In the beauty parlors that are the social hubs for black women in the Carolinas, loyalties are being tested as voters here contemplate the first 2008 Democratic primary in the South.
Clara Vereen, who has been working here in rural eastern South Carolina as a hairstylist for more than 40 of her 61 years, reflects the ambivalence of many black women as she considers both Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
“I’ve got enough black in me to want somebody black to be our president,” she said in her tiny beauty shop, an extension of her home. “But I want to be real too.”
Part of being real, said Vereen, is worrying that a black president would not be safe. “I fear that they just would kill him, that he wouldn’t even have a chance,” she said. One way to protect him, she suggested, would be to not vote for him.
And Clinton?
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“We always love Hillary because we love her husband,” Vereen said. Then she paused. “A man is supposed to be the head,” she said. “I feel like the Lord has put man first, and I believe in the Bible.”
Black women are a crucial constituency in South Carolina, which may hold its voting as early as Jan. 19. In 2004, about half of the state’s Democratic primary voters were black (in Iowa and New Hampshire, black voters made up about 1 percent or less of Democrats).
Most polls here show Clinton leading and Obama second.
In interviews with more than three dozen black women in Loris and Columbia, most said they were puzzling over which way to go. Some said that specific issues like health care were important to them, but most thought their votes would be based on intangibles.
A striking theme that emerged in the interviews was how often these women expressed concern for Obama’s safety.
State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter said she had heard black women say they were afraid for Obama. “Maybe it’s a Southern thing. They want to protect him from the bad people, and in order to protect him, they won’t support him. They want to see him around.” Cobb-Hunter said.