Racists lack the clout to derail new America

The general store in the middle of the tiny South Carolina town of Allendale still has Barack Obama T-shirts and baseball caps proudly on sale in the window.

But inside the shop, Eddie Bernice Hammond's thoughts are not on last year's triumphant election of America's first black President.

They are focused on a fresh race row, roiling the country and coming from her own home state.

The debate is simple: is the fury being directed at Obama by his many conservative opponents a product of his skin colour or his policies? Obama and top Republicans say it is simply hardball politics. Former president Jimmy Carter has said it is racism.

Obama has been flat out making the case yet again for healthcare reform, but at the same time playing down the significance of the colour of his skin in the debate.

"Are there some people who don't like me because of my race? I'm sure there are," he told one ABC presenter. But far more Americans, he says, are "passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right. And I think that's probably the biggest driver of some of the vitriol."

Maybe. For her part Hammond, 68, black and proud, thinks that Carter got it right.

"I agree with President Carter," she said, more in sorrow than in anger. "A lot of white people don't like Obama being where he is because of his race."

Despite his best efforts and intentions, Obama cannot escape the simple and historical fact of his race. He has told senior staffers that he does not want to be thought of as America's first black President, but more as just a President who happens to be black.

Obama thought his famous Philadelphia speech during the election campaign would end the race issue. It did not. A fresh start was sought in the White House.

Then Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested in his own home by a white cop. Beers on the White House lawn should have solved that.

But now comes the latest racial drama, inspired by the violent tone of a summer of raucous meetings on the issue of healthcare. That eventually led South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson to call Obama a liar on the floor of Congress; which in turn led Carter to call Obama's opponents white people unhappy at a black man in the Oval Office.

It was inevitable that America's first black President would face these issues, and Carter was just telling it like it is.

"In America now, we are constantly having this debate over race. It is a conversation that needs to continue," said Joseph Crespino, associate professor of history at Emory University, in Atlanta. Then Crespino borrowed a phrase Obama himself used to sum up the Gates incident: "There are going to be a lot of 'teachable moments' in the months ahead. It is going to be a good time to be a teacher."

In South Carolina, a little history goes a long way. Just last week, a South Carolina court was forced to rule on a case brought by Candice Hardwick, a teenage girl who insisted on wearing T-shirts, belt buckles and even a mobile phone case all emblazoned with the Confederate flag to her mixed-race school. The court found against Hardwick, but her lawyer, Kirk Lyons, said she would appeal.

He did not hold back: "If the courts allow this to stand, then it is proof that we are a system of gulags that they call public schools."

Almost alone in the US, South Carolina still makes flying the Confederate flag a political hot potato. The Confederacy's former battle flag flies in front of the state Capitol assembly building in the main city of Columbia, fluttering beside a memorial to the southern civil war dead.

Its presence has prompted a long-standing ban on holding conventions and conferences in South Carolina by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, a civil rights group.

Wilson has denied any hint of racism in his comments, but seeing his actions through the prism of South Carolina seems to add weight to Carter's theory.

Perhaps it is a coincidence that the man who yelled "You lie!" to Obama while he spoke to Congress has been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a body dedicated to celebrating the Confederate cause. Or that he was an aide to notorious South Carolina politician Strom Thurmond, once an avowed and unapologetic segregationist.

While many black Americans unsurprisingly find the flag an offensive reminder of slavery, supporters insist it reflects traditional values. Unfortunately the truth is not so simple in South Carolina. The flag was first flown on the Capitol, not back in far-off history, but in 1962, just as civil rights was sweeping the south. It was not a long-standing tradition. It was an explicit message to intimidate black southerners seeking their political rights.

But it is the nature of the current row that the debate is steeped in covert symbolism and myths. Modern America is no longer a place where the Klan holds sway. Instead the "Birther" movement has sprung up, questioning if Obama was born on Kenyan soil, not American.

Placards have appeared at recent conservative rallies calling Obama an "undocumented alien" or telling him to "go home" to Africa.

Then there is the "Tenther" movement which claims that individual states have the constitutional right - under the 10th amendment - to reject nearly all federal laws. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is a prominent sympathiser to that cause.

None of this is overtly racist. Neither is the conservative habit of calling Obama a socialist, a communist or - confusingly for political scientists - a Nazi. But many experts believe it is seeking to define Obama as a shadowy "other" who must be linked to the colour of his skin. By speaking out, Carter was simply breaking the unwritten rule that one cannot point out the racial element of modern American conservatism.

Yet those crying racism are also missing something of the whole picture, even in South Carolina.

Zo Warren, a black photographer in Columbia, shrugged his shoulders when asked about the Confederate flag flying just a block from his downtown office. He said he was genuinely unmoved by its existence.

"To me, it says that we are one of the freest countries in the world, when the side that lost the war can still fly its battle flag. I think that is a good thing," he said with a smile. For Warren, the key word is "lost".

If Obama's election meant anything - and almost everyone agrees it meant a lot - it meant the dawning of an era when forging multi-ethnic electoral alliances is the key to future success.

Obama's coalition of middle-class urban whites, young people, blacks and Hispanics has simply got greater numbers - and vastly greater future electoral potential - than the dwindling demographic of rural, older, mostly southern whites that have become the Republican base.

It should also not be forgotten that Obama's victory in 2008 was notable for its successes in the south. Not only did he win the vital battleground state of Florida but, more surprisingly, he turned two other southern red states - North Carolina and Virginia - into blue ones by winning significant amounts of white support.

All in all, given the extent of the crisis gripping America, and the dreadful legacy of its slavery-stained history, perhaps the progress on race under Obama is more amazing than the setbacks.

A HISTORY OF CONFLICT

1856 Democratic congressman Preston Brooks beat an abolitionist senator, Charles Sumner, senseless with his cane in the Senate. Sumner was unable to work for months. Brooks was hailed in his home state of South Carolina.

1896 South Carolina senator Benjamin Tillman threatened to poke then US President Grover Cleveland with a pitchfork in a row over foreign policy.

1902 Tillman, by this point nicknamed "Pitchfork", assaulted Senator John McLaurin (also from South Carolina).

1957 Segregationist senator Strom Thurmond tried to kill a civil rights bill with the longest filibuster in US history (24 hours and 18 minutes).

2009 Congressman Joe Wilson (right) yelled "You lie!" during a speech to Congress by President Barack Obama.

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