The release of the study, which had researchers look at five areas of African-American life in the state, coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which desegregated America's schools and paved the way for other civil rights legislation. The report also included results of a survey on attitudes toward race relations in South Carolina.

Fred Sheheen

David Swinton, an economist and president and CEO of Benedict College, examined the economic status of African Americans in South Carolina in the past 50 years. He noted that, while African Americans made significant socioeconomic gains between 1950 and 1970, those gains slowed between 1970 and 2000.

“There was some progress, but I would not put the emphasis on progress,” he said at a press conference announcing the release of the report. “I would put the emphasis on lack of progress.”

Lewis Burke, a USC law professor who looked at the issue of justice, said he was “startled” by the percentage of African Americans who are in state penal institutions for drug offenses compared to the small percentage of white inmates incarcerated for similar offenses.

“Yet, when you look at the studies on illegal drug usage in this state, you find no difference between illegal drug usage between blacks and whites,” he said.

He also noted that in 1954 the majority of the state prison population was white, and African Americans made up about 40 percent of the state’s general population. Today, the state’s prison population is 70 percent African American, but blacks make up less than 30 percent of the state’s population.

Andrew Billingsley’s part of the report focused on the status of the African-American family and health. “Opportunities have opened up, and there have been tremendous improvements,” said Billingsly, a USC sociology professor and research fellow with the Institute for Families in Society. “The longevity of black Americans has increased substantially, and infant mortality has decreased substantially. But of all of these improvements, we’d like to improve more.”

In his paper, Thomas Thompson, a USC education professor, looked at education. “Have we made progress? Certainly, we have,” he said. “But there is still a tremendous gap between the haves and have nots. Across our pre-K to 16 educational system, regardless of the advances we’ve made, we still have a long way to go in achieving equal educational opportunities.”

Paul Beazley, a retired deputy commissioner from the S.C. State Human Affairs Commission, researched African-American participation in public life. In his report he wrote: “Blacks made steady gains in public employment during the 1990s and into the 2000s. But, for the most part, blacks are concentrated in mid-level positions—the proverbial 'glass ceiling' is present in most agencies. There have been significant gains by blacks at the local government level. In the General Assembly, however, the effect of single-member districts has been a polarization that affects legislative action.”

The report outlined other issues facing African Americans in South Carolina:

• the inability of predominantly African-American school districts to garner necessary resources and to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers
  
• a sharp decline in husband-and-wife families among African Americans
  
• an adverse impact of technology on unemployment, job certainty, and poverty levels among African Americans
  
• an increase in serious health threats to African Americans, including diabetes, substance abuse, and HIV/AIDs
  
• little representation of black judges among all South Carolina's courts
  
• fewer black males obtaining college degrees
• an expanding wealth gap between blacks and whites.
  

Based on the studies and suggestions of the researchers, the steering committee for the research project outlined the following recommendations, including:

• ensuring full employment for all citizens, including the creation of a program of public works projects if needed
  
• the establishment of universal health insurance using federal and state resources
  
• requiring all new nationally board-certified teachers to spend one year in a high-need public school
  
• providing better substance abuse programs and adopting penalties other than incarceration for minor drug offenses
  
• increasing the number of black judges and solicitors in the state
  
• adopting alternate legislative representation plans to ensure representation reflective of the state's diverse population
  
• naming more blacks to serve on the boards and commissions of state agencies
  
• investigating why more blacks don't hold higher positions in state agencies
  
• adopting a minimum wage of $7 per hour.
  

“We do believe and hope that, although some of these recommendation may be debatable and contentious and controversial, that they will make their way in to the public discourse of the state and they will be given serious consideration by members of the General Assembly and the executive authorities of the state,” Sheheen said.

“It’s been my personal philosophy for many years that South Carolina suffers from a vision of limited expectations. We dwell on what we cannot do. I don’t think we’ll ever reach the place we need to reach if we’re not willing to move ahead and extend ourselves. If we don’t get all the way there on all of the topics, we may be some of the way there on some of the topics.”

For more information about the IPSPR, go to www.iopa.sc.edu.

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