Montgomery, The Perplexing

For better or worse, Montgomery, Alabama is my home town. I have a love\hate relationship with this place. It is a very strange town. It is a majority black city, yet the power structure heavily favors whites. The blacks that have money here don't even like other blacks. Younger African Americans tend to move on to Atlanta, Birmingham, or if they are really enterprising, Washington D.C. in search of a future filled with opportunity instead of inhabiting a living landmark of the past.

Montgomery is a very conservative town. It's kinda stuck in the dark ages, without the bubonic plague and tre' cool chain mail. It's a small town that has none of that kind, giving community feel. It is a very segregated place...unless you're wealthy. Younger blacks here are kinda hostile towards everybody. You'd think that they were the ones who had the water hoses pointed at them during the Civil Rights Movement. There is little opportunity here. The school system sucks. In turn, the younger black people who are trapped in the underclass are pissed. They have no problem head-bobbing and telling you off just because you asked them where the damn Murphy's Oil soap is at Wal-Mart, because they are the one in the blue shirt with the tricked out name tag that says "Customer Satisfaction is MY Number1 Priority."

The whites aren't much better. They are less hostile, but they are holding on to the past for dear life. They cling to the good old days the way Kirstie Alley clutches a Krispy Kreme before a day at the fat farm. Many of them lament kinder, gentler days in our fair city when you could freely through a colored fella in jail just for funzies! They have their country club, mystic societies, and civic organizations that the keep shockingly free of blacks...I guess they like to get together and do whatever rich white people do...ALONE.

There are times it really bothers me that I live in a place like this. I worry about how this place will effect my two biracial sons. It used hurt to know that I will never fully fit in no matter how much money I make. Now, it gives me the freedom to tell the truth. Freedom is a very powerful drug...it's exactly why the not so distant ancestors of the folks in charge fought so vehemently to make sure blacks stayed in their place. Liberation is power.

All that is simply back story to help you get an idea of who I am and the context from which all my wacky opinions emanate. I'm not militant. I have no problem taking my own folks to task. It is my goal to talk about race and class and gender in an open manner. I'm not looking to beat anybody upside the head with the chip on my shoulder. I just want to make you laugh...and make you think. It's not always easy being a black woman married to a white guy in Montgomery, Alabama...but it sure does give me great material!

Tangela Parker Ekhoff is a wife, mother, stand-up comic, and maid from Montgomery Alabama.