AlaBAM! - Harper Lee Would Be Proud

If you have never read the description beneath the title of this blog, I suggest you do so before continuing…

To Kill A Mockingbird is my all-time, favorite novel. It stands alone in my mind as the most essential treatise on race relations, religion, and politics in America. I urge those who have never read it to do so; and I urge them to read it even more strongly if they've only seen the movie version.

At the end of Tom Robinson's trial, Harper Lee exposed and explored the  unspoken, "cynical confidence" which allowed racial prejudice to trump truth and deny justice in her home state of Alabama as well as much of America.

And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to 'feel sorry' for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people’s. I need not remind you of their appearance and conduct on the stand—you saw them for yourselves. The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber.

Today, I offer a rewrite of that passage. I believe it accurately sums up the dynamics that led to the outcome of yesterday's special election in Alabama.

And so a group of quiet, respectable, humble women who had the unmitigated temerity to speak out against pedophilia and sexual predation have had to put their word against the twice-removed Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, the national Republican party, and the President of the United States. I need not remind you of their posturing and conduct in recent election campaigns—you saw them for yourselves. The political associates of the Republican candidate, with the exception of the senior senator of the state, have presented themselves to the voters of Alabama and the nation in the cynical confidence that their endorsement would not be questioned, confident that a majority would go along with them on the assumptions—the evil assumptions—that all women lie, that all women are basically immoral beings, and that all Republican men who wrap themselves in the flag and glibly quote from the Bible are to be trusted around women and teenage girls, assumptions one associates with minds of their caliber.

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the inception of the Republican Southern Strategy, the election of Roy Moore to the U.S. Senate would have been as inevitable as the guilty verdict handed down in the fictional trial of a black man in Alabama in 1935.

Yesterday, the people of Alabama rejected the "cynical confidence" of Roy Moore, the Republican party, and Donald Trump.

Harper Lee would be proud.