In The News
Black Eye - South Carolina Still Stumbles on Racial Equality
America might be on the verge of electing its first black president, but South Carolina still seems to be standing on the precipice of its past.
That seems to be the core message of the 20th anniversary edition of The State of Black South Carolina: An Action Agenda for the Future, published earlier this summer by the Columbia Urban League.
Topics covered in the 300-plus page book show that many of the same issues that plagued black South Carolinians in 1988 haven't gone away: wage disparity, lack of health care access, lagging academic and professional success, high representation in jails and juvenile justice facilities, AIDS rates, and on and on.
League president James T. McLawhorn Jr. argued recently that while there has been improvement in the lives of the state's black residents, racism and its ill effects still hold sway in the Palmetto State, though in a more subtle form.
McLawhorn painted South Carolina's stagnant progress as a series of "missed opportunities."
First, he said, was an argument the league made for a state center for rural education that included tendrils like housing support for teachers in distressed areas.
"That was a year before the Abbeville educational equity lawsuit was filed," said McLawhorn of the case centering on an under-funded statewide K-4 program and educational disparity depicted in the Corridor of Shame documentary about rural areas shadowing Interstate 95.
Another missed opportunity was state government not further investing in a minority health education program that could have reduced the state's woeful rates of diabetes, strokes, heart attacks and AIDS.
For Democratic S.C. Rep. Leon Howard of Columbia, who chairs the House Medical, Military and Municipal Affairs (3M) Committee, it's still too early to say definitively what the state's Legislative Black Caucus, which he leads, will push for to help black residents in the coming legislative session.
Howard, noting that there has been some improvement in black life in the past two decades, said he would push for funding from a proposed state cigarette tax increase to help close health care disparities.
The money couldn't come too soon in health care, as the fifth most common reason for hospitalizations in South Carolina is amputation of major joints or limbs of the lower extremities, according to state statistics. (read: grandma losing a foot to diabetes.)
Howard said that while the nation’s and state's economic problems have hit blacks the hardest, there have been signs of progress in South Carolina. "We probably have more black high school graduates than ever before," he said. "And the same probably goes for the number of first-generation college graduates and attendees."
That came as good news for black residents like Emory Campbell, the former director of the state's Penn Center and current chairman of the state's Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission. Campbell has spent the better part of three decades fighting for the state's disadvantaged black residents.
But the news still wasn't good enough for Campbell, who said he continued to see a more subtle form of racism and indifference pervade the thinking of policymakers on the state and local levels. "The idea still exists that this is the way to treat blacks, that they don’t deserve any better," said Campbell, who wondered why the same problems have continued to haunt black South Carolinians.
Meanwhile, another force is rising in South Carolina that could push black issues farther off the front burner: Hispanics.
With the state's Hispanic population continuing to grow rapidly, Campbell sees "more of the same" indifference in coming years.
McLawhorn was less worried. "Look at the General Assembly: How many Hispanic legislators do you see?"
South Carolina has had problems of racism and contempt for 400 years and only a paltry few decades of reform. It's hard to say when substantive improvements will be made in the state of black South Carolina. But one thing is for sure: It won't be an easy or quick fix.
Written by
Bill Davis
Editor of the SC State House Report
billdavis@statehousereport.com
Published in the Columbia Free Times on August 27, 2008
