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Welcome to the United States of Alabama
Welcome to the United States of AlabamaBy Kyle Whitmire, al.com
Robert Bentley told a lot of lies when he was Alabama’s governor, and except for the big one about his love life, he never caught so much hell for fibbing as he did the time he told the truth.
“Our education system in this state sucks,” he told a conference of regional economic developers in 2016.
“Our education system in this state sucks,” he told a conference of regional economic developers in 2016.
(snip)
Alabama lags in a lot of national rankings, usually landing at or near the bottom of basic, objective measurements of quality of life. The harder thing to explain is why people here accept this.
In a place that could face the truth, people might shake off that collective embarrassment and try to do something about it. Civic leaders, elected officials and public employees of every stripe would unite behind the singular goal of raising our standards. Citizens would expect better, demand better, and send anyone packing who didn’t do better. People would care.
In a place that could face the truth, people might shake off that collective embarrassment and try to do something about it. Civic leaders, elected officials and public employees of every stripe would unite behind the singular goal of raising our standards. Citizens would expect better, demand better, and send anyone packing who didn’t do better. People would care.
(snip)
Being complacent in failure used to be an Alabama thing.
Now it’s becoming an American thing, too.
The United States has failed to deal with the coronavirus crisis. This week, the world passed 20 million confirmed cases. Even though we have just a smidge over 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of those coronavirus cases and 22 percent of coronavirus deaths. Every other wealthy nation is doing a better job getting this thing under control. But not us.
But what’s more remarkable is how many folks seem OK with these facts or are willing to pretend they aren’t real.
Now it’s becoming an American thing, too.
The United States has failed to deal with the coronavirus crisis. This week, the world passed 20 million confirmed cases. Even though we have just a smidge over 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of those coronavirus cases and 22 percent of coronavirus deaths. Every other wealthy nation is doing a better job getting this thing under control. But not us.
But what’s more remarkable is how many folks seem OK with these facts or are willing to pretend they aren’t real.
(snip)
This isn’t American exceptionalism. It’s American acceptin'-ism.
We’ve become accepting of failure.
We’ve become accepting of being worse.
We’ve become accepting of lagging behind.
Because it’s easier to tell ourselves that we’re better than everyone else than it is to be better than everyone else.
The good news is that there’s a fix for this. Just as Mississippi came to grips with its sagging test scores and scrounged its way above Alabama in national rankings, we can change our mindset and our expectations. We can do the work. We can demand better.
Or we can surrender to the White House entertainment complex and its silly sideshows made to distract from its incompetence.
We’ve become accepting of failure.
We’ve become accepting of being worse.
We’ve become accepting of lagging behind.
Because it’s easier to tell ourselves that we’re better than everyone else than it is to be better than everyone else.
The good news is that there’s a fix for this. Just as Mississippi came to grips with its sagging test scores and scrounged its way above Alabama in national rankings, we can change our mindset and our expectations. We can do the work. We can demand better.
Or we can surrender to the White House entertainment complex and its silly sideshows made to distract from its incompetence.
More at link: https://www.al.com/news/2020/08/welcome-to-the-united-states-of-alabama.html
Of course, the one thing he's leaving out is that it's the poor, black counties that are hit the hardest by the shoddy educational system and all the other hallmarks of a system founded on inequality.
