The Alabama Constitution, approved in 1901 to entrench white supremacy, still has language regarding segregated schools, poll taxes and bans on interracial marriage.
But a seismic change could be in store. Alabama voters on Nov. 8 will decide whether to ratify a new constitution that strips out the Jim Crow-era language. It would also reorganize the unwieldy governing document, which has been amended 978 times and tops over 400,000 words. The Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama says the size makes it the longest such document in the world.
Voters in 2020 authorized state officials and lawmakers to cut the racist language that lingers from the era of racial segregation. That work, finally completed, now goes back before voters to ratify the Alabama Constitution of 2022.
Proponents say the changes that will demonstrate Alabama is a different place today — and streamline the sprawling constitution to be more user-friendly.
“This is an effort to show, not only the rest of the country, but the world who we are today,” said state Rep. Merika Coleman, one of the lawmakers who led the bipartisan effort.
However, it does not make the policy changes that some reformers have sought — such as giving counties more home rule and removing tax earmarks, which dedicate taxes to a specific program or purpose.
The Alabama Constitution of 1901 is currently 420,000 words. The new Constitution would shrink slightly to 373,274 words, but that is three times more words than the next-longest state constitution – Texas, according to an analysis from the PARCA.
“Power will still be concentrated in the Legislature and local matters, like whether counties can regulate golf carts on public roads, will continue to clutter the state constitution … And it will still be the world’s longest constitution. Even with the organizational fixes, the document is a confusing mess,” Spencer wrote.
The state committee that worked on the recompilation and the lawmakers who approved it only had a narrow charge to delete racist or repeated language and to reorganize, according to Coleman. However, she is hopeful the ratification will be approved.
Saturday’s Donald Trump rally in Nevada naturally featured some extremist comments, chief among them a false—and racist—tirade from Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who claimed that Democrats are in favor of “reparations” because they are “pro-crime.”
Tuberville’s speech also called for an end to food stamps, education reform, and closing the border. “No, they’re not soft on crime, they’re pro-crime. They want crime!” Tuberville said to the fringe crowd.
“They want reparations because they think the people who do the crime are owed that. Bullshit!” The remarks at an event intended to promote Stop the Steal loons like Adam Laxalt, a Senate candidate, drew the ire of an army of critics on social media.
Among them was MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, who likened the Alabama senator’s comments to the rhetoric of segregationist figures like George Wallace and Lester Maddox.
Tommy Tuberville is an American retired college football coach and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Alabama since 2021. Before entering politics, Tuberville was the head football coach at Auburn University from 1999 to 2008. He was also the head football coach at the University of Mississippi from 1995 to 1998, Texas Tech University from 2010 to 2012, and the University of Cincinnati from 2013 to 2016.
Ordinarily, when Sen. Tommy Tuberville generates national headlines, it’s because he’s said something foolish about subjects he really ought to know. Shortly after getting elected nearly two years ago, for example, the Alabama Republican flubbed the basics of World War II. The former college football coach also struggled with how recent presidential elections have been resolved.
A few months later, he misstated the three branches of the United States government. Earlier this year, Tuberville made the case that Russia invaded Ukraine in order to acquire “more farmland,” which really didn’t make any sense.
But in each of these instances, the GOP senator’s rhetoric made him appear foolish, not sinister. As the Associated Press reported, the Alabaman’s message took a toxic turn at a rally over the weekend.
More needs to be done to address racism in motorsport, according to an F1 employee who experienced repeated use of the n-word by coworkers at the Aston Martin F1 team.
Sebastian Vettel’s vehicles were built in part by Aidan Louw, 25, a laminator who is of mixed race and was born in South Africa. He works at the famous F1 team’s base close to Silverstone.
After the F1 employee joined the group in February as a supplier’s agency contractor, the abuse began.
I was told, “Look, if you’ve got an issue with how we speak here, it’s simply how we speak,” before I had even entered my workplace.
