Foster Dickson's Blog, page 55
June 19, 2018
A Thousand Small Changes
When I was younger, a teenager and twenty-something, I stayed angry almost all the time. It was exhausting, to me and – I think – to the people around me. This went on from middle school through my mid-twenties: an ongoing frustration with both large and small aspects of life in 1980s and ’90s Alabama, a place that had side-stepped the latter twentieth century. That culture urged itself upstream through a reactionary regression against modern civil liberties and by choosing tactless leaders seeking perhaps to be our next big charismatic— we had a governor who acted like a monkey to mock the teaching of evolution, a lieutenant governor who peed in a jug on the senate floor, and a small-town judge who refused to take down his Ten Commandments plaque. The backwards trajectory of my Deep Southern home state’s culture in the 1980s and ’90s, coupled with a daily torrent of minor bullying and badgering by its man-on-the-street advocates, pushed me – and lots of others who felt like I did – into a constantly defensive mindset that was usually accompanied by surly, biting sense of humor.
Casual on-lookers in those days would sometimes ask me, why do you insist on being different? The answer: I just couldn’t go along with what I saw around me. And we know what happens to people who don’t go along . . . especially in the Deep South, a region with a substantial reputation for its handling of those who don’t go along.
Living as a detractor among the supporters meant that life was doubly difficult. Not only was the status quo not OK with me, the public reaction to my rejection of it only enhanced the negativity. I was, at once, living in a culture for which I expressed chagrin while living among people who felt free to express their chagrin at my chagrin. So, for most of a decade, from the mid-1980s into the mid-1990s, I did what many nonconformists in this situation do: I harbored deep animosity (even for some things I knew nothing about), I assumed that I was smarter than the people I criticized, I did little to learn about or understand what I disliked, and I sought ways to get as far as I could from all of it. In short, I adopted and embraced the worst, most self-righteous, most immature, and most regrettable response: I am better than what doesn’t suit me. When we’re young, everything can seem personal, and voluntarily succumbing to the rut of polarization – there’s you all, and there’s me – can seem the best option for facing one’s opponents.
Today, I regard the life I’ve spent in Alabama, among so many people with whom I disagree, as a privilege. It has been the learning experience of a lifetime to have been immersed for so long in a culture that willfully perpetuates its own worst problems. Don’t get me wrong: it’s still frustrating, and I do still get angry— but now, I don’t stay that way. For the last two decades, I have watched the glut of inane political maneuvers, the lack of candor about our obvious problems, the crippling paralysis of our preoccupation with the culture war, and the creeping seepage of our wealth out of the state, and being here to witness it has yielded in me a patience that I never thought possible and a sense of humor that I never would have imagined.
Some part of me believes that Alabama has actually put me through the seven stages of grief. It began with shock and denial at Alabama’s wild and unruly defiance of modern norms, then transitioned to pain and guilt over this being my home. Later, anger and bargaining took over, as I tried after college either to change the culture or leave, and that gave way to depression when neither of those things happened. The upward turn came when I began learning about our state and its complexities in my mid-20s, and the past seventeen years have been the reconstruction/working-through. And now here I am at acceptance and hope, with the admission that a particularly acidic sense of humor and the Biblical admonition to “shake their dust from your feet” often keep me going.
[image error]For most of a decade, I fought Alabama, and I lost. But that’s OK, because now, in middle age, I understand that it isn’t my job, my duty, my right, or my privilege to have the world look like I think it should. Besides, it’s also like the warden in Cool Hand Luke said: “There’s some men you just can’t reach.” It took me a while to learn that— and another deeply important notion: reach the ones that you can. Ultimately, I found my role as a foot soldier, as a writer and researcher, as an educator, as a pack mule for the new school.
Here in Alabama, there’s still no shortage of work to be done. The people, actions, and scenarios that stoked the decade-long temper tantrum of my youth are still here doing the same things: re-electing ineffective politicians, refusing any and all reform, blaming a host of boogeymen— but those of us with hope have hung in there so long that we’re beginning to see some light. I doubt that Bryan Stevenson imagined the grandeur of the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice when EJI was the struggling one-man operation that he described in the early chapters of Just Mercy. I also doubt that Doug Jones had an unwavering certainty about beating Roy Moore and becoming a US senator. While I’m neither Bryan Stevenson nor Doug Jones, my less-grandiose work is informed by a similar attitude: let’s get one necessary task done right, then let’s move to the next one and do it right, too.
