Hopefully third time’s a charm for lawmakers to remove racist language from Alabama’s state constitution.
According to reports from WRBL, an effort to redo Alabama’s constitution is currently underway to authorize lawmakers to do so on the state’s ballot this year. This is the state’s third time trying to remove racist language from the state’s constitution with prior efforts failing in 2004 and 2012. This time the move has been supported and any organized opposition has yet come forward amidst this year’s election.
Rep. Merika Coleman told WRBL, “What we are trying to do with this small measure is to bring the Alabama Constitution into the 21st century and be more reflective of who we are as a state now.”
The Alabama constitution was written around the tenets of Jim Crow as a way to make white supremacy the law. So you already know that means poll taxes are cool, interracial marriages are not, and schools are segregated.
Since then those things have gradually been removed in the almost 120 years since the Alabama constitution was ratified, with the measure being more symbolic than anything. The legislation will allow lawmakers to clean up the document by removing the racist language as well as any duplicate sections.
This should be easy for lawmakers to do, but this is America, and even trying to fix racist sentences comes with a fight.
From WRBL:
“While eradicating overt racism might seem like a logical move in 2020, approval isn’t a given: Voters in the majority white, conservative state have rejected similar proposals twice since 2000.
In 2004, conservatives helped kill a move to clean up the constitution by arguing the move could lead to increases in school taxes. Eight years later, education groups and others opposed a similar measure because it retained segregation-era language that denied the constitutional right to education in Alabama.
Supporters of the measure are being careful with how they present the issue this year.
Called Amendment 4, the proposal as written on statewide ballots does not even mention race. It just says the amendment would let the Legislature “recompile the Alabama Constitution and submit it during the 2022 Regular Session, and provide a process for its ratification by the voters ….”
Even though there is no organized opposition against the state’s constitution, there is concern that it may face difficulties should the state’s conservative ruling majority feel it’s tied to the anti-racism protests that have been ongoing throughout the year.
Leave it up to conservatives to make being anti-racism a notable part of their platform.
Coleman feels this argument would be false as there is no connection between the protests this year and the passing of the legislation. She told WRBL, “I don’t understand how anyone would conflate the two issues when we passed the measure in 2019 and it was completely bipartisan.”
Alabama’s Republican Governor, Kay Ivy, hasn’t taken an official position on the measure, but her spokeswoman Gina Maiola has said the governor doesn’t oppose it.
It’s a harmless measure that is symbolic in nature, yet history shows that Alabama voters may not be with it. In 2000, a measure was on the ballot to remove a section of the constitution that outlawed interracial marriage between Black and white people. Despite it already being an unenforceable law, 40% of voters still voted against it.
Just sayin’, America will be racist most of the time.
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