April is the Racist Month

Or Reason #165 As to Why the South Should’ve Won the Civil War:

We wouldn’t have to admit to other countries that Georgia’s part of the union.

Al Swearengen at Dead Issue informed us last Saturday that Georgia did something extraordinary. Not only did they refuse to pass a bill to apologize for their role in slavery as did Missouri and Virginia (and in the latter case the bill still had to be introduced by two African American legislators), the Georgia state legislature is about to pass a bill designating April Confederate History and Heritage Month.

Al was concerned that we’d think this was a parody out of the pages of The Onion, so she provided a link to the Chicago Sun-Times, an article that could’ve been more accurately entitled, “No, Ya’ll, Not Only Are We Not Apologizing For Slavery, But We Wish We Could Get Away With Passing a Bill Bringing it Back.”

For good reason, I’ve been getting on Georgia’s case lately, especially in Assclowns of the Week, because it seems lately the most shithouse rat-on-fire insane people in the country come from this fetid, half-assed apology for a state. Between Newt Gingrich, Phil Gingrey, Zell Miller, Ben Bridges and his viral, anti-semitic memo, and now these redneck bozos, it seems that Georgia is bidding fair to outdo states like Texas, Utah, Idaho, North and South Carolina and Kansas as the most assbackwards, anti-science, hateful and collectively brain-damaged state in the union.

And in rejecting a bill apologizing for slavery and responding with something like this, a bill with actual traction that proposes celebrating the confederacy, they’re more or less openly embracing a legacy that gave us Jim Crow laws, the KKK and lynching.

So before some of my southern readers start giving me Hell like they did last November when I did a two part series about the deep south and how its politicians cater to the racist, mouth-breathing, miscegenation-fearing proles that make up their constituency, think of this. Think of all the southern US senators that refused to sign on to Mary Landrieu’s bill apologizing to the relatives of lynching victims, think of George Allen’s infamous “macaca” statement, the "Call me, Harold" campaign ad that got Bob Corker elected to the Senate, at how they’ve never elected an African American senator since Reconstruction, Genarlow Wilson's ridiculous conviction for child molestation and countless other recent instances of southern, Republican racism and their audacity to claim that the Democratic party was responsible for all the racism of the 60’s.

Those of you who are navy blue Democrats in red states, either you can stop reading here and except yourselves from what I’m about to say. Then cut me some slack.

Now, I’ve been forced to live in these swamps of alleged humanity where the word “nigger” is still in open use (provided there are no people of color within earshot), states in which the Aryan Brotherhood and KKK local chapters parade around in their dirty laundry and openly flaunt their idiocy courtesy of the First Amendment and the ACLU.

These people still long for the anti-bellum era in which vaporish ladies sipped mint juleps on the patio while the niggers cut their fingers to pieces picking their cotton 16 hours a day under the baleful glare and bullwhip of an overseer. Or so they seem to remember. Of course, their memories of what the confederacy used to be prior to the Civil War would have to be atavistic because obviously nobody alive remembers those days. But what little they think they know can hardly be considered enviable even by south of the Mason-Dixon line standards.

It was a time of extreme hardship for most in that part of the country. Education was spotty at best, the economy rickety. It was a violent, hateful and murderous period in a part of the country in which violence, hatred and murder flourished in ignorance, hunger and stupidity.

Come to think of it, this seems to be exactly what southern Republicans want to bring back, to look at the legislation they pass and oppose.

I have two African American boys, although I'm white, and when each of them was born, I made a promise that I would do everything in my power to ensure that they wouldn't have to share a world inhabited by people like the racist knuckle draggers who make up the Republican GA state legislature, people who probably rooted for Edward Norton's character in American History X, people who would still bring popcorn, Pearl beer and fried chicken to a lynching, people who would gladly bring lynching back if they knew they wouldn't suffer political fallout.