The abuse allegedly started almost immediately with racial epithets, according to Mr. Louw.
“It changed from “brownie” to “darkie”; I wasn’t called “Aidy” or anything similar. I was addressed as “n** n**” and “brownie,” respectively.
“I eventually processed what was going toward the end of the duration.”
It had taken me shift cycle after shift cycle of abuse before I finally said no when I was being called a n*****, which ranged from the phrases n** n** and brownie to plain n*****.”
Aidan is a dual citizen of the UK and South Africa and is in possession of two passports. He claims that one particularly insulting slur from the apartheid era was included in the abuse.
Aidan experienced homophobic harassment in addition to racism: “I divulged to someone that I had a partner in my teen years and that was it – in that split second everything turned… ”
They started trying to break me down as a man, as an individual, and as a human as soon as they learned about that tiny bit of information.
As organizations tackle topics related to race and equity in an unprecedented way, there’s a tacit tension constraining and constricting many of these very necessary, overdue conversations. Racist
Indeed, many White colleagues (in particular) are deathly afraid of being labeled “racist,” so instead of engaging, questioning, learning and contributing, they largely sit on the sidelines nervously itching for a topic change.
Much of that discomfort is the result of an anachronistic, fundamentally skewed concept of what racism actually looks like and what the term “racist” really means in 2022.
As Equal Justice Initiative Founder Bryan Stevenson reflects on the “emancipation” of African Americans post-Civil War, he insists, “Slavery doesn’t end. It just evolves.”
Similarly, racism didn’t end. It too evolved. With the acknowledgement of this tragic “evolution,” it’s important to recognize that what is considered and meant by the term “racist” today is very different from what was considered “racist” in decades or centuries past—and the conflation of the two oftentimes becomes a stumbling block for productive exchange and real progress.
Indeed, if we’re to effectively navigate “racism 3.0” (the post-Civil Rights Movement era), we must use more evolved, nuanced language about race, and immediately labeling someone a “racist” because they said or did something racially offensive can oftentimes create more problems than it solves as a result of this fundamental misunderstanding.
Given the country’s brutal history of white supremacy and racial violence, the term “racist” typically conjures up the worst mental images—Bull Conner ordering children to be hosed, KKK members torching homes and churches, white supremacists lynching men, women and children and leaving their bodies hanging to terrorize the Black community, etc.
As a result, for many (particularly within the White community), they consider those people the racists. Indeed, that stunted mental paradigm creates a “good/bad binary” as Robin DiAngelo explains in her New York Times bestseller White Fragility.
Some Lino Lakes residents woke up Saturday to find white bags of rice containing racist messages by white supremacists on their properties, according to the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
CAIR-Minnesota condemned the action in a press release sent out Sunday. Leaders said they welcomed a statement from state senator Roger Chamberlain, (R-Lino Lakes) expressing “zero tolerance for this behavior.”
“I condemn these racist acts in the strongest possible way,” the senator said in a statement Sunday. “These cowardly actions are an attempt to sow seeds of hate and division in our community. It will have the opposite effect – those seeds will not take root; it will unite us against this evil. Make no mistake, I have zero tolerance for this behavior. It should be investigated and fully prosecuted as a criminal act. I support law enforcement efforts to find the perpetrators and ensure they are dealt with accordingly.”
The action is on the heels of a similar incident by White supremacists last week in Cottage Grove when residents there found racist flyers in bags of rice. Police are still investigating.
“The group these flyers direct people to is linked to white supremacists,” Police Chief Pete Koerner wrote on Facebook. “While the information in these flyers isn’t illegal, we agree that it is disturbing. The Cottage Grove Police Department is here to protect all of our neighbors of all races, genders, religions, etc.”
“We condemn this latest racist incident targeting our communities and welcome Senator Chamberlain’s expression of ‘zero tolerance for hate,” Jaylani Hussein, CAIR-MN’s executive director said in a press release Sunday about the Lino Lakes incidents. “We join in the call for law enforcement authorities to investigate all such hate incidents and to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
He added that the American Muslim community and CAIR stand in solidarity with all those challenging anti-Black racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, white supremacy, and all other forms of bigotry.
