Democrats may have to address the issues of inequality and justice

Those stately homes sit on the mostly white side of town. In the city's poor black neighborhoods, the odd laundromat and ramshackle corner grocery are spread amid broken-down cars and beat-up furniture left stranded on the buckled sidewalks. A decrepit mobile home park and some clapboard homes -- windows gone, porches collapsed, boards missing -- seem scarcely fit for human habitation.

Those disparities could force an uncomfortable conversation. The issues likely to come up in tonight's Democratic presidential debate are familiar ones -- the war in Iraq, healthcare, the economy, education. The big difference in South Carolina is race, which overlays just about every policy discussion in the state, as it has since Emancipation and reconstruction.

"Here you have to face issues that candidates shy away from elsewhere," said state Rep. Bakari T. Sellers, who went to school in Orangeburg and now represents the district next door. "Issues of justice and inequality. Issues of race."