State Rep. Kelvin Datcher (D-Birmingham) wants you to know that your parents were "racist." According to the outgoing lawmaker, anyone who voted for Govs. George Wallace or Lurleen Wallace were racist, and if you yourself oppose medicaid expansion or Obamacare, you're racist.
In a lengthy social media screed, Datcher spoke to white people, encouraging them to "acknowledge" that the "poison" of racism still shapes the world.
"Your parents were racist," he recently wrote. "That’s a hard sentence to read. It’s a harder sentence to say. But with the conversations happening right now about race, history, and equality in America, especially after recent Supreme Court decisions, we cannot keep avoiding uncomfortable truths."
He then walked it back, but only a little.
"Not everyone’s parents. Not every family. But in Alabama — and across much of the South — the numbers tell a story we should be honest enough to face. If your parents or grandparents voted for George Wallace, they voted for a man who built his political career on segregation, humiliation, and open racism."
On those who voted for the Wallaces, he wrote, "Many of the people who cast those votes are still alive. Many raised families, led churches, ran businesses, taught in schools, and shaped communities. That history didn’t disappear just because time passed. And yet today, many Americans want to pretend racism was limited to a few men with fire hoses and Confederate flags, instead of recognizing how deeply accepted it once was by ordinary people."
Datcher went on to say that those who oppose Obamacare expansion do so "because the policy became associated with America’s first Black president."
This is not Datcher's first time making controversial race comments. Last month, Datcher opposed a bill that allowed the Ten Commandments in schools since, when they were last prominent in public schools, black Americans were facing oppression.
“How effective was the display and inclusion of the commandments when, at the same time, folks who sat on front rows of churches were bombing churches?” Datcher rhetorically asked. “The time that we’re talking about being influenced by the commandments was not a great time for everybody.”
He continued, “We slaughtered an entire civilization on this ground, and we enslaved another civilization on this ground.”
Datcher came in a distant third in his primary and will not be returning to the legislature. Prior to being elected, he worked for Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin.
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