Not long ago, an old college friend, who I haven’t seen in twenty years, contacted me and in her catching-up message, she made reference to my then-penchant for “melancholy seriousness.” With a mixture of embarrassment and concession, I reflected a little bit on her reminder of my morose attitude, and I think I know now why I dragged it around with me: when we’re young, the world is so exciting and confusing and infuriating that some of us try to swallow it whole, but then all we do is choke or get a belly ache. The risky vigor of youth can be compelling and endearing, and it can create some wonderfully surprising results, but here’s the truth: real social change is made by people who persevere, who hang in there for the long haul.
[image error]Alabama has whipped my butt more than once, and it will probably continue to whip my butt for my entire life. The bright side, for me and the people around me, is: I’m no longer some long-lost romantic, bitterly waiting for the revolution. Instead, I’m way past being angry and always busy with the hopeful sense that a thousand small changes can add up to a few, very necessary big ones.
June 18, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “‘Teachers’ (1984)”
One day recently, when I was roaming through Netflix, something told me to watch the movie, Teachers,a dark comedy from 1984. I remembered this movie from when I was a kid – I was 10 in 1984 – but since the movie was Rated R, I didn’t see it then. I mainly remembered that Ralph Macchio was in it, and that he played a bad kid this time, instead of the lovable whiner he was in the Karate Kid movies.
So, I watched the movie last night. The story is based around a set of burned-out teachers and administrators at an urban jungle high school that is being sued by one of its graduates who cannot read and write. Nick Nolte plays the main character, a drunkard, burn-out, former-hippie-radical social studies teacher who is now jaded about whether or not he can actually “save” kids and who wants to have sex with the lawsuit’s lead attorney who used to be one of his students . . . but that’s not what caught my interest.
June 14, 2018
“Welcome to Eclectic”
Name changes can be tricky—but here goes. I know that people can get confused, especially when a big company changes from one nonsensical name like Knology to another like WOW! (No one gets confused by names like Bill’s Hardware or Burger King, but naming a blog isn’t that simple.) Luckily I’m not a company, I don’t have any customers per se, I don’t have to change any letterhead, and I don’t send bills or draft anyone’s checking account, so there’s no danger of anybody worrying about this very much.
I’m changing the name of this blog from Pack Mule for the New School, a phrase that came from a poem I wrote back in 2004, to Welcome to Eclectic, which comes from a big sign that I pass on Alabama Highway 170 in Elmore County near Lake Martin. Welcome to Eclectic seems like a hell of a lot better title for what I’ve been doing all along. I do write about current social-justice issues, Southern culture, education, and Alabama politics, but also about a lot of other things, too, like obscure history, old movies, and memories from my Generation X upbringing. Pack Mule for the New School has a good ring to it, but let’s be honest: I’m writing – both in this blog and in my other writing work – about the myriad subjects that fall under the subtitle, which will remain the same: Deep Southern, Diversified & Re-Imagined.
So, Welcome to Eclectic.
June 13, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “Southern Baptists Re-branded”
I couldn’t believe it— a few weeks ago, I was kind of half-heartedly watching NBC Nightly News when out of the blue, smack in the middle of the broadcast, Brian Williams reported a very brief, less-than-one-minute story that the Southern Baptist Convention – this is no lie – had elected its first ever black president! I had watch it again to make sure that I understood right. The short video clip showed New Orleans pastor Fred Luter wiping away tears as he made his way to the podium in his starched-collared shirt. Brian Williams made some comment to the effect that this new leader’s election was a landmark event for the Southern Baptists, and then he moved on.
June 12, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “Not So Fast: Racists and Re-election”
The Deep Southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina did not contribute one single electoral vote to the re-election of Barack Obama. In fact, for most of the last three decades, the Republican Party has been counting on the South for those electoral votes (and those seats in Congress) in the same way that the Democratic Party did for many decades of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. (Even though Obama claimed North Carolina back in 2008, he didn’t pick it up this time around.) I have to wonder: despite many Deep Southern voters’ current love affair with the Republican Party, were Obama’s arguments for his ideas and programs not effective enough? Do the region’s social conservatism and Bible-Belt leanings not jive with his stances on hot-button issues like gay marriage and abortion rights? I mean, why don’t so many people in the Deep South identify with an Ivy League-educated liberal black lawyer from Chicago? It’s all very complicated. But, maybe if we look to Twitter for the answer, we’ll figure it out . . .
