I hate Alabama, and I love Alabama too
By
Zac Showers
In 1999, when I was twenty-one, I got a tattoo, the only one I have. It’s not great, and today it is blown-out and embarrassing, so in that way it is perhaps even more appropriate. There are many reading this who remember when I got this tattoo, and how proud I was of it. I was about to graduate from the University of Alabama and move down to Florida for graduate school. I decided I needed a permanent reminder of Alabama, the state in which I was raised, and the state that had made me what I was. I was inordinately proud—I had a lot of misguided confidence in myself, and I was convinced I would be going out into the world to do great things, useful and positive things, and most importantly I wanted the world to know I was Alabamian and proud of it. I was going to show the world that Alabama ain’t that bad; I was ready to argue and defend and fistfight if necessary to protect the reputation of my home.
So I got the Alabama flag, a red X on a white field, tattooed on my left shoulder. Later, when I had a little more money to waste, I got the state motto tattooed around it. My shoulder says Audemus Jura Nostra Defendere, “we dare defend our rights.” In my own mind I was a warrior-poet with a badass tattoo, and I was most definitely NOT the scared little kid that sucked at sports and got made fun of for being obnoxious and generally not achieving a tenth of what my ego promised me. When I got to the University of Florida I was so adamant about Alabama, so vociferous in defending and promoting my home state, that my nickname became Alabama, and soon few people with whom I came into contact even knew that I had another name.
I envy that twenty-one-year-old baby. I envy his fire, his energy, and his optimism. Now that I have become a man, I am sad to say I have put away those childish things. Twenty years later, I am the cynic to beat all cynics. I hate myself, I hate the world and what it has become, and I have often expressed, both on Facebook and elsewhere, how much I hate Alabama. No amount of apologist nonsense can wipe away what Alabama is, was, and has become. Faulkner famously said the past is never dead, it isn’t even past, and nowhere is this more true than in Alabama. I can promise that I feel it deeply every time the news picks another awful headline about the area I consider family, the land I loved and clung to as if there were no other. What my home state has done and is doing to black people, to poor people, to the indigent and the sick and the vulnerable amongst us is unconscionable. We have hated the foreign and the gay and the different and the weak with a fury unmatched in the other forty-nine, and we have backed our viciousness with mean-spirited laws and even more mean-spirited social ostracism that, all too often, has resulted in violence and death for those least able to defend themselves. We have abandoned that which is morally right merely to champion the politically expedient. Our desire to provide wealth and power for ourselves, to make money at the expense of the desperate, and above all to curb-stomp those already lying on the ground in order to make ourselves appear triumphant and fearless is made even more heinous because we wrap it in a flag and nail it to a cross. We used to thank God for Mississippi, but even Mississippi cannot touch us when it comes to sheer cruelty. All the while, we pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves that THIS is what Jesus would have us do.
And so the world makes fun of us, and so we deserve it. Alabama is nothing but racism, incest and stupidity, they say. Alabama is the butt of every cheap joke, as it has been for years, and the inhabitants of other states can feel good about themselves because at least they aren’t Alabama. Every one of those jokes has just enough truth in it to make it hurt. Make no mistake; it hurts to have the state that raised me so ridiculed. It hurts even more to have Alabama reinforce the stereotypes that make it a laughingstock. Those of us from Alabama, even those who left long ago and never plan on going back, wear Alabama all over ourselves. I could deny it if I wished; I could deny my heritage until the cock crowed a dozen times, but no one would believe me. I code Alabama; I am white and fat and scraggly and bearded. I wear a baseball cap every day; my hair is long and greasy. When I open my mouth to speak, the accent is so thick it could be poured on a waffle, and try as I might I have never been able to rid myself of it. No amount of apology, no amount of Ph.D.-having, no distance can separate me from the Alabama in my speech, in my walk, and in my veins. Every single day I am reminded that I am white trash from a garbage state, and if my children are unfortunate enough to grow up like their father they too will wear that crimson A and be derided for it.
Sometimes Alabama tries to make us proud; sometimes we can cheer at the football game or mention that the moon rocket was built there, but for every step forward we must watch while another one of our leaders makes himself infamous for being stupid and cruel, and takes all of us three steps back. Ten years ago I stopped telling people I had a tattoo; five years ago I almost got it lasered off. Yesterday—yesterday I could have scraped it off myself with a cheese grater.
I am ashamed. I am hopeless, I am angry, and I am deeply, deeply sad.
But here’s the thing. There are two Alabamas. There is the one we see, the one that festoons CNN and Reddit, the one that makes everyone else feel superior, the one whose ignorance is surpassed only by its steadfast meanness, and there is the other one that we don’t see. In my shame and fury I forgot about that second one, but that second Alabama is Alabama too.
When Bull Conner unleashed the dogs, the batons, and the firehoses on innocent children in Birmingham, that was Alabama. When the children lined up in their hundreds and faced down certain injury and likely death, that was Alabama too.
When the state police blocked the Edmund Pettis Bridge and cracked the skulls of those marching to vote, those who dared defend their rights, that was Alabama. But the congregations marching against them, singing gospel songs and turning the other cheek, that was Alabama too.
When the mob screamed racial slurs and promised all sorts of bloody retribution to children, small children, who had made the mistake of trying to go to school, that was Alabama. But the teacher who loved those babies and taught them, despite what kind of lover she would be called, she was Alabama too.
When the girl who grows up “country poor,” who lives in a broken trailer and stinks because they have no running water and wears her brother’s shirt to school without a bra because she has nothing, literally nothing, that she can call her own, that is Alabama. But the social worker who knows what it’s like to be poor because she was poor, who lets her shower in the locker room and takes her to Wal-Mart to buy whatever a social worker’s salary can provide, she is Alabama too. When the boy they call faggot gets bullied and punched and spat on every day at school, only to go home and have his loving parents tell him he’s no son of theirs, he’s hellbound, and God will punish him for being who he is, that’s Alabama. But when he gets out of there and finds people who love him, who will defend his right to be what he was born to be, that is Alabama too.
When a grown man gets a fourteen-year-old girl pregnant, promising her all sorts of pretty lies he never intends to honor, and then joins in with her parents and his friends to call her slut and whore, that is Alabama. When the Christian people outside the clinic also call her slut and whore, tell her she will burn in hell for what she is about to do, scream “baby-killer” and spit on her while praising Jesus for the opportunity to do so, that is likewise Alabama. But inside those doors there is a nurse who will hold her while she sobs like the child she is, and that is Alabama too.
For every bit of incessant wickedness, or ignorance, or stupidity that the world recognizes as Alabama, there is a person born and raised in Alabama who has spent their life trying to make it stop. Oftentimes the odds are ten, a hundred, a thousand to one, yet Alabama defends its rights, even against itself.
The worst people I have ever known are Alabama; the best I have ever known are Alabama too. I am not one to believe in hope, and I take solace in very little, but Mr. Rogers taught us to look for the helpers, and I am trying. When I see Alabama, when I make fun of it or hide from it or apologize for it, I need to train myself to see the other Alabama too.
So I will keep my sad little busted-out Alabama (tat)too.
Because
I hate Alabama. I love #Alabamatoo.
TL;DR: Roll Tide.
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