LAT: Race is onstage in South Carolina debate

ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Race is onstage in South Carolina debate
Democrats may have to address the issues of inequality and justice.
By Mark Z. Barabak, Times Staff Writer
April 26, 2007

....The issues likely to come up in tonight's Democratic presidential debate are familiar ones — the war in Iraq, healthcare, the economy, education. The big difference in South Carolina is race, which overlays just about every policy discussion in the state, as it has since Emancipation and reconstruction....

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Democrats placed South Carolina near the front of their presidential nominating calendar to bring diversity to the selection process. The state will vote Jan. 29, giving the winner an important boost heading into the coast-to-coast balloting blitz that comes a week later. (The South Carolina Republican primary is set for Feb. 2.)

For now, the Democratic contest is a three-way fight among Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who grew up in rural Seneca, S.C. He carried the state in his White House run four years ago.

Black voters will have a major say in this first Southern test of Democratic strength, likely accounting for about half the vote. By contrast, blacks cast about 1% of the vote in 2004 in New Hampshire's leadoff primary.

Obama may be the strongest black presidential candidate ever. But that has not given him the overwhelming edge in South Carolina. The novelty of path-breaking politicians like the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Greenville, S.C., native who carried the state in 1984 and 1988, has long since worn away.

"I don't need a moral victory," said Earl Thomas, a black history professor shopping at the Prince of Orange Mall here. "I want a solid victory."

For decades, South Carolina has been a laggard in educational achievement and national measurements of health and affluence. But black residents have it worst of all; any serious examination of the school system, economic opportunity, sickness and mortality can't help but touch on the yawning gap between South Carolinians based on the color of their skin....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-carolina26apr26,0,4586693.story?coll=la-home-nation

issue of slavery?

Some things regress, some things stagnate.

There apparently has been no change of heart in the majority of the citizens of South Carolina since the final days of the Civil War. I know that because South Carolina was the first to secede, the Union Army really decimated the area in revenge. Maybe they still hold a grudge.

Whatever, it's time to get over it.