Gov. Bentley showed up at a rally in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Montgomery on Monday and gave a short speech in which he urged the audience to “be like King.” One has to question, by the way, whether this is a case for advice of “be careful what you wish for” because there are a number of serious issues in the state of Alabama that would motivate Dr. King to renew mass protest and civil protest against social and economic injustice. That aside, the appearance by the Governor would seem more superficial, a “PR move,” than a sincere effort to bridge the racial divide in the state and country. Let us examine some of the disjuncture between word and deed.
“As we meet the difficulties, let’s continue Dr. King’s message to be brothers and sisters,” said Bentley, who attended a unity breakfast earlier in the day in Huntsville.
This is a current statement from a Governor who stated upon his inauguration that, unless a person was a “born again Christian,” the person could not be deemed one of Bentley’s “brothers.” Was Bentley backing off from his religious intolerance? Was he contradicting himself in calling upon everyone to adopt his fundamentalist dogma? Certainly Dr. King would never have imposed such a limitation upon the concept of brotherhood, and so there are few who are so “unlike” King than Gov. Bentley appears to be in word and deed.
Take as another example the Alabama “immigration” law championed by Bentley that has promoted Alabama to the forefront of overt ethnic bigotry by targeting Hispanics. The fallacy and deception behind the law - the arguments that it was necessary to protect jobs and reduce unemployment, to eliminate economic burdens caused by social welfare to illegal immigrants or criminal suppression of "undesirable elements" - have all been thoroughly debunked. That has left the state with serious problems and loss of revenue because of the number of Hispanics (including many legal citizens) that have left the hostile environment of the state, as would any rational person. Agricultural and food processing companies have lost crops and have had to curtail operations due to the unavailability of workers. The recovery from the April 27 tornado has reportedly been delayed because many of the Hispanic laborers who were skilled in construction and roofing have departed. Contract jobs are not scheduled and completed as quickly as they might previously have been done because skilled workers were unavailable to fill the job vacancies. School officials had to publicly beg Hispanic parents to allow their children to come back to school in light of the hostile atmosphere and persecution promoted by the legislation. Bentley defends the law as a “states’ rights” issue, an argument traditionally used to defend state sponsored racism and discrimination going back to the Civil War and through the Civil Rights Movement.
Again it is inconceivable that Dr. King would have supported such measures. Indeed, if the people of Alabama were to heed the Governor’s advice there would be tens of thousands in the streets marching in peaceful protest until the law is brought down. This also suggests again that the rally attendance and speech by Gov. Bentley were contrived as a public relations move to try to camouflage his manifest record in support of actions and principles that are directly contradictory to the values and the admonitions of Dr. King: “injustice anywhere is an injury to justice everywhere.”
And so we again are confronted with a high profile politician seeking self-promotion by public appearance and statements that try to gloss over and to obscure a shameful record, an attempt to “put lipstick on a pig.” Once again, it may be incumbent to extend apologies to pigs in light of this unfortunate sham and the metaphor.
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