Alabama Lawmaker Bets Whites Won't Adopt Black Children; It Backfires

Meanwhile, down south in Alabama: A bunch of white adoptive parents of black children are very angry, after an African American Democrat in the state legislature suggested in the middle of an abortion debate that whites would never adopt black children, anyway.

Jesus, take the wheel!

The comments came in the midst of a rancorous debate over an abortion bill, reports the Montgomery Advertiser. Rep. Alvin Holmes suggested that white anti-abortion lawmakers are full of shit and would be the first to march their daughters down to Planned Parenthood (or some discreet alternative) if they got pregnant by a black man. He followed up by suggesting that:

“I will bring you $100,000 cash tomorrow if you show me a whole bunch of whites that adopted blacks in Alabama,” he said then. “I will go down there and mortgage my house and get it cash in $20 bills and bring it to you in a little briefcase.”

Now, it is worth noting a little historical context, here: When Holmes was first elected to the state legislature in 1974, George Wallace was still governor. “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” was just 11 years in the past, ditto the Birmingham campaign and the Selma bridge crossing.

Nevertheless, this was PERHAPS not the right way to defend abortion rights in Alabama. MAYBE. PROBABLY. In fact, all his remarks did was piss off a lot of adoptive parents of African American children, who responded by turning up at the capital and staging a protest demanding that he apologize and pay up. “I would like for him to ‘man up.’ He’s made the statement. He needs to put his money where is mouth is, ” the mother of a biracial adopted daughter upset by the remarks told ABC. Her husband added:

“After we work on it and work on it to have an elected official that can come in and make those comments and tear down everything that we’ve worked hard for. It puts a question in their minds of ‘Do I belong?’ ‘Where do I belong?”

The pair are part of “Faces of Families in Alabama,” a Facebook protest group that coalesced after Holmes made the comments. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Fox News has been making hay of the issue, bringing one of the moms from the group on Fox and Friends. But Holmes isn’t apologizing. He told the Advertiser, “If anybody says Alvin Holmes is against interracial adoption, they are just as wrong as Adolf Hitler,” and told Montgomery’s WAKA:

“The majority of white people in the state of Alabama are against adopting black children and the majority of white people in the state of Alabama are against their daughters having babies by black men and I stand by that comment,” he says.

As proof, he cites the results of the 2000 referendum that scrubbed rules against interracial marriage from the Alabama Constitution. It passed—but only by 59 percent.

God knows what sorts of medieval anti-abortion measures the state GOP is cooking up in some BBQ-smelling backroom in the meantime.