The Anna'fication of Georgia

Its important to look at our uglier side, if we hope to ever evolve past it.

James W. Loewen begins his book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, talking about Anna Illinois. He tells the story of a conversation he had with a convenience store clerk, asking her in the midst of coffee purchase, "Is it true that 'Anna' stands for 'Ain't No Niggers Allowed'?" She answered him, "Yes. That's sad, isn't it. That all happened a long time ago." He pressed her "I undertsand [racial exclusion] is still going on?". Her reply: "Yes. That's sad".

Us white folks like to pretend that our commitment to the myth that, 'that all happened a long time ago,' and our being sad about it somehow absolves us of responsibility to examine the degree to which white supremacist thinking still drive private and public decisions making to the detriment of our very humanity, much less a just society.

Loewen goes on in that first chapter to make at least these points: (1) racial exclusion, very specifically in the form of Sundown Towns is ubiquitous; (2) we don't acknowledge its existance; (3) Sundown Towns are a new phenomenon, since the 1890s actually; (4) that they were created by violence; (5) that they persist.

In spite of the Fair Housing and public accomodations laws, so little has changed because, as Loewen quotes Tim Wise, "If people of color aren't around, there's a reason, having something to do with history, and exclusion . . . "

While we've been busy being sad that a town in our country would be known for the racial slur which composes the acronym crafted from its name, we've sat by and failed to speak out as the media has used an equally offensive phrase: 'illegal alien' and its close cousin, 'illegal immigrant' so ubiquitously that now elected officials feel entitled to codify in the statutes which govern this state such hateful rhetoric.

Sundown Towns are not the only ugliness which white folks harbor in our hearts, nor the only thing we could be sad about.

Being sad is not changing the conditions we face in any of our communities. Neither our economy, nor our stake in it has been protected by prioritizing loyalty to our whiteness over loyalty to humanity. If we hope to save our own skin, we must break ranks and do so now.

We are living in extremely dangerous times. With the Brown Codes (SB-40, HB-87) progressing without shame or remorse through the state Assembly, Georgia will soon join Arizona in the new Jim Crow South, unless sanity suddenly strikes the Governor's office.

It goes against ones nature to ask the global community to boycott one's one home community. But how else are we to respond? Are we really supposed to be good Germans about the whole affair, pretending that our elected leadership is not completely whacked, that they would spend a legislative session scapegoating our neighbors and coworkers, instead of building a more vibrant and self-reliant local economy for their constituents?

The sadness of the good germans did not save the life of a single slav or jew. Only action was capable of doing that. When one is faced with apartheid conditions, as have been communities in South Africa and Palestine and Arizona and I fear next, Georgia; it comes time to ask the global community to render its verdict.

As Greens, we'd like to be pro-actively engaged in deconstructing the cultural supports which permit us to demonize and criminalize the two million plus people locked up in this country. Fewer than half of those were convicted of violent crimes. As Dr. Angela Davis of the California University system (and a Green) writes in "Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons and Torture", "This is supposed to make people feel better, but what it really does is divert their attention away from those threats to security that come from the military, police, profit-seeking corporations, and sometimes from one's own intimate partners."

Instead, just when we'd like to imagine that it can get no worse than subjecting one in thirteen of our adult neighbors to judicial supervision, our elected officials respond by asserting that yes, indeed, they can make this much worse.

If the Georgia General Assembly is to take such significant steps to recreate our apartheid past, it seems we are left with little alternative but to insist on seeking the intervention of the international community. Please don't let it go there. Sign the petition. Call Governor Nathan Deal at 404-656-1776 and remind him what the good book has to say about the 'stranger (who) sojourn with thee in your land', remind him how it is we sometimes have 'entertained angels unaware'.

Georgia has an ugly ANNA'fied history. Don't let that be the future we leave for our kids.