By Charlie Smith, Charleston, SC

A distant relative of mine on both my mother’s and father’s 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…yes 20th Century…Governor and later U.S. Senator was his declaration that “To educate a nigger is to ruin a good field hand.” 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 “aristocrats” and “dandies”; the kind of man he described as “…some fellow who does nothing, lives on his daddy’s name and doesn’t pay his debts.”; and more colorfully as those who “fiddled away their nights watching decadent theater shows, yelling with delight at a foul mouth Yankee woman and a man dressed as “The Pink Lady.”

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 “The 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.”

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’s message loud and clear…Some “Lowcountry Dandy” 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!

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’t 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 “outside agitator” 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.

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’s Mansion reviving his 1910 gubernatorial platform, but he’d be completely understanding of Gov. Sanford’s textbook Blease-ite outrageousness regarding the stimulus money. After all, Blease became a senator after his governorship and Sanford’s 2012 presidential aspirations are no secret.

No doubt Cuzin’ Coley would find the alliance between Sen. Ford and Howard Rich downright shocking; but he’d be tickled pink at the prospect of a black senator proposing legislation to cripple the education aspirations of African Americans in our state. He’d probably even forgive Sen. Ford for inadvertently crippling the education aspirations of less affluent whites who, even though armed with vouchers, can’t afford Sen. Ford’s publicly funded private schools. Make no mistake about it, if Coleman Blease were alive today he’d be extolling the virtues of the “Pay White People With Children Already In Private Schools” Bill.

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’t 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 ‘round and ‘round in circles, and it’s time for the nail to come out.

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.