June 9, 2018
June 7, 2018
Alabamiana: “The Politics of Embarrassment,” 1998
It was twenty years ago today, on June 7, 1998, that The New York Times ran an editorial by Alabama native Howell Raines titled “The Politics of Embarrassment in Alabama.” Originally from Birmingham, Raines had a storied career at the Times, having joined the staff in the late 1970s, after his novel Whiskey Man and his collection of civil-rights oral histories My Soul is Rested were published. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1992 and became the Editorial Page Editor in 1993. The occasion for this opinion piece was a June 30 runoff election between two Republican contenders for Alabama governor: incumbent Fob James and challenger Wynton Blount III, the winner of whom would face Democrat Don Siegelman in the general election in the fall.
Though Raines’ editorial contained biting criticisms of his home state’s wild politics, he began with this understatement: “Alone among the states of its region, Alabama has not fully turned the New South corner.” The idea of the New South is a recurring, evolving, and ephemeral notion that the region could finally shed its unseemly qualities and move forward in more progressive ways. Famed editor Henry Grady had proclaimed a “New South” in a speech in 1886, and various periods of reform have re-incited the notion that a New South was coming. (The Encyclopedia of Alabama calls the period from 1875 – 1929 the “New South Era.”) Yet, in the period after the Civil Rights movement, it seemed a strong likelihood, especially in states that elected “New South governors” in 1970: Georgia’s Jimmy Carter, Florida’s Reuben Askew, and South Carolina’s John West. Alabama’s best good hope had been Albert Brewer, the lieutenant governor who served only a partial term after Gov. Lurleen Wallace died of cancer in 1968.
Getting a hold on Alabama politics in the 1990s requires context. In the 1970s and ’80s, Southern politics had to change dramatically after the formerly segregationist Democratic Party became (nationally) the party of Civil Rights. The stronghold of the “Solid South” crumbled, and post-movement Southern conservatism needed a new home, a need sensed by Republican Richard Nixon and exploited in his “Southern Strategy.” The 1965 Voting Rights Acts also changed the Southern electorate, and the 1970s had black candidates winning public offices for the first time since the 1870s. The changed region’s electoral votes may have gone to Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush in the 1980s, but state and local officeholders were much bluer than the 1980, ’84, and ’88 presidential maps showed. In Alabama, this odd mixture of old habits, big changes, and new reactions created, on the one hand, a biracial two-party system that necessitated cooperation and, on the other, a climate of party-switching that made for strange bedfellows.
Alabama’s gubernatorial races during these decades had consequently been confusing when it came to political parties. The outspoken segregationist Democrat George Wallace had regained the office in 1970 after coming in second in the Democratic primary, beating Albert Brewer in a runoff, then receiving 75% of the votes in the general election. (No Republican candidate even ran that year.) After being shot in May 1972 during his presidential run as an independent, Wallace was re-elected as a Democrat in the 1974 gubernatorial election, this time with 83% of the vote. A Republican, Elvin McCrary, did appear in the state’s general election, but he had once been a Democrat. In 1978, the general election pitted Republican-turned-Democrat Fob James against Republican Guy Hunt, so the choice was really between two Republicans. Then, in 1982, James did not seek re-election, and Democrat George Wallace returned for a fourth term as governor by defeating Montgomery mayor Emory Folmar, a long-time Republican. The 1986 election made Guy Hunt the first Republican in the governor’s office since Reconstruction, after an ugly Democratic primary between long-time Democrat Bill Baxley and Republican-turned-Democrat Charles Graddick. In 1990, Hunt was re-elected over Democrat Paul Hubbert, the leader of the state’s teachers’ union, but Hunt was convicted on ethics charges in 1993 and succeeded by Democratic lieutenant governor Jim Folsom, Jr. A year later, in 1994, Fob James ran again, this time as a Republican, and defeated Folsom by only a slim margin.
After nearly three decades of political-party maelstrom, which included the sporadic re-emergence of George Wallace’s dominant name and persona, the 1998 gubernatorial elections offered Alabamians three distinct choices: the New South progressivism of Don Siegelman, who campaigned on improving education through a new state lottery; the boisterous conservativism of Fob James, who had, as Raines put it, done “an ape imitation before the State Board of Education” and “announced that the Bill of Rights does not apply to Alabama;” or the modern, middle-class Republicanism of Wynton Blount III, who mainly wanted to be a “governor that won’t continually embarrass us.” About his view of the situation that the candidates were facing, in comparison to neighboring states, Raines wrote:
Alabama’s contrasting lack of progress can be linked directly to its penchant for electing buffoons. Because of the structure of state politics, only a progressive governor can change things. The Legislature is paralyzed by the gambling, timber and trial lobbies. The revenue system is a joke, having been tailored by Northern corporations to avoid paying fair taxes on their Alabama holdings.
