Thankfully the current Mayor and City Council condemned it at a joint appearance, as have the two white candidates in what appears to be a four-way race. While retired Army Lt. Col. Gary Myers, one of the two black candidates vying to make history has said;
When you're dealing with hatred, it's not really directed at Steve or I, it's directed at defiling the image of Columbia and the state.
Unfortunately as The State reports, it's not the first racist statement in the modern history of what Mayor Bob Coble described as "a city of the new south", but it may make it that much more understandable, when the head of the South Carolina NAACP says;
What's the big much ado about nothing? We don't make an issue of all the other racist activities that take place every day in the city of Columbia.
And, it illustrates the dream, when the head of the Martin Luther King neighborhood association replied;
All my life, 80 years in Columbia, I've seen things like that written, the word and what not, but this century? I didn't expect it. I thought we were beyond such garbage.
Add all this to the questions being raised about the candidacy of Artur Davis for Governor of Alabama and the Tennessee County Commission which failed to affirm compliance with the Civil Rights Act, or any number of recent events, all signs point toward us having a wild ride.
