The liberal reaction to South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s speech on Wednesday was somewhat predictable because Scott shows that politics go far beyond skin color. Demographics aren’t everything. They certainly aren’t destiny, as we saw in the most recent election.
MSNBC conspiracy theorist and liar Joy Reid misrepresented Scott multiple times to talk about how “embarrassed” she was for him. CNN’s Van Jones said Scott “lost a lot of African Americans by the tens of millions” for saying that America isn’t a racist country. The View co-host Sunny Hostin called Scott a token, and her colleague, Joy Behar, decided that she, as a white woman who has dressed in blackface, understood racism better than a black man who grew up in South Carolina in the 1960s and 1970s.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post offered a “fact check” of Scott’s family history, determining that Scott’s ancestors didn’t really have it that bad in the Jim Crow South because they owned a bit of land. Twitter allowed the phrase “Uncle Tim” to trend for hours, as verified liberal users decided and shared their opinion that Scott isn’t really black. What’s sort of incredible is that even as this was going on, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both publicly agreed with Scott on the point that had angered everyone so: America is not a racist country.
Scott’s existence as a powerful black man is offensive to the Left. It pokes a hole in the narrative that Democrats are destined to dominate politics based on demographic change. Scott illustrates an important truth: Conservatism and patriotism transcend skin color. And Democrats fear this because they saw in the 2020 election how it could play out.
President Donald Trump won 40% of Hispanic voters in Texas, flipping Hispanic counties that had regularly voted for Democrats by wide margins in the process. Republicans flipped heavily Hispanic House districts in Florida. And the share of black men voting for Republican presidential candidates has risen with each recent election cycle, going from 5% in 2008 to 18% last year.
Right-wing pundits such as Tucker Carlson may foolishly buy into the “demographics are destiny” narrative as well, but it’s a juvenile level of analysis. A prominent politician such as Tim Scott, who is as good of an ambassador for conservatism as the Republican Party has, highlights just how silly the demographic-obsessed worldview is.
Demographics aren’t destiny in politics, and skin color doesn’t have to define anyone’s political views. Tim Scott shows this. Liberals know it, and they tremble.
At a time when Democrats are ostentatiously neglecting black victims of crime in cities that the party has run for decades, Scott shows that it isn’t “systemic racism” that is holding people down and that conservatism knows no race, gender, or ethnicity.