There is a common thread between the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, Texas, and Laguna Beach, California, the January 6 insurrection, everyday police lethality, and the overturning of Roe v Wade. Add to this list the critical race theory and queer American discussion bans in public schools across the country. It is the tangled web of violent white supremacy, or at least, the threat of it.
The goal here has always been to terrorize, cower, exploit and marginalize anyone who isn’t a straight white male. Although white males are the primary practitioners of violent white supremacy, one need only subscribe to its main tenets – racism, elitism, narcissism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and control over the bodies of women and the marginalized – to be one.
White males who are die-hard white supremacists and their fellow travelers have and will continue to create hypothetical hurts, slights, and people (especially theoretical children) to create their ideal nation-state. One that fully represents their worldview while fully denying the rights and humanity of everyone else. And while hate may be the trigger for white supremacists to commit their domestic terrorism, power and the pursuit of such is the everlasting fuel for white supremacy.
The recent near-violent incident in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho is yet another example of this seeming contradiction between the rhetoric around protecting children (in this case, from the harms of queer “indoctrination”) and the planned harm of hurting and killing people over queerness.
For many white males and their allies, preserving access to military-grade firearms is just as important as legislating against reproductive care and telling children the truth. President Barack Obama once said, when white people “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them”. But for many white males regardless of socioeconomic status, and other converts, violence and the threat of it is their Bible. Defending the rights of hypothetical children provides the perfect cover for their violent means and ends. They have decided that if marginalized “others” have to endure trauma and die in order for them to hold onto power, then so be it.
On May 14 in Buffalo, New York, an 18-year-old named Payton Gendron, armed with a semi-automatic weapon and a violent, racial ideology called the “Great Replacement” theory, opened fire at a Tops supermarket in Masten.
Gendron methodically killed 10 people and injured three. Eleven of the thirteen people shot were Black.
In conversations surrounding the shooting, sources have discussed the two-front war of white supremacy and racial segregation, but these issues are not separate.
They are one and the same, and the city of Pittsburgh harbors the same roots of systemic racism that prop up shootings like the one in Buffalo.
As details on the Buffalo shooting unraveled, it became obvious that the attack was a hate crime. Prior to the massacre, Gendron had posted a racist manifesto online.
The N-word was written on the gun he used in his attack. He had researched the local demographics to ensure that he could kill as many Black people as possible and drove over three hours to take advantage of the neighborhood’s concentration of Black people.
The shooting was a strategic move, purposefully targeting a grocery store that lay in the center of Buffalo’s Black community. But how did Black residents become so concentrated in the region?
The city of Buffalo has a long history of racial inequality and segregation within its schools, housing developments and health systems. The community is victim to abysmal school funding, lack of affordable housing and poor health outcomes because of these forms of racism.
If you are familiar with Pittsburgh’s history, then these details may sound alarmingly familiar. Pittsburgh’s history of racial inequality mirrors Buffalo’s.
Before Gendron’s attack, the community of Masten was already experiencing compounding layers of racism. The city of Buffalo is one of the most segregated cities in the United States.
As the Black population began to increase after World War l, racist restrictive covenants barred Black residents from buying homes.
Less than an hour after the city of Buffalo, New York, took a 123-second pause on Saturday to memorialize the victims of the terrorist attack that shook the city a week ago, June Bloomfield held her own moment of silence.
Standing outside the Tops Market, the only grocery store in the area, where white supremacy stole the lives of 10 people, Bloomfield’s tears were obscured by sunglasses, a mask and her quiet resolve.
“It’s not fear”, she said, trying to summon the words that described her feelings. “It’s … All I can say is, I’m not afraid.”
