Where the gang set upon Carter Strange was not an out-of-the-way place

Sage McLaughlin writes:

You probably don’t remember this but I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. The Catholic school where I received my elementary education is about a mile from where the attack on Carter Strange took place. What is shocking is that this intersection—Blossom and Saluda—is not in some out-of-the-way, dimly lit corner of the city. Carter Strange had little reason to think he was doing anything unsafe jogging through there, where there are always plenty of people in cars and on foot, even late at night. It is directly adjacent to the university campus, with dozens of restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and the like all within a stone’s throw. If a man is not safe at that intersection, then there is no place in Columbia that is safe from savage racial violence.

As the white population of Columbia has declined, as white flight has taken hold and the suburbs of Irmo and Harbison have exploded, the city has become less and less safe at night. The one thing everyone always said about Columbia for as long as I could remember was that “It’s a great place to raise a family,” because even the downtown area was quite safe. This is increasingly untrue, but I did not realize it had gotten so bad.

To see my home town go through this kind of decay is more depressing to me than anything I’ve contemplated in a long while. There is no oasis from the violence and squalor that liberalism coughs up.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 27, 2011 10:02 AM | Send