing when in fact they have been sold a bill of goods by elected officials who don’t give the first **** about this state, or its people, as long as corrupt corporate money keeps lining their pockets.
And if you think for one second that corrupt money is not what lures our elected officials to office, look at those embarrassing emails Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard sent to former governor Bob Riley. The only difference between Hubbard and the rest of the clowns is that he got caught and his emails publicized.
To be conservative in Alabama is to be in favor of corrupt government and always hoping that Mississippi, rather than Alabama, is number 50 on the latest ranking concerning education or the economy. To be conservative in Alabama means that being last or next to last in everything is okay.
Alabama needs progress, and its conservative ideology, embodied in the 1901 Constitution, stands in the way of any progress.
That’s what it means to be conservative in Alabama.