On Saturday, the residents of Buffalo’s East Side took part in the traditional Black gathering ritual that finds solace in music, food and – most of all –togetherness. Buffalo
Throughout the day, a dense, almost palpable fog of grief wafted through Buffalo’s East Side air, sitting on the collective chest of an entire neighborhood, refusing to move.
Yet, alongside the alchemy of producing Black joy from pain, there arose one almost unanimous consensus among the unpublished, uncounted victims.
If the alleged mass murderer’s goal was to inflict terror, then the man responsible for this trauma failed miserably. There is no terror here.
For Sabrina Madison, the violent tragedy served as both a teaching moment for her daughters and an opportunity for the city to eliminate the daily dose of white supremacy swallowed by the people who live on the East Side.
Madison hoped that the events would awaken people everywhere to the inequality that exists in neighborhoods like the one where she was born and raised but she also knows that it won’t be easy – someone must make it happen.
“I drive my 12-year-old past here to her art lessons every day,” said the mother of two. “When this happened, I explained to her what happened and we started talking about what a food desert was and how it affects the community.”
In The News is a roundup of stories from The Canadian military Press designed to kickstart your day. Here is what’s on the radar of our editors for the morning of Apr. 25.
What we are watching in Canada.
OTTAWA — Defence Minister Anita Anand will release a highly anticipated report this morning that is expected to take the military to task for not doing enough to address racism in the ranks over the past two decades.
The report is the result of a yearlong review by a panel of retired Canadian Armed Forces members tasked with identifying ways to address hate, racism and discrimination in the ranks.
The review was launched in December 2020 amid concerns about systemic racism in the military, as well as reported links between some members with hate groups, right-wing extremism and white supremacy.
An internal document summarizing the panel’s key findings obtained by The Canadian Press says the military will be criticized for failing to act on past reviews and recommendations to address the problem over the past 20 years.
“The report strongly reiterates that the Defence Team must place a greater emphasis on previous recommendations that were made as it believes the organization has the knowledge and expertise to implement them in order to ensure effective and meaningful culture change,” reads the summary dated April 14.
The panel also calls for the military to “elevate the voices of those with lived experiences,” and puts an emphasis on tracking the implementation of past recommendations to ensure real culture change in the ranks.
OTTAWA — The federal government has until the end of the day to call an inquiry into its use of the Emergencies Act during the blockades at Canadian border crossings and in Ottawa earlier this year.
Millions of dollars in trade was halted for days at several border crossings and the streets of downtown Ottawa were flooded with demonstrators as part of a national convoy of big-rigs and trucks protesting COVID-19 restrictions.
In New York words and ideas used to describe discrimination against members of historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups have seemingly exploded into the lexicon: systemic inequality, privilege, white supremacy, the patriarchy, etc.
In some senses, the apparent novelty is deceiving: most of these concepts have been around for decades in academic and activist circles. None of these ideas are genuinely new.
Nonetheless, our new study published in Social Science Computer Review demonstrates that a substantial shift in discourse has occurred – at least in the US media. And it may have important social and political implications.
Analyzing 27m news articles published in 47 popular news media outlets between 1970 and 2019, we find that there was a rapid uptick in the use of words related to prejudice and discrimination beginning in the early 2010s. These shifts occurred in left- and right-leaning media alike. New York
Moreover, the changes are not limited to print media. Using data from the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer, we found that the major shifts observed in print media seem to have been mirrored in television news coverage as well.
Just as striking as the magnitude of the shifts is when they occurred. The attitudinal and discursive changes don’t seem to be a response to anything in particular.
For instance, given that the shifts became increasingly pronounced in 2012, one might assume they are straightforwardly a response to the killing of Trayvon Martin. However, it is harder to explain why we see similar changes in discussion and public attitudes with respect to sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism – all at roughly the same time as we observe the spikes related to race.
The shifts with respect to sexism and misogyny, for instance, were not a response to #MeToo. They preceded the emergence of #MeToo by a few years, and may help explain why the movement was able to achieve the impact it did.