Exactly. If the school were so racist, either it would be full of white kids or there would be brawls everyday among different races.
@LucieTheLakie I’m currently trying to plan a visit
Good for you, @CaliCash. And encourage your mom to come here and post if she has any concerns or specific questions after her visit.
Haha I’m from Tennessee and my friends give me crap about how I’ll come back a redneck. I don’t pay it much mind, since I know what an awesome school UA is
It’s funny how Northerners are sometimes so judgmental about Southerners. I guess we could call it Yankeeism! I grew up in the Northeast, have lived in 4 different US regions in my adult life. One of them was the deep South, and I was the same way at first. People are the same all over once you get to know them. Yes there is racism among southerners, but there is also racism in California, in the Northeast, and in the midwest. Some Midwesterners and southerners are a little afraid of the Northeast, because they think they are rude and always in a hurry. Is that true of everyone? Of course not! Wherever I have lived, the younger generations are more open minded than the rest.
We are also from California and have also heard that we shouldn’t send our boy to Alabama. I started prefacing it with “well they offered him a lot of money so we went to visit and he FELL IN LOVE with it and we are SO HAPPY he is going there, it is an amazing place” that usually shuts up the naysayers and if not I mention all the amazing opportunities UA has and how much money has been spent on engineering (his major) and how many out of state students there are including 900 freshmen from CA and that they are heavy on NMFs. I usually end up surprising people.
For what it’s worth, we visited over the weekend and did the honors tour. As another poster noted, it’s very much an OOS crowd…in our entire group (and during a busy presidents’ day weekend) there was exactly one person from the state of alabama. The others were literally from around the country…
Here’s an update: I’m on the admitted students FB page, and everyone seems lovely. There is even a special olympics student of color who has received plenty of love from other admitted students 
CaliCash: Glad you looked at the admitted students FB page. You got to see what type of kid is interested in attending Alabama.
My boys heard plenty of negative comments, too, about attending school in the deep South. My older son was a NMF from Virginia. He graduated debt-free and with two majors and two minors. He took advantage of any and all opportunities he had and built an incredible resume. His reward? Landing a full tuition/fees scholarship to attend UVA Law, one of the top seven schools in the nation. My younger son got a full tuition ride to UAH where he is a triple major and has a minor in math. He also runs track/cross country. Employers are already contacting him for internship interviews … and he just started his second semester there.
My husband and I tell people when they ask why send them to the deep South that the opportunities for an awesome education are definitely there. You need to make the most out of what is presented and run with it.
My DS is currently a junior at Alabama from Sacramento, California. He loves being a student there. Westerners tend to be ignorant about the University of Alabama, they think it’s only about football. We laugh because people hear he went to Bama on scholarship and they think it’s an athletic scholarship. We educate them by explaining that Bama gives away more scholarships to the Million Dollar Band than to football!
I have since learned some Southern communication skills and I can respond, “Bless your little heart, you just don’t get it, do you?” Oh yes, and to our foreign exchange students we explain that this is the college Forrest Gump attended!
We are from Colorado, and my daughter got so tired of hearing, “Why are you going to Alabama?” that she came up with her standard response of, “because Forrest Gump when there!”