Take interstate highways between South Carolina’s largest metropolitan areas and the scene remains similar ”” thick forests, meandering rivers and lush farms punctuated with thriving suburbs and vibrant downtowns.
Get off those interstates and something else emerges ”” towns where poverty rules, illiteracy passes to children like an inherited disease, and diabetes strikes 9-year-olds because of bad diets and obesity.
This is the other South Carolina. It runs along the “Interstate-95 Corridor” through the mostly majority black counties made infamous by the “Corridor of Shame” documentary about inequities in public schools. It also includes the “Mill Crescent,” the swath of rural, largely white, old textile mill counties between the I-85 economic powerhouse and greater Columbia.
If you took this other South Carolina away, the state would no longer rank at the bottom of nearly every list you want it to be at the top of. Instead, it would basically mirror the nation as a whole in income, education and health.
Many crippling disparities linger in these metropolitan counties, but the areas have been pushed into the national mainstream by four decades of economic growth, desegregation and an influx of people from other states and countries with new ideas and high expectations.
The other South Carolina remains shrouded in despair by the legacies of slavery, dependence on a marginally educated workforce, and political and economic domination by an elite few.
Seems like a very difficult engvironment. We have similar areas in Australia – once poverty of this sort becomes entrenched, it is very difficult for communities to break out of it, or of governments to assist, despite their best intentions.
Do the churches have much mission going on in these areas? I expect that it wouldn’t be an easy mission to be part of.