In the last few months, The Daily Gamecock’s Opinion section has hosted articles addressing race in the policing of Ferguson and the legal protection of hate speech in the U.S.
I want to address race from a different and more local angle: electoral politics in the state. I'm going to avoid accusations of racist intent in policies or pointing out specific policies that may disproportionately harm minorities — that's not the point of this column.
The way the electoral math adds up on race in South Carolina is troubling at its core.
Governor Nikki Haley won re-election by 15 points last fall, but she only won 6 percent of the African-American vote, or 27 percent of the electorate. Haley won by receiving 76 percent of the white vote.
These numbers show an apparent difference in perceived quality of policy outcomes based on race. They also allow the state’s Republican government to implement policies disproportionately harmful to minorities if they choose to, which stems from a lack of empathy from white voters.
The first point is the easiest to prove. Republicans have held both chambers of the Statehouse as well as the governorship for more than a decade. The state’s population has had time to observe what red state governance can do for them. And, apparently, different races perceive the results differently if a strong majority of whites vote to continue the Republican rule and 90 percent of African-Americans vote to end it. The results imply at least a perception of unequal outcomes under the policies of the Haley administration and its Republican predecessors.
This is a problem, because even if every non-white voter had voted against Haley in 2014, she still would have carried a majority of the state’s voters. In effect, even when there is a perception of unequal outcomes among African-Americans, the governing Republicans can afford not to care. They could even adopt more policies that disproportionately harm the African-Americans without fear of losing significant numbers of their voters. This is why a few weeks before the election, Haley could say without serious political risk that it is OK to keep flying the Confederate flag at the Statehouse because not a single CEO has objected.
Why should it matter to her that the banner once represented the desire to fight a war for the right to keep other human beings in bondage? Those offended don’t vote for her anyway and she wouldn’t need them to win. While I strongly doubt that either her statement on the flag was motivated by racial factors, it proves her ability to be oblivious to the potential feelings of 27 percent of the electorate and politically survive.
Which, perhaps, leads to the most crucial issue at hand: a lack of empathy. If minority voters feel as if conservative government has had a much less favorable impact upon them than whites and have no real means of political redress, it doesn’t appear as if white voters really care. After all, over 70 percent of them voted for Haley. To an extent this is understandable, as it’s hard to expect every voter to know how state policies affect other people. But it allows Republican governments to continue policies that receive near-universal disapproval from minorities.
This is where a conversation on race could be effective. Maybe if white voters understood how policies impact African-Americans differently than whites, as the voting records suggest they do, they would be more willing to punish politicians who disregard minority voices. This could at least weed out the most blatant offenses by making it politically unsafe to ignore the desires of 90 percent of African-American voters. Quite frankly, it’s disgraceful that it ever was a safe option.