Friday, May 25, 2007

Crip walkin' through HISTORY

I wanted to give my dear gentle readers a positive story to start their Memorial Day Weekend out right.

And so, you’ll be happy to know that Alabama is going to apologize for slavery.

As you might have guessed, it was, and still is, a controversial issue, and the AL state House of Representatives passed it on an unrecorded voice vote. Tricky, eh?

But it’s kind of a nice apology, actually:

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF ALABAMA, BOTH HOUSES THEREOF CONCURRING, That we express our profound regret for the State of Alabama's role in salvery and that we apologize for the wrongs inflicted by slavery and its after effects in the United States of America; we express our deepest sympathies and solemn regrets to those who were enslaved and the descendants of slaves, who were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States; and we encourage the remembrance and teaching about the history of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and modern day slavery, to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated.

Wow. I have to say I am impressed by the lack of ass-covering going on in this little ole’ resolution. Oops. Wait a minute…

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That it is the intent of the Legislature that this resolution shall not be used in, or be the basis of, any type of litigation.

Well, c'mon, their attorneys MADE them put that in. Legalese, you know.

But, if you look beyond the perfunctory NYTimes coverage of the event, you’ll see that there is quite a bit of crankiness afoot in the lesser publications of Dixieland.

Like this guy who left a comment in the Montgomery Advertiser:

That is the biggest crock of ....... What was done, was done, why try to change things now, it's HISTORY!

What if all of the whites got together and demanded an apology for how they all have been treated since this took place, Black History Month, Miss Black America Pagent (sic), African American Spring Break, ETC..., ETC...! Could you imagine the outbreak it would cause if we did stand up and ask for this?

Give me a break!! New low for the South!
What's next? This is B/S, we are now the minority, no longer the majority...what else do yall want?! Everything has been handed to you and still is...I'm reminded of this saying....Never bite the hand that feeds you!
Hhhhmmmm

First of all, I like how he lets you know right off the bat that he is well informed on the subject of HISTORY. Because he’s correctly identified the events of the past as being HISTORY. And you can’t change HISTORY. Oh, you can try. Apparently, apologizing is one way that people try to change HISTORY. But it doesn’t work. Just so you know.

Secondly, regarding the Miss Black America Pageant, although I do generally advocate the humiliation and debasement of anyone involved in ANY kind of beauty pageant, I think that they should be required to apologize to us collectively, and that there is no reason to force any one particular pageant to apologize in advance of the others. Except for that Miss Universe thing. Because, well, c’mon. Humans only. So racist.

Plus, I think a country that also sees fit to recognize National Bread Machine Baking Month, National Salsa Month, National Polka Month, National Cat Health Month, National Umbrella Month, National Soft Pretzel Month, National Iced Tea Month, and National Rosacea Awareness Month, can also probably stand to recognize the history of the African American people, don’t you? Let’s not be stingy with the recognizing, my people.

And as for African American Spring Break…WHERE THE FUCK DO I SIGN UP FOR THIS??? Because I bet the music is AWESOME.

And lastly, dude, I think you must be some kind of time traveler, sent to Montgomery, Alabama to subvert the future where African Americans are in the majority, and have invented machines that hand them whatever they want (even when they bite them!) by infiltrating the comments features of many of the soft news and trade publications of the South. Well, it won’t work, dude. Because now that Alabama has apologized for slavery, the last obstacle to the ascendancy of the African American race has been obliterated. So it’s too little, too fucking late for all y’all.

Dude, if only you'd insisted that they apologize for BET. You might have had me then.

Anyway, according to an email I got from one of my heartland relatives, this we are all going to now have to learn Ebonics. So, I’m off to study for a couple of days. I’ll see y’all Tuesday. Fo shizzle.


12 comments:

SkylersDad said...

This just in:

1/2 of Alabama electricity now generated by George Wallace spinning in his grave...

Unknown said...

I'm pretty the correct term for a humans-only beauty pageant isn't racist, it's specious.

Larry Jones said...

It's good 'Bama's getting us on board the Train of Regret and Apology, because in a few years, when we have a little distance on the Bush Administration, the whole county's gonna have a lot of apologizin' to do.

kiki said...

how many months are there in a year?

kittens not kids said...

larry jones: i have been apologizing since day ONE of this fool-ass administration.

but hey, props to alabama.

i'll skip the "history is written by the victors" speech. also the one about the instability of the past and the non-fixedness of "history" as a narrative construct. possibly some kind of superduo (ambiguously gay duo?) of foucault and derrida could take that argument to its proper limits.

good post, VikkiTikkiTavi.

vikkitikkitavi said...

SkyDad: After that last Republican debate, I'm thinking that California should harness the power of spinning Ronald Reagan.

Michael: Right, and the correct term for using "specious" as the punchline in a joke: not funny.

Larry: I'm not worried. Apparently we can wait 150 years to apologize, and everyone will still be pretty impressed.

Kiki: We have twelve, I don't know how many y'all have down under. Hey, so, does your year run counterclockwise as well?

Kbryna: Thanks, and good idea on skipping all those speeches. I'm a little hung over, and deconstruction is so noisy.

Megan said...

We had a similar debate in Virginia this past legislative session. I believe it resulted in no apology. A friend of mine posted on her blog a bill of sale for her GRANDMOTHER. And for that we should not apologize? Come ON.

Moderator said...

Thanks for this insightful post. I'd nearly forgotten Alabama still existed.

GETkristiLOVE said...

"Never bite the hand that feeds you."

Wha...?! That guy ever hear of Squanto?

Megan said...

GREATgrandmother. . .my bad.

kiki said...

sorry, i should have said "how many 'months' are there in a year?"

i wonder though, you probably do too, how many of these "(insert ludicrous cause here) Month" we can have!

Cisco said...

Morons like that will always be around to wine about who gets things handed out to others while his hand are probably extended out as well.