The Blight That Is Still With Us – New York Times

… There has been a spasm of political campaigning here, but that will soon end. In presidential elections, South Carolina is reliably Republican. A state with Pitchfork Ben standing guard at the Capitol hardly could be otherwise.

The Democrats are here this week fighting over the black vote. It’s ironic that in a state so racially polarized, there is so little serious discussion among the candidates of the race issue.

Senator Barack Obama, with his message of unity and healing (and not wanting to be seen solely as a black candidate), has tried to avoid addressing the issue of race head-on. Bill and Hillary Clinton have worked hard at turning that posture into a negative, aggressively courting the black vote, while at the same time spotlighting (directly and through surrogates) the fact that Mr. Obama is black.

The result has been a churning of the issue of race to no constructive effect, even during last night’s debate sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute.

This was probably inevitable. In South Carolina the Confederate flag is flying right out there in the open and Pitchfork Ben is on display for all to see. But in most other places, the hostility to blacks remains on the down-low. No one wants to deal with it.

Despite big and important advances over the past several decades, including Senator Obama’s crossover campaign, racism remains alive and well in much of the country. And yet no one — not Bill Clinton, the man touted (absurdly) as the first black president; or Hillary Clinton, who’s running for president; or Barack Obama, the first black person with a real shot at the White House — is willing to talk honestly and openly about it.

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