Howell Raines’ lack of faith in Fob James was abundantly obvious. He called James “a contender for worst governor of the century” and “devoid of public-policy expertise.” Raines also added that James’ “record has defied any rational analysis” and that “he has kept the state in chaos by arguing that Alabama, which ranks near the bottom of every educational index, is spending too much on education.” The editorial ended with Raines semi-endorsing both Siegelman and Blount, mainly as antidotes to James’ politics. His conclusion: if voters deny James, “for the first time in living memory, Alabama will have a choice between two progressive candidates whose public appearances will be occasions of pride rather than dread.”
Other national media outlets covered that June 1998 runoff with slightly less opinion but with a similar set of facts. One CNN story was headlined “Alabama Republican Runoff Gets Nasty,” while the Washington Post titled theirs “In Alabama, A GOP squabble.” Both referenced the ugly name-calling that had marked the back-and-forth.
Ultimately, Republican voters in Alabama disagreed with Howell Raines’ bleak assessment of Fob James. A few weeks later, James won that June 30, 1998 runoff with 56% of the nearly half-million votes cast, thus defeating Wynton Blount III. However, in the general election, James lost to Don Siegelman by a margin of 57% to 42%, and Siegelman became the last Democratic governor of Alabama to date.
When the dust settled, Raines got his wish that Alabama get a progressive governor. However, the bad news for a Siegelman administration was equally embarrassing: after being elected on a pro-lottery platform in 1998, his proposed lottery was defeated in a 1999 public referendum. Among the main opponents to his plan were conservative Christians, who had mainly backed Fob James.
1998 was not the beginning of Alabama’s “politics of embarrassment,” nor was it the swan song. With an array of cringe-worthy symbolic gestures to choose from, the state’s politics has a solid tradition of rewarding grandstanding, misdirection, and personality conflicts in lieu of prioritizing policy solutions. So now, two decades later, as Alabama prepares for another round of elections, we still haven’t managed to “turn the New South corner”— but who knows what might happen in 2018?
Further reading:
“Alabama, Despite History of Unruly Politics, Has “Never See Anything Like This.” (Dec. 2017)
“Rep. Mo Brooks suggests rocks falling oceans causing seas to rise” (May 2018)
June 6, 2018
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “No Lonelier Place on Earth”
As perhaps the most pitifully lonely and isolated character in Carson McCullers’ 1940 novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, the socialist-revolutionary-turned-carnival-worker Jake Blount’s most notable acts are ranting and raving for workers’ rights, often when he is drunk, sometimes violently. His ongoing frustration that working people will not look at their socio-economic situation and make moves to change it drives him to behave in ways that are unacceptable anywhere, relegating him even further to the margins of society. Standing in the midst of Southern culture, perceiving the inherent and obvious inequalities, Blount is the reformer no one will listen to— at least in part because he seems like a total nut. And it drives him into madness and despair.
June 2, 2018
It’s time to #vote, #Alabama!
[image error]Primary elections are this Tuesday, June 5, in Alabama, so please go vote! We’ve actually got choices this go-round, with some Democrats and some Republicans, many of whom want to take office and change the stale culture of our politics. If you haven’t done your homework yet, there’s still time to get on the web and read up on the races and candidates in your area. If you live in Montgomery, here’s a link to the Election Center, which offers online sample ballots for both parties.
The importance of voting can’t be understated when we’re talking about a system that needs to change. Considering that, when turnout is only 30%, a candidate elected with just over half the vote – let’s say 55% – has really been elected by only 16% of registered voters. That’s not a majority when 16% have gotten their choice, 14% have not gotten their choice, and 70% had no say in who governs us, passes new laws, and creates our budgets.
Please go vote on June 5. Alabama can do better.
May 31, 2018
#TBT: Hands Uplifted for Freedom and Justice, 2010
It was quite an honor to be asked back in 2010 to have my hands bronzed for the Hands Uplifted for Freedom and Justice permanent exhibit at the Troy University Rosa Parks Museum. The exhibit features the hand-prints of people whose latter-day work in Civil Rights or social justice have continued the mission of the movement beyond its most significant period in the 1950s and 1960s.
