THE ISSUE: National focus on Wilson-Clyburn-Obama

OUR OPINION: Impossible for reporter to truly capture the realities of race here

It came as no surprise to learn that a Washington Post reporter was in Orangeburg working on a story about the 6th and 2nd congressional districts, which split Orangeburg County.

Republican Joe Wilson of the 2nd District with his “You lie!” to President Barack Obama and the 6th District’s Jim Clyburn with the effort to censure Wilson have made the political landscape here the subject of national interest.

Locally, we saw reporter Philip Rucker’s efforts as news for T&D readers. We contacted him during his visit, but he declined being part of a story about what he was doing. Understandable. Journalists are to report the news, not make the news.

That had us awaiting his report. The story appeared in Tuesday’s Post. The T&D was granted permission to reprint it on Sept. 23.

We wanted Orangeburg to see how the Wilson-Clyburn-Obama story was reported on a national scale, knowing full well the report would leave plenty of room for all of us here to ponder the view from afar.

Reporter Rucker did a solid job of interviewing people in Orangeburg about the furor born of Wilson’s comment during Obama’s speech to Congress and the subsequent debate about the congressman’s motives as racist or not. The story was not surprising in that many whites interviewed defended Joe Wilson and criticized Obama, while most African-Americans questioned Wilson’s motives and supported Obama.

That made it easy for readers elsewhere to reach the conclusion that opinions about the present controversy show Orangeburg and South Carolina are no different today than in the era of Jim Crow: Racism abounds; whites and blacks are divided across the spectrum; the South is racist.

That Rucker reported accurately what he was told is not being questioned. But even as he acknowledges, it is very difficult for a reporter from afar to come to a community, spend a few days talking about a specific issue and get the total picture.

During an online interview session with Post readers, he said, “Often the hardest part of my job is to write stories that accurately portray people and places, capturing all the texture and nuance in a powerful piece of writing. It is difficult if not impossible to present people fully and capture all their complexities in a matter of paragraphs. Sometimes we succeed and perhaps more often we fall short. But we try our best every time, and I hope this South Carolina story came close.”

Consider some of the comments by those questioning Rucker:

n “I find places like South Carolina almost to be another country.”

n “The white folks in your story won’t change, they’ll be supplanted by a different demographic.”

n Obama’s election meant a loss of long-standing white status in the South.

It’s simply not that simple. No one will deny that racism exists here, but this is not the Orangeburg or the South of even a few short decades ago. It is a vast oversimplification to paint Columbia Road as some kind of dividing line — “tension along the border” — between whites of Joe Wilson’s majority-white district and African-Americans of Clyburn’s 6th. Let’s not forget that many blacks are served by Wilson and lots of whites proudly claim Clyburn as their congressman.

While they do not capture our sentiments exactly, we’ll defer to the insightful words of a reader from North Carolina engaging in the online discussion with Rucker:

“I grew up in South Carolina, attended elementary, high school and college in S.C., and had an extended family that was very Southern and sounds much like the people in your story.

“It’s is often a little painful for me to read about the state and its residents. Not a whole lot of good news seems to come out of S.C. And the descriptions of the people and their lives, even if factually accurate, always ring slightly judgmental to me. ...

“I feel fortunate to have a solid education and a more progressive background and outlook. But I also feel like I have some insight into that world. The people you quote ... often come off seeming like bad caricatures … Maybe those descriptions are true sometimes, but there’s a more nuanced version as well, one that doesn’t necessarily come through in words alone.

“South Carolina, for all of its myriad problems, is not necessarily a simple place. Yes, it has more than its fair share of racists, I don’t think anyone will deny that. But it also has people who are easy to paint as racist, when they really are not. And then it has people who probably are racist, but would never appear as such. ...”

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