40 years after Dr. King

Today, on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, newspapers across the South are looking at the tremendous civil rights progress that has been made. But as Adam Parker at The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., points out, problems still fester. He talked with Andy Brack and John Simpkins, both board members of the Center for a Better South:

"Videos that have recently surfaced of white South Carolina troopers' allegedly harsh treatment of black drivers also caused an outcry. NAACP officials and other observers, such as political activist Andy Brack, have asked: When white drivers are pulled over, do troopers aim guns at them and handcuff them to their cars?

The great achievement of King and the civil rights movement was the end of legal segregation. The integration of blacks into white society was the political outcome based on a political agenda, said Brack, publisher of the S.C. Statehouse Report and president of the nonprofit think tank Center for a Better South. King was fighting laws that were designed to keep blacks without rights.

Integration called for full participation in civic life by all Americans, and government has done a pretty good job removing the legal and political barriers that stood in the way, he said. But while the political process can help resolve political conflicts, it can do little about cultural differences.

It's important to remember that there is such a thing as a distinct black culture, especially in the South, Brack said, and it is at its most visible in church on Sunday morning. "That's the way it is."

John Simpkins, professor of constitutional law at Charleston's School of Law, said America's cultural differences are not strictly black and white.

"It's not just an issue of race, but of values inherent to cultural viewpoints," he said.

Black culture tends to be more collective, and this tendency often can conflict with the predominant American value of individualism, Simpkins said.

"The legal system is based on the individual," he said. We value property rights, say every vote counts, encourage consumerism and the singular pursuit of the American Dream.

Meanwhile, most blacks maintain a set of values that accommodates the group, he said. The property one person owns is shared, exemplified by the problems related to heirs property, Simpkins noted. For blacks, communal ownership is legitimate, he said.

"It's the exposure that culture has had to a legal system favoring the individual that has resulted in problems," Simpkins said. "African-American communities are in decline because there is no longer a collective to which a variety of people contribute."