The death of racism has been greatly exaggerated.
That’s what Alabama’s current AG and U.S. Senate hopeful Steve Marshall said. With a straight face. Not a hint of a giggle. He’s a practiced panderer, that Steve Marshall. A real pro at it.
You could almost believe him – a lot of white people who want to believe him definitely believe him – when he told the aptly named “Rightside Radio” hosts that Black people in Alabama’s two congressional districts currently represented by Black lawmakers would be better off with Republican reps.
Because y’all just don’t understand. The white Republicans have been trying so hard to help Black people in this state. So hard.
Why, just look at what Marshall and his office have done for Black folks while he’s been the state’s AG.
When it was widely reported that raw sewage was flowing through the streets of cities in the state’s Black Belt, and that disease and illness were being caused by the unsanitary, 17th-century conditions, Marshall and his office sprang into action. He toured the area. Talked to locals. Sued the federal government to get proper wastewater infrastructure in place. And when the Trump administration tried to undo what little had been done to rectify the situation, Marshall, head of the Republican Attorneys General Association, used his clout to put a stop to that and protect the mostly Black citizens of some of the country’s poorest counties.
Nah. I’m joking. He didn’t do any of that.
In fact, as far as I know, Marshall is unaware of the Black Belt existing.
In fairness, so I’m not just picking on Marshall, no other white Republican did anything either. They continued to act as if raw sewage flowing through the streets in the 2020s is just something that happens sometimes.
You know who did do something, though?
Terri Sewell. The lady who represents that district. Pretty much all of the work that has been put in – the work that white Republicans have tried to stop – to cure the waste water catastrophe in Lowndes and other counties has been directly tied to the work put in by Sewell and a number of Black activists and Black lawmakers who refused to stand idly by and accept such an atrocity in this day and age.
And it doesn’t stop there.
Each legislative session is filled with example after example of white Republicans being absolutely clueless to the daily life and struggles of the average Black Alabamian. Not because it’s impossible for a white person to have a basic understanding of those lives – because most of the struggles of the average Black Alabamian are very similar to the struggles of the average white Alabamian – but because they refuse to acknowledge the history and circumstances that have led to many of those struggles.
Time after time, men like Marshall cast blame on entire communities of minority people for current realities that are directly caused by past injustices and misdeeds. And that refusal to acknowledge the causation of the struggle has directly impacted their willingness to do the things that might aid those communities in overcoming the problems.
Because in today’s Republican Party, there is no political advantage gained by righting historic wrongs and aiding struggling minority communities. There is only one advantage in downplaying the historical significance, questioning its impact, and vilifying the victims of that history.
Here’s how bad it can get: A few years ago, a police department in Alabama went to Marshall’s office with clear evidence of underage minority workers employed at an auto parts supplier near Montgomery. The police department was concerned about human trafficking – that Hispanic kids were being trafficked into the state to work for cheap at that plant and others.
But there was no political advantage to doing something about it.
And that’s exactly what Marshall did – nothing.
It took the Reuters news organization exposing it and the Department of Justice under Joe Biden to get something done. As far as I know – and I’m more than open to anyone who would like to correct this – not a single Alabama Republican lawmaker uttered a word of condemnation about this.
Kids, man. No one spoke up to help these kids.
And we all know why.
Or we would if racism wasn’t so dead already.
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