re: I don’t get it- How is Louisiana failing this bad?

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The people in that mass of land between Georgia and Mississippi's heads are so far in the sand, it's laughable.

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You make many good points that I wholeheartedly agree with (and many pertain not just to some of the AL residents), but you lose all credibility when you commit the exact same atrocities that you are so brutally condemning the people of Alabama with: When you apply broadscale generalities and sweeping, defamatory statements across an entire group of peoples, if reasonable men- no matter their color- are lending their ear as to make judgement on who the winner is, then you will most certainly lose the fight every time.

You are obviously an insightful man, and you are, obviously, far too narrowly focused on the matter of racism, the prejudices derived from it, and of the effects that both have on society (whether real, percieved or contrived)- and in this particular case, on the society in Alabama. You're not seeing the forest for the trees.

When you level such sweeping, all-inclusive and injurious judgement upon the head of a nearly 5 million-strong chunk of humanity like you've just done, and when you do it with the air of committed finality like that of dictator like you've just done, then you've become a deeply prejudiced man.

You realize that, don't you?

You realize that you even sound like a prejudiced man, don't you?

Humanity belongs to every human being, both collectively and individually. Like every other species, we humans are all alike in many ways, but unlike most other species, every single one of us is absolutely unique as well. What you've done is apply a subjective perception of a people to the person, and you cannot- you should not- do that.

If you do that, if you compartmentalize 5 million people, if you neatly & comfortably tuck them all into the little "boxes" that the worldview from within your own mind says they ought to be in, then you run the risk of becoming another Edgar Ray Killen: Black or white, southern or northern, if a man fits into the narrative of the "box" that your mind has placed him into, then he'll easily fit into the earthen dam-turned-mass grave that you've dug for he and the others.

By the laws of what is good and right, Alabamians- an Alabamian- deserves to be respected for his humanity- nothing more, nothing less- and you've no right to lay claim as being the one man in history to say otherwise.

Besides, the all-encompassing state and regional problems that we all speak of here now, as before and hereafter, has nothing to do with racism, but instead classism. You'd find more clarity (and clarity for me is as clear as mud) the sooner that you realize this. This comes from a man who, like many, abhors the n word as filth, racism, unequal treatment to another and his dignity, and who will give the friends and family that are his people in his community and who happen to be black the shirt off his back and never tell a soul about it (and they will do the same 100 fold when I need it): the problem is classism.

And the problem with classism is that no form of socialism, communism, capitalism, etc., will EVER eradicate it off the face of the earth: Even 5000 years ago, deep in the darkest depths of the Congo lived a male silverback who had his lot in life, and, usually, there's not a damned thing he as an individual gorilla could've ever done about it- not in the big scheme of things like you speak of. Sure, for some humans upward mobility is real and it's there for the taking (albeit less so, hence the subject of the thread) for a select few like we Americans, but even then, the truly "rags to riches" fairytales that bring widespread influence and power along with it are, statistically, just that: fairytales.

And therein lies the problem with places like AL, MS and LA and with your worldview on the individuals who live there: Their problem- our problem, in this specific case as southerners who are subject to the ramifications of history but also more generally as regular citizens- has been magnified by a ruling class who also happens to be the elite. We're headed back to the same fate that the poor silverback had: there's not a damned thing that any individual Alabamian can ever do about these things until (and not unless) the time is nigh for cause-and-effect to take place in order to change what was thought to be, "destiny."

There are many good & reasonable men and women in Alabama, albeit nowhere near as many as are in Mississippi, but they're there- I'm sure of it.

And until the time is nigh where one (or a few) of them is chosen to begin the turning of the spokes of history's wheels to unseat the elite ruling class so that we can rinse and repeat, then you ought not be so critical of all 5 million of them.

Not unless you're ready to accept the fact that the premise is flawed and ignorant and prejudice.

(And btw, as an aside, I wholeheartedly disagree that taxpayers ought not have any and all right to criticize a public university. The University of Alabama is in the business of making money, yes, but when the cash flows are overwhelmingly derived from loans funded by you and I on a, "guaranteed" basis, then we've got skin in the game. Period, end of story.)