by Sharelle Burt
November 7, 2023
Scott told black community members in Chicago that as the leading black GOP candidate, America needs to ease up on discussions of race.
Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator and presidential candidate, recently gave a speech that caused some to side-eye him.
During an unscheduled visit to a Black church on Chicago’s South Side in October 2023, Scott told the crowd that he wants America to focus less on race relations, ABC News reports. The speech was intended to clarify some comments made during the second Republican debate in September, after he reportedly claimed that former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society federal welfare program posed a greater hardship for black Americans than slavery .
“There is a radical movement on the far left, and the more progress America makes on race, the more some leaders want to deny it,” Scott told members of New Beginnings Church.
“However, our country has made tremendous progress on the racial issue since then – but lawlessness, fatherlessness and unemployment have gotten worse, not better, in the last 60 years.”
In his more than hour-long speech, Scott called out Chicago Democratic leadership — many of whom are Black — and said he felt they were failing the Black community. Scott said liberals don’t offer solutions, only divisions.
“They want us to sit down, shut up and remember to vote as long as we vote blue,” the presidential candidate said. “Instead of solutions, we are offered distraction and division.”
His comments were not particularly well received by the participating viewers. “I saw both in the debate and in your statements that you indicated that you believe there is no systematic racism,” attorney Rodrick Wimberly told Scott afterward.
“There is statistical data that shows, or at least suggests, that there is a systemic problem.” Wimberly and his wife, Evelyn, came out to hear the South Carolina senator’s speech “out of respect” and were willing to give Scott his vote until Scott responded to Wimberly’s comments: “I say that racism exists, but that’s not the case in the system.”
And here experts believe that Scott is losing touch in his election campaign. Political scientist and Georgetown University professor Nadia Brown argues that his racial message is not aimed at blacks, but that the senator is campaigning as a non-white candidate who aligns with Republican issues, the newspaper reports.
“Tim Scott and his ilk are trying to play on these emotional appeals that most African Americans don’t see. It’s not a landing for them,” Brown said.
“I think this is a call out to other conservatives, particularly white conservatives, who want to say, ‘I have a black senator,’ or ‘I feel comfortable voting for a black candidate.’
Ahead of the third Republican debate, scheduled for Nov. 8 in Miami, Scott isn’t looking particularly good in the polls. According to New York Magazine, he is on the verge of elimination. In a memo obtained by Politico, campaign manager Jennifer DeCasper laid out a strategy for what the debates will look like. “Haley and DeSantis will have a slugfest on Wednesday,” she wrote.
“Scott, on the other hand, will sell himself as a conservative who can actually win.”