Birmingham

The Faux Pas No One Could Have Predicted -- A True Story of Sensitivity Gone Awry

by Dan Carsen | February 23rd, 2010

Sometimes good intentions and a reasonable degree of awareness can land you in a funny place. A place where, for example, someone with a good heart, a little knowledge of America’s racial history, and a foreign upbringing regularly refers to a grown man with a term more often heard in toddlers’ bathrooms.

Here’s how we came to this odd place: A good friend of mine, a Frenchman who is fluent in English and runs a paper plant here in town, rents out half the basketball court at the Mountain Brook YMCA every Saturday so the guys who work for him can play ball. They often bring friends, and lucky for me, my friend – we’ll call him Tony Parker (that’s an alias, as my friend is white and not an NBA player) – does too. After my first time playing with that crew, I tried to ask Tony about a player who’d impressed me with his strength and passing. Of course, true to form, I’d forgotten his name. The following conversation ensued:

“Hey – the really strong guy in the white shirt – the guy who can really pass, what’s his name?”

“Poop.”
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Urban Impact

by Aziza Jackson | February 15th, 2010

When I learned that I would be doing a story on Racial Integration for this issue, I was pumped. I figured I would scout out my sources, ask some hard-hitting questions, and whip up a poignant Pulitzer Prize-winning piece.

What I didn’t know was that the story would write itself. That it didn’t need to qualify for a Pulitzer, it just needed to exist. A story needed to be told.

Integration. It’s such a dense subject. How in the world would I ever be able to get close to its story? How do you compile the stories of the men and women affected by it, and the stories of the communities that were forced to change with it? The word conjures memories of a world that once was, and a world that fused together two distinctly different communities. However, to the businesses located in the 4th Avenue Historical District of downtown Birmingham, this word means something much more.
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