Why Roy Moore Why?
Soooo Roy Moore is running for the US Senate….apparently back in 1865. There is so much wrong with Roy. But I need to get off my chest several areas of disagreement where he just doesn’t get it…or maybe does and we won’t admit it?
I spend a lot of time on conservative chat boards. And those from Alabama are angry. The message I get is they are tired of the greater US telling them how to vote. They want to determine their own direction and if that involves voting for a teen loving, racist with a penchant for slavery that is their right.
And to a small degree some of us in the North are beginning to see their point on wanting to vote their own people in. There is something very appealing about not letting a broken national party or extremist groups control your government. Up here in Minnesota national and statewide extremist groups forced our Senator Al Franken out last week. And now they are whetting their lips to replace him with an extreme progressive of their choice. And the Democratic Congressional leadership is touting their clean the cabinets approach to leadership voters be damned strategy. Apparently they forgot elections are local and that the locals may think differently.
Which brings us back to Alabama. Roy Moore is a blatant racist. He doesn’t refer to people with any sort to of respect. Yet these same minorities are still going to rallies! With Black representing 27% of the voting public only 24% of anyone else needs to show up to change the metrics. Yet….the race appears on paper close. So clearly either the minority base and Democrats there just don’t care or there is something about his message that appeals to them. What is it?
Roy Moore’s main theme is similar to Trump’s in that he hearkens back to a time when things were supposedly better. As a student my understanding of Alabama history is a little different. Especially given I was raised in Minnesota. I was raised to believe that Blacks were enslaved and then oppressed by Jim Crowe laws. The Civil Rights Movement supposedly freed Blacks there and provided the right to vote. And there is the problem isn’t it? For all of the efforts did the movement really deliver the economic advantages? Did it decrease the wage disparities between Blacks and Whites? If the goal was to desegregate schools why did both sides promptly re-segregate and have frankly not made it much of an issue if the papers within the community are to be believed. Could the horrible era of share cropping be seen as a more positive period where families lived together. (in dire poverty) And farmed the land. (for which they were paid pennies on the dollar)Could this period be seen from a family perspective as a better time? Apparently so if the chat boards and local media are to believed.
I guess as a liberal I would hope not. But then again what can I say here in Minnesota. Minnesota’s segregation is much much much more pronounced than Alabama’s. Our income disparity and education disparity is much more pronounced. And we have a so called progressive state. Progressive Whites and their Conservative counterparts live in segregated enclaves and view Blacks as lazy, stupid, others. Like their counterparts in Alabama these comments had been kept in safe spaces among themselves. But now people are talking openly about the good old days. How the Black family, (like they know any) is broken and that if Blacks only tried they could work their way out of their plight.
In both cases the voters have little to no contact with minorities. Work with few minorities. And certainly would never live with them save for the odd biracial family. (I live in one they are great!!)But in both cases “acceptable” Blacks are given “opportunities”. But you have to undress who you are at the door and put on the language and clothes of the majority to fit in to survive. But even then there are limits to what one can expect to accomplish. And people always assume it was your race and not performance that got you there. The glass ceiling is very very thick.
And so all this brings us back to Roy Moore. Instead of asking why Roy Moore? The question we should be asking is why not Roy Moore? Why are we so surprised that someone so obvious in their racism, so blatant in their nostalgia for a the old days is the leading candidate for a senate seat? Frankly, why didn’t he show up earlier?
It’s not like as a country we ever did the heavy lifting to heal after the Civil War. We have for over 100 years put band aids on the gaping wounds and declared the patient healed. We chose not to build an economic system that was deep and competitive for all. We chose to build public housing and prisons and if we were honest the prison like apartments in minority communities to separate ourselves. We chose to feed the poor instead of helping them get the social equity that gets jobs, and credit. And minorities, Blacks in particular have chosen to in many cases to accept the “golden” (leaden) handcuffs. Too few of us have been able to get out of “just getting by” and have allowed ourselves to be housed away like library books on a shelf on the 10 floor.
I am not going to give the rah rah positive there is hope speech. Frankly, I don’t think any of the major groups here in America want to heal. Every group is unwilling to give up their advantages. Even if those “advantages” are tearing our country and communities apart. I want to see hope here. But hope seems to have left the country. Maybe Trump will let it back in or….maybe not. Either way why are we so up in arms over Roy Moore? He is simply a reflection of what this country sees in the mirror if we bother to look at ourselves honestly.
