Report from the Front: On the Ground in South Carolina: Gender Bender
race wasn’t the only issue for South Carolina’s Blacks
2008-01-28
By Adrienne P. Samuels, senior writer

Columbia, S.C. and Orangeburg, S.C. - What the mainstream media isn’t telling you about Sen. Barack Obama’s Saturday night smackdown over Sen. Hillary Clinton in this state’s Democratic primary is that race is only one part of the story down here.

Let’s not forget that conservative views and gender politics played a huge role in this Bible-wielding state, where several people told Ebony that God did not create woman to lead this country. Meanwhile, people under the age of 30 – churchified or not - defied the pundits by voting in record droves.

That said, it’s unclear if Obama took in a record 55.4% of the democratic vote because people believed in him or because people don’t believe in a woman. An informal exit poll of several precincts found that many people said they would have voted for Clinton if she hadn’t started “ballyhooing” in New Hampshire, a sure sign of feminine weakness.  Therefore, they pulled their votes back and switched to Obama just days prior to the primary. Men and women. Young and old. They described their reaction to Clinton as “a Southern thing.”

“I think that changes need to be done,” explained mail carrier Evelyn Riley, 43, of Orangeburg, S.C. as she was exiting the voting booth into a chilly, 35-degree day. “I’m not really sure why I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. I guess I don’t think she’d be capable of being president. To me, it’s more of a man’s job.”

Wait, there’s more.

“The man is the head, so I figure they’d be capable to do better,” added Riley, who voted for Obama. “I think a woman takes things too personal. We need a man in charge who won’t make it personal.”

Riley’s thoughts were echoed by others. Willie Jeffries, 41,  a Marine who now is the service manager at the local Nissan dealership, brought his two sons with him to the voting booth at the campus of South Carolina State University.

Like many of his Southern contemporaries, he owns about 20 guns (and voluntarily returned to his car with a gun  prior to voting because the voting booth said “no concealable weapons allowed.”) Riley is a hunter, is not a member of the national Rifle Association and has already taught his nine-year-old how to kill a deer.

He also voted for Obama and explained why Southerners- no matter their color - are a religiously conservative breed apart.

“I work with a lot of White men and these Southerners want to control their wives,” said Riley. “And Edwards he’s a lawyer and we don’t like those kinda people too much.  The poor (voters) voted for Bush in that last election because Kerry was against guns and that’s the way the Southerners vote.”

“Southern men won’t vote for no White woman,” Riley added. “They don’t want their women to think.”

Over at the victory party in downtown Columbia, State Rep. Bakari Sellers rejected the “women should be seen and not heard” theory. Only a minority of people feel that way, says the 23-year-old. For him, the victory stems from the young adult vote.

“I think that people in South Carolina chose the better candidate,” said Sellers, after completing an interview with BET News and the Chicago Sun-Times. Sellers was part of Obama’s state steering committee. “We (the youth) rocked the vote. Eighteen to thirty, once again we’re defining our generation.”

In fact, the majority of the roughly 2500 people who came to wish Obama well late Saturday night at the convention center in downtown Columbia were young, college-educated people of all races. They stood in the cold and rocked to an eclectic mix of country, rock, pop, soul and Black band music prior to Obama taking the stage with his wife, Michelle.

Polls showed that some 19% of the voters were under the age of 30, meaning about 118,565 young adults voted. That’s about the same amount of people that you might find in your average small American city.

Gloria Weeks, 29, of Fredericksburg, VA, drove down to help volunteer for one day. She couldn’t vote for Obama but was one of many Black women working the press entrance table at the last Obama event of the evening.

Just like the ladies at church, Weeks, who is a patent examiner for the US government, was doing the happy dance.

“I drove down on Thursday,” she said. “It seems like everybody volunteering today is under the age of 35 and most of them are in their mid to late 20s. I definitely see the youth presence. And a third of us are Black.”

Dontravian Frederick, 17, was one of them.

He’ll be 18 before the general election, so he was allowed to vote in the primaries. He even volunteered to be a poll watcher earlier that day.

“I’m kinda excited to be part of the difference,” said Frederick, who sees Obama as a window to the larger world outside of small town Orangeburg. “A lot of us teens are really concerned about this election. The senior class is very concerned.”

In his victory speech, Obama dismissed racial politics, saying that there is one South Carolina, not a Black state or a White state.

“After four great contests, we’ve got the most votes, the most delegates and the most diverse coalition of Americans that we’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Obama. Later in his 18-minute speech he added, “We’ve got young people from across this state who never had a reason to participate until now.”

The atmosphere was almost drunkenly giddy, though not a spit of alcohol was in sight. Yet perhaps the defining moment was when a room full of Independents and Democrats booed Hillary Clinton as she appeared on the jumbotron television screen swinging high above the crowd.

A roomful of Democrats taking pot shots at a Clinton? Perhaps America’s first Black president – via the message of his wife - just got impeached.

Click here for Campaign '08 coverage 

Adrienne Samuels is senior staff writer for EBONY magazine.