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Senator
Tim
Scott of
South Carolina opposes the impeachment of Donald
Trump,
reflecting a long history of the junior senator caping for a white
supremacist - who just incited a deadly U.S. Capitol insurrection -
in the White House.
Now
is the time for Scott to do his job, hold this president accountable,
and decide exactly which side he is on.
With
the House impeaching Trump for a second time - this time for
“incitement
of insurrection”
in a 232-197 vote, with 10 Republicans voting with the Democrats -
the Senate will have a trial to decide whether or not to convict
Trump. On Jan. 12, a day before the historic vote, Scott made his
feelings about impeachment known.
“President
Trump has eight days left in his term and has promised a smooth and
peaceful transition of power. The Democrat-led impeachment talks
happening in the House right now fly in direct opposition to what
President-elect
Joe Biden
has been calling for all year,” Sen.
Scott tweeted.
“An
impeachment vote will only lead to more hate and a deeply fractured
nation. I oppose impeaching President Trump.”
In
many ways, Scott sounds a lot like Sen.
Lindsey
Graham
(R-S.C.),
who told Biden to reject impeachment because it would be
“destructive” and “will further divide the nation,”
and Sen. Susan
Collins
(R-Maine), who voted against impeachment the first time around,
justifying her decision by claiming Trump learned
“a pretty big lesson”
from impeachment. That makes sense if Collins meant Trump learned he
could give the green light for a Klan massacre at the Capitol to
overturn the election he lost.
If
Senator Scott knows his history, he knows that America had a coup
attempt similar to this one, and for the same reasons. In 1898, a
lynch mob of 2,000 white men waged a racial massacre in
majority-Black Wilmington,
North Carolina.
The angry mob staged an insurrection against the city government, and
replaced the city’s Black and white elected leadership with
themselves. The purpose of the insurrection, in which hundreds were
killed, was to restore white power and white supremacy, and stop
Black folks from voting. And it was the only coup on U.S. soil -
until 2021.
The
Capitol insurrection, like the Wilmington insurrection, was all about
white people overthrowing the government and maintaining white power.
This time, it was for Trump, and about nullifying the Black vote that
elected Biden and Harris. And this is the man for whom Tim Scott is
providing cover.
The
lone Black Republican in the Senate has done some good for
underserved communities during his time on Capitol Hill. For example,
his police
reform proposal,
the Walter
Scott Notification Act,
would establish a national database on police deadly force incidents.
The senator has spoken out about the racism and police
racial profiling
he has faced, along with threats,
racial tirades
and accusations he is a token “Uncle Tim” in the
Republican Party.
He
championed the First
Step Act,
the criminal justice reform package for reducing recidivism and
helping transition incarcerated citizens back into civilian life.
Further, Scott has committed to investment in Opportunity
Zones
to combat poverty and create jobs in economically disadvantaged
communities.
Despite
the good work he apparently tried to do, Tim Scott voted to repeal
the Affordable Care Act, supported Trump’s Supreme Court picks
and voted for the tax cut. And he has toned down his language when
speaking about Trump’s racism.
Scott
pushed back too softly and gently against Trump when his president
called Black nations s***hole countries, and said there were “very
fine people”
on both sides in the deadly 2017 white supremacist confab in
Charlottesville, Virginia. The senator said Trump “misspoke”
when he refused to condemn white supremacists in a presidential
debate with Joe
Biden,
and criticized the president for retweeting a “white
power”
video. Moreover, Scott compared Trump’s first impeachment to a
“political
death row trial.”
Moreover,
Scott said some people “enjoy”
talking about systemic racism,
and declared “We are not a racist country. We deal with racism
because there is racism in the country… Both are true. They
are not mutually exclusive.” And at last year’s
Republican National Convention, Sen. Scott was carrying much water
for Donald Trump, claiming “our nation’s arc always bends
back towards fairness” and saying “Our family went from
Cotton to Congress in one lifetime.” He warned that Joe
Biden
and Kamala
Harris
“will turn our country into a socialist utopia,” and
proclaimed: “We don’t give into cancel-culture, or the
radical - and factually baseless - belief that things are worse today
than in the 1860s or the 1960s.”
My
people have lived in the Gullah Lowcountry of South Carolina since
around 1700. During the Civil War, my great-great-grandfather, Henry
Whaley,
escaped from the plantation in Pineville to Charleston with his
parents, a baby strapped on his mother’s back. They were part
of a group of self-liberating folks fleeing from the plantation
police. When Henry wouldn’t stop crying, his mother was
prepared to kill the baby, then herself, rather than risk being
captured by the paddy rollers. Thank God she didn’t have to.
In
2021, the police and the white mobs are still chasing Black people,
and white supremacy is still trying to kill us. This time, white
domestic terrorists threatened to overthrow the government and wage a
massacre under Trump’s direction.
Although
there is much we have yet to learn about Jan. 6, we do know that
according
to a “Stop the Steal” organizer,
U.S. Reps. Paul
Gosar,
Mo
Brooks
and Andy
Biggs
helped plan the rally-turned-coup. Unnamed lawmakers gave
reconnaissance
tours
of the Capitol to sketchy individuals the day before the siege.
Police
officers,
enlisted
soldiers
and veterans
were among the insurgents.
The
white domestic terrorists had Confederate and Nazi flags, a noose
and gallows
at the Capitol and wanted to hang Vice President Mike
Pence
and kill Speaker Nancy
Pelosi.
Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez
feared she would be kidnapped and assassinated. The mob found the
secret office of House Majority Whip
James
Clyburn
of South Carolina, who said it was an inside job, and someone removed
the panic
buttons
from Rep.
Ayana Pressley’s
office before the attack. We are only scratching the surface.
Yet,
according to Senator Scott, Trump wants peace, and impeachment is bad
for the country. What’s bad is Scott’s complicity in
playing the role of negro whisperer and providing cover for white
supremacists when they’re called out on their racism.
You
know that Black South Carolinians deserve better than this. By the
way, Senator Scott is up for reelection in 2022.
This commentary was originally published by The Grio
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