President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday agreed with Senator Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) remarks in response to Biden’s joint address to Congress that the United States as a nation is not racist. “America is not a racist country,” Scott said, “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.”
During his speech, Biden mentioned racism twice, when he called “to root out systemic racism in our criminal justice system” and “we have a real chance to root out systemic racism that plagues American life in many other ways.” When asked during an NBC News interview Thursday if he thought America was racist, Biden seemed to retract his position: “No, I don’t think the American people are racist, but I think after 400 years, African Americans have been left in a position where they are so behind the eight ball, in terms of education, health, in terms of opportunity.”
During a Thursday morning appearance on ABC‘s Good Morning America, Harris was also asked to react to comments from Scott. “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,” Harris said. “I applaud the president for always having the ability and the courage, frankly, to speak the truth about it.”
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Harris noted that domestic terrorism manifested by white supremacists is “one of the greatest threats to our national security,” repeating the notion Biden expressed during his joint address that “white supremacy is a [form of] terrorism.”
The leftists’ reaction to Scott’s views was fast and ugly. A racist hashtag “#Uncle Tim,” a riff on the racist epithet “Uncle Tom,” was allowed to trend on Twitter that night, echoing the subliminal message present in the mainstream media coverage of the story. CNN political analyst Van Jones maintained that Scott’s message “was nonsense” and that the senator had lost African Americans “by the tens of millions” by denying what everyone knew was true about the United States. Another CNN observer, Clay Cane, said Scott “uses his Blackness when it’s convenient, and so does his party,” and believes that “Republicans’ racist policies, from a voter suppression bill that has been called Jim Crow 2.0 … to bills that grant immunity to drivers who hit protesters, speak louder than their words.” For MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Scott’s speech was “disappointing.” Reid also said she was “surprised,” “shocked,” and even a little “embarrassed” for the black senator from South Carolina. She went on to lecture Scott on the difference between “racist country” and “systemic racism.”
Scott is playing for the “white supremacy team,” and deceives black Americans, Bishop Talbert Swan believes. “Trotting out sycophantic Black folks who will serve as apologists for white supremacy is a tried-and-true tactic that racists have used for centuries,” he told the Washington Post.
MSNBC’s far-left program The Reidout briefly addressed the story Thursday evening, with one guest defending the use of #UncleTim owing to Scott’s Republican politics.
After the backlash from the left, Scott told Fox & Friends that it was shocking to hear intolerance coming from those who say they want to end discrimination, and that those attacking him were doubling down on the concept of liberal oppression. “Intolerance so often comes from the left with words like ‘Uncle Tim’ and the ‘n-word’ being used against me…. The left has doubled down that they are going to, not attack my policies, but they’re literally attacking the color of my skin,” he added.
The left routinely attacks black conservatives for their “treachery,” and for their advocacy of small government, low taxes, strong borders, choice in public schools, and voter-integrity laws. They are immediately dubbed “Uncle Toms” by the party that has taken black Americans’ support for granted, in exchange for social welfare programs. It comes as no surprise that this condescending treatment has caused a drift of black voters back to the “Lincoln Party.” Polls show that the number of black and Hispanic blue-collar workers who identify as Republican has gone up during the past decade, with Hispanics up 13 percent and black blue-collar workers up seven percent. At the same time, 54 percent of African Americans believe the Democratic Party isn’t paying enough attention to their needs. It is an issue that is leading a growing number of blacks to rethink their choices at the ballot box, which was reflected during the 2020 presidential elections.
The dramatic disparity in treatment among Senator Scott, President Biden, and Vice President Harris, all of whom said the same thing within 24 hours, is a glaring example of the Left’s double standards and intolerance. Are Biden and Harris spinning “nonsense” when they say that America is not racist? Are Biden and Harris losing “tens of millions” of black voters for saying “the obvious”? If not, why not? Or are liberals simply trying to smear Scott as a quisling because they’re worried about his appeal? America is certainly not a racist country, but there are some racists left, and they will attack any black person who dares leave the “Democratic plantation.”
