They're nice to drive through.

They're not nice to live in, especially...

Well, okay. I'm biased because I lived for well over a decade in Alabama, and I'm not white.

I'm Native American, and there's this weird thing that happens in Alabama when you're native.

One, people think that you are Mexican and so they will speak Spanish to you and ask you to translate things and wonder how much your gardening services cost. (and when I did that kind of work, my prices were very reasonable)

Two, once they learn that you're native because you happen to have, you know, three foot long hair and high cheek bones, they will assume that you have mystical powers and can talk to the wind and that animals will communicate to you with the secret magics.

So I got the downside of racism, where people hated me and people who liked me as a person would not date me because of the color of my skin, but I also got the upside of racism, where people thought that I was special and magical because of who my parents happened to be.

All of that aside, as I grew up, I thought I must be somebody special because every time I went to the store, people would follow me through the store and watch me closely, constantly sticking their head around corners as if getting a glimpse of me was one of the highlights of their time travel experience.

Turns out that they were just being racist and watching the little brown boy to make sure that he didn't steal something or cause some sort of kerfluffle that they could get involved in.

I said all of that to say Alabama is incredibly racist.

My lived experience is that of racism.

And nobody lynched me.

I was not beat up.

I was not horrifically abused.

But racism is still racism, and people held me back and thought less of me, thought differently of me, or refused to evaluate me on the same level that they would have evaluated me if I was white, because I was not white.

So sure, a lot of those small towns are, you know, quaint and pretty and the people will smile and wave hands at you and open the door for you and say cute little colloquialisms with southern twang voices.

But if you don't fit into their established social groups by benefit of the color of your skin or your financial position in the world, don't rely on that for anything other than a very thin veneer of how they justify to themselves how they weren't really racist because they didn't murder you, they just watched you like a hawk and made sure that you were kept on your tippy toes to make sure that you know you are being allowed to be where you are.