Blue vs. Gray

For all the talk of Blue and Red states, questions about voting in Alabama over a constitutional amendment and a map of the states won by Kerry and Bush make me believe that we should be talking Blue and Gray and not Blue and Red.

Voters in Alabama apparently rejected a proposed amendment would delete unenforced sections of the constitution that mandate racially segregated schools and allow poll taxes, once used to discourage blacks from voting.

As Newsday put it When voters refused to approve a constitutional amendment that would have erased segregation-era wording in the state constitution requiring separate schools for "white and colored children" and referring to poll taxes that once disenfranchised blacks, Alabama was dragged into a confrontation with its segregationist past that illuminates the uneasy race relations of its present.

The amendment had two main parts: removal of the separate-schools language and the removal of a passage - inserted in the 1950s in an attempt to counter the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling against segregated public schools - that says Alabama's constitution does not guarantee a right to a public education.

Leading opponents, such as Alabama Christian Coalition President John Giles, said they did not object to removing the passage about separate schools for "white and colored children." But, employing an argument ridiculed by legal experts, Giles and others said guaranteeing a right to a public education would have opened a door for "rogue" federal judges to order the state to raise taxes to pay for better schools.

If anyone thinks this thinking is limited to Alabama, consider these maps, which basically show that Bush won the slave states and Kerry won the free states. The only changes were that Kerry barely lost Ohio and Iowa, picked up Maryland and Deleware but lost Indiana.

One has to wonder what has gone wrong in Indiana.