{"id":1449,"date":"2009-04-03T11:49:44","date_gmt":"2009-04-03T16:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/?p=1449"},"modified":"2009-04-03T11:53:56","modified_gmt":"2009-04-03T16:53:56","slug":"the-re-blease-ing-of-south-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2009\/04\/03\/the-re-blease-ing-of-south-carolina\/","title":{"rendered":"The Re-Blease-ing of South Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Charlie<\/strong>\u00a0Smith,\u00a0Charleston<\/strong>, SC<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A distant relative of mine on both my mother\u2019s and father\u2019s sides of the family (yes, I am a native South Carolinian) was once elected to the office now held by Governor Mark Sanford. One of the sayings that got him elected and kept him in office as a noted 20th century\u2026yes 20th Century\u2026Governor and later U.S. Senator was his declaration that \u201cTo educate a nigger is to ruin a good field hand.\u201d Sayings like this and equally offensive daily rants during his tenure as Governor and later as US Senator were designed to pit poor white upstate millworkers and sharecroppers against African Americans and against the evil politically dominant Charleston \u201caristocrats\u201d and \u201cdandies\u201d; the kind of man he described as \u201c\u2026some fellow who does nothing, lives on his daddy\u2019s name and doesn\u2019t pay his debts.\u201d; and more colorfully as those who \u201cfiddled away their nights watching decadent theater shows, yelling with delight at a foul mouth Yankee woman and a man dressed as \u201cThe Pink Lady.\u201d<\/p>\n

As governor, Coleman Livingston Blease fought with all his might against a law that would require all children under the age of fourteen in South Carolina to attend school. He preached against this legislation to poor whites ranting that \u201cThe Bible says a great deal about obedience to parents and reverence for parents and believing in the Book and its teachings, as I do. I say to the parents, and for the sake of their children, our country and for their future, keep within your own control the rearing and education of your own children.\u201d <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In reality the mill children were not being educated, they were being worked to death by the mill owners; but the parents of the mill children who depended on the wages of their children got Blease\u2019s message loud and clear\u2026Some \u201cLowcountry Dandy\u201d wants to tell you how to raise your children and then next thing you know your kids will be going to school with you-know-who!<\/p>\n

My friends, these beliefs, expressed by Blease as few others in positions of power have ever had the blatant racism to express — with the possible exception of John Graham Altman — are the seeds of our present public education crisis, a seated Governor who won\u2019t accept $700 million to support a desperately underfunded public education system joined by a prominent African American Democratic senator who has been bought off by an billionaire meddling dandy of an \u201coutside agitator\u201d who wants nothing more than the total destruction of public schools. That outside agitator, Howard Rich, has no child of his own to leave behind in our South Carolina public schools, so he has no problem leaving yours behind.<\/p>\n

Former governor and U.S. Sen. Coleman Livingston Blease would be so proud of Gov. Mark Sanford, Sen. Robert Ford and Howard Rich. He might be a bit confused by a Lowcountry dandy in the Governor\u2019s Mansion reviving his 1910 gubernatorial platform, but he\u2019d be completely understanding of Gov. Sanford\u2019s textbook Blease-ite outrageousness regarding the stimulus money. After all, Blease became a senator after his governorship and Sanford\u2019s 2012 presidential aspirations are no secret.<\/p>\n

No doubt Cuzin\u2019 Coley would find the alliance between Sen. Ford and Howard Rich downright shocking; but he\u2019d be tickled pink at the prospect of a black senator proposing legislation to cripple the education aspirations of African Americans in our state.\u00a0He\u2019d probably even forgive Sen. Ford for inadvertently crippling the education aspirations of<\/span> less affluent whites who, even though armed with vouchers, can\u2019t afford Sen. Ford\u2019s publicly funded private schools. Make no mistake about it, if Coleman Blease were alive today he\u2019d be extolling the virtues of the<\/span> \u201cPay White People With Children Already In Private Schools\u201d Bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

As decades and even centuries have gone by in the Palmetto State, South Carolinians have deluded themselves into believing that the political scenery is actually changing — even improving. What the dear people of my home state won\u2019t admit is that South Carolinians have one foot nailed to the floor, by race. We are in fact not moving forward and not improving. We are going \u2018round and \u2018round in circles, and it\u2019s time for the nail to come out.<\/p>\n

Accept the stimulus money, Gov. Sanford, and please, Sen. Ford, come back into the fold and be the kind of effective leader you know you can be. Minimally adequate leadership breeds minimally adequate education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charlie\u00a0Smith,\u00a0Charleston, SC A distant relative of mine on both my mother\u2019s and father\u2019s sides of the family (yes, I am a native South Carolinian) was once elected to the office now held by Governor Mark Sanford. One of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-network-newsevents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1449"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1454,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1449\/revisions\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}