First of all, a sincere congratulations to Octavia Spencer from The Help for winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that night. Her win was remarkable because 1. There have been less than a dozen African American females to win an Academy Award, 2. She’s one of the only Oscar winners from Alabama E-V-E-R and quite possibly the only actor from there to win an Oscar (I’m not sure), 3. The Help had no connection to Harvey Weinstein, who did a clean sweep of the top awards with his films The Artist and The Iron Lady. So that in itself is a miracle that it won anything.
So it was truly a great night for Spencer, and also a great night for any Alabama citizen (black, white, Hispanic) that aspires to do something in the creative arts. Alabama’s not exactly known for art or creative indulgence and your only real shot at making a great salary there is in engineering defense (Huntsville), medicine (Birmingham), law, or business (all over the state). Thus, it was fantastic to see that it could be done by someone from the state even with little advantages, encouragement, or nepotism. Octavia is a true outsider, and seeing her win on a night when so many insiders did, was refreshing.
Now let’s talk about the real meat which is that when she thanked her home state of Alabama in her speech, it drew a lot of laughs from the Hollywood crowd. To me, this is a very quiet prejudice much different than the kind-of out front verbal attacks Alabamians have launched against illegal immigrants or (before that) black people who had the audacity to want to go to a school that was properly funded.
The crowd laughed essentially because they thought she was joking. They thought there was no way a black woman could ever thank a state like Alabama. And, most likely, more than a few of them probably forgot for a minute that her film was set in Mississippi and mistook that for Alabama, and thought Spencer was being sarcastic in thanking it.
This is a type of very soft prejudice that I’ve encountered quite a bit in New York or other places. A type that says it’s not possible for someone who’s a white male from Alabama to not be a racist or to say interracial relationships are not only equal but better. Or for someone who’s a black woman from Alabama to thank the state without being sarcastic. I can’t lie and say Alabama doesn’t have its share of race problems, I know it does, but I also can’t lie and say that America doesn’t have its share of race problems. I take issue with the idea that no one from one state isn’t a racist and that everyone from another state (like New York, which proudly features several lakes upstate with the N-word in the title) couldn’t possibly be. Octavia thanked the state she’s from, meant it, and—-even if I’m not sure I would ever do the same in a similar position—-I’m glad she did, if for no other reason than to remind people that you really don’t have to be from California or France or England to win an Oscar.