Editorial: Photo shared ’round the world reminds us what South Carolina does right

We share Public Safety Director Leroy Smith’s surprise — we’d go so far as to say shock — at the intense internet interest in a picture that showed South Carolina’s top cop helping a racist out of the heat at Saturday’s KKK rally at the State House.

Perhaps people outside of South Carolina were surprised to see a black law enforcement professional acting like, well, a law enforcement professional.

Perhaps these same people were surprised by the fact that the massacre of nine black people by a white supremacist who had invaded their Bible study led not to riots or disunity but to a coming together across racial lines, the likes of which our state has never seen before. Perhaps they were surprised that our Legislature responded nearly instantaneously by removing the Confederate flag from the State House grounds — not because anyone in the world believed the flag caused or contributed to the massacre, but because so many white lawmakers and ordinary citizens had come to recognize how much pain it caused black people, and wanted to stop causing that pain.

Perhaps these same people were surprised that there were no riots when a white police officer in North Charleston gunned down a fleeing black man, because there was no cause or time for riots: The officer was arrested and charged, and the Legislature passed the first law in the nation requiring police to wear body cameras.

Perhaps these same people were surprised last fall when a white Highway Patrol trooper was fired and charged after he drew his weapon on a black motorist who was clearly trying to comply with the trooper’s orders.

Perhaps many people still think of South Carolina as a racist backwater, because, well, you know, it’s hard to shed such long-held beliefs.

And perhaps the photo of Mr. Smith — which thousands of people around the state, nation and world shared after a top aide to Gov. Nikki Haley posted it on Twitter — offers those of us in South Carolina a good opportunity to think about how much better we have handled so many racial tinderboxes than other states and communities.

Certainly South Carolina has a lot of work to do on racial animosity. Certainly there remain too many instances of black people being targeted for extra scrutiny merely because of the color of their skin. Certainly we still have too many laws that have the effect if not the intent of disproportionately disadvantaging black people.

But as all of these examples of South Carolinians working across racial lines to ease tensions, to avoid conflicts and to move appropriately beyond them should remind us, we’ve got a lot to feel good about.

As Mr. Smith explained this week , he was simply doing what S.C. law enforcement professionals — and, we would add, government employees in general —are trained and expected to do. “Our men and women in uniform are on the front lines every day helping people — regardless of the person’s skin color, nationality or beliefs,” he said.

Mr. Smith also expressed hope that the picture shared round the world “will be a catalyst for people to work to overcome some of the hatred and violence we have seen in our country in recent weeks.”

We share that hope, but we also realize that the key to Mr. Smith’s hope isn’t hope, but work — “work to overcome some of the hatred and violence.” A good way to start would be by looking back to the Charleston County courtroom where the family of the slain innocents from Emanuel A.M.E. Church faced the white supremacist who had massacred their loved ones and told him that they forgave him his terrible crime. In that, they displayed the deep and abiding faith that is perhaps the most important characteristic of South Carolinians.

This story was originally published July 22, 2015 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Editorial: Photo shared ’round the world reminds us what South Carolina does right."