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In
his response to President Joe
Biden’s
joint address to Congress, Senator Tim
Scott
of South Carolina said the most outrageous thing a Black man could
possibly utter in 2021. He said that America is not a racist country.
This
begs the question, exactly how does Tim Scott think he is going to
work on police reform if he and his Republican Party do not believe
there is systemic racism in America? You already know the answer,
fam.
Listening
to Scott’s speech, one was reminded that he is speaking not to
Black people, but to white Republicans who believe Blue Lives Matter
and police should be able to brutalize, even kill Black bodies with
impunity, and that his whole purpose as a Black Republican is to
serve as a Trojan
Horse
for the GOP, a Negro Whisperer for white supremacists.
As
is typical, the lone Black Republican senator presented his bootstrap
narrative about how he made it out of poverty through prayer and
“with a string of opportunities that are only possible here in
America.”
As
a fully-grown Black man living in America, Scott knows he has
experienced racism — because he said as much. “Nowhere do
we need common ground, more desperately been in our discussions of
race. I have experienced the pain of discrimination. I know what it
feels like to be pulled over for no reason, to be followed around the
store while I’m shopping,” Scott
said.
And
yet, Scott declared, “America is not a racist country. It’s
backwards to fight discrimination with different types of
discrimination. And it’s wrong to try to use our painful past
to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.” The senator
devoted his energy to complaining about progressives and liberals who
he said call him Uncle Tom and the n-word, and defending his party’s
Jim Crow voter suppression efforts aimed at maintaining white
supremacy.
Scott
called the Democrats’ sweeping voting rights and election
reform legislation a “Washington power grab,” claiming
“This is not about civil rights or our racial past, it’s
about rigging elections in the future.”
Vice
President Kamala
Harris
said
we cannot heal the country if we ignore our realities. "No. I
don't think America is a racist country but we also do have to speak
the truth about the history of racism in our country and its
existence today," said Harris, adding that white supremacist
domestic terrorism is "one of the greatest threats to our
national security."
Black
Twitter
dragged the junior senator from the Palmetto State, and all of it was
justified.
Bree
Newsome Bass,
the activist who climbed up the flagpole to remove the Confederate
flag from the South Carolina State House, asked the question: “How
can calling Tim Scott ‘Uncle Tim’ be racist when he just
told everyone this isn’t a racist country?”
Touré
tweeted: “Tim Scott said America is not racist. George Floyd,
Alexander Brown, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor could not be
reached for comment.”
“The
concept of an “Uncle Tom” as that term is used in the
Black community-is a slave who is given prestige & comfort by the
master, using his position to tread on the slaves abused by the
master,” tweeted
Pam
Keith,
Esq. “Repackage that concept to modern times & ask if Tim
Scott fits the definition.”
Tariq
Nasheed
tweeted:
“A major strategy of racists, is to incentivize one of it’s
(sic) Black victims to act as the crash test dummy for white
supremacy. When Uncle Tim Scott says America is not a racist country,
he is fully aware he is speaking in bad faith. The purpose is to
protect white supremacists.”
None
of this should come as a surprise. Lest we forget, Tim Scott was a
loyal Trump supporter and water carrier for GOP racism. After all,
Trump recently gave Scott a “complete
and total endorsement”
ahead of his 2022 Senate reelection race. Scott, who was honored to
receive the endorsement, reacted on Twitter by saying, “Thank
you, President Trump!”
Sen.
Scott opposed
impeaching Trump,
supported those horrible Trump Supreme Court nominees, and
rubberstamped the Trump tax cuts and the attempts to repeal
Obamacare. At last year’s Republican National Convention, Scott
did more caping for Trump and his party’s racism. And he was
criticized for telling Fox News that “woke supremacy” is
just as bad as white supremacy.
Even
to the end, Scott spoke proudly of working with his president, saying
on the eve of the January 6 insurrection that he was “grateful
for all of the work President Trump has done for the people of this
country,” and “the lives of the American people have been
bettered by what has been accomplished in the Trump Administration.”
All
of this brings us to Sen. Scott’s efforts to work with Sen.
Cory Booker
(D-NJ) and Rep. Karen
Bass (D-CA)
on a bipartisan compromise for policing reform. Given that Scott
refuses to acknowledge the role of systemic racism in society, he is
not a serious player in policing reform. After all, racism has
plagued law enforcement since the days of the slave patrols, and true
reform is impossible unless we address and eradicate systemic racism.
He refuses to acknowledge its existence.
And
Republicans certainly are bad-faith actors, given their support for
white
replacement theory,
opposition to civil rights, hatred for Black Lives Matter and their
lockstep calls for law and order and heavy-handed policing against
Black folks — when they are not trying to kill police officers
at Capitol insurrections, that is.
Scott’s
prior attempt at reform failed last year when Democrats charged that
his plan did not go far enough. He was scheduled to meet with the
family of George
Floyd
on
Thursday. Will he tell them
America is not a racist country?
This
commentary was originally published by The
Grio
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