“They aren’t stopping you for speeding, are they?” My girlfriend Eileen was as confused as I was. It was 10 p.m. on a hot Charleston night. I was driving Eileen home after leaving my granddaddy’s house. When I turned onto Rivers Avenue, I saw the far-too-familiar flashing lights in my rearview mirror. My eyes flicked down to the odometer. Thirty-eight in a 35 zone. That can’t be the reason.
“Son,” the officer said, “do you know how fast you were going?” The officer’s hand never left his gun.
“Yes, sir.” I put on my most apologetic grin. “I think I was at 38. I know that’s a little fast, but I can promise you it was a mistake. I honestly never speed.”
The officer bent lower to see Eileen. “Are you all right, ma’am? Do you need anything?”
“Yes, sir. I mean no. I’m just fine. Thank you,” she said.
This interaction with the police wasn’t anything new. And it wasn’t just interactions with police. I have more memories than I can count of people hurrying along to the other side of the road when they see me walking toward them. I have a dozen memories of shopping for a new pair of pants or a shirt with a department store clerk shadowing me the entire time to be sure I wasn’t shoplifting. I’ve been shadowed in grocery stores.
Just three weeks ago, for the fifth time, I was stopped by a Capitol Police officer on my way into the Capitol to cast a vote. Each time, after showing the officer my credentials, I was still detained. Each time, I have had to ask my white colleagues to tell the officer who I was.
Then, there is the other side of my black experience.
Just recently, I was being interviewed on Fox News by my friend Trey Gowdy. He asked me to respond to an accusation that had been hurled at me a day or so earlier by Joy Reid on MSNBC.
“You’ve got to love Tim Scott standing there to provide the patina of diversity,” she said, her voice dripping with disdain.
Joy was “reporting” on a press conference I had attended with a colleague who was speaking out against a bill that immediately would raise the minimum wage in his state by 50%. I have owned and operated a number of small businesses over the years, and I understand how this kind of bill could destroy a small business. This is a subject on which I have decades of experience and about which I have strong convictions.
I care deeply about the communities I represent. You would be hard-pressed to find another senator who has spent as much time as I have strategizing how to bring prosperity to lower-income neighborhoods, and I can tell you that the numbers and the arguments for raising the minimum wage don’t add up. I am committed to providing a pathway to success for all Americans, and I know from experience that workers can’t benefit from a policy that forces their employers out of business. Yet in the eyes of most liberal elitists, a black man needs to stay in his place, over on their side of the aisle. In their world, the only reason I would ever attend a press conference is to be used as a prop.
I’ve said and written a lot about the history of race in this country and how far we have come. Yet there are some who are doing their all-out best to drag us backward. And it is the very people who impugn and admonish us daily, lecturing us about how racist and divided we are as a nation, who are exhibiting these undeniably racist views on national television. Their low expectations are the very definition of racism. And I hear it in some way, shape, or form weekly, if not more often.
After I delivered my rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s inaugural address, the term “Uncle Tim” started to trend on Twitter. It wasn’t cute. It was hateful. The idea that having an independent thought is the same as betraying my race is preposterous.
One of the things I am most proud of since coming to Washington is the 2017 tax reform bill I played an integral role in creating. When the bill passed, I was asked to stand beside President Donald Trump at the press conference. Within minutes, actor Andy Ostroy tweeted: “There’s one black person there and sure enough they have him standing right next to the mic like a manipulated prop.”
I quickly responded with a tweet of my own: “Uh, probably because I helped write the bill for the past year, have multiple provisions included, got multiple senators on board over the last week, and have worked on tax reform my entire time in Congress. But if you’d rather just see my skin color, pls feel free.”
I was standing next to the president because I was one of three senators given the task of wading through the tax code and making changes to it. I worked on the personal side of the tax code, while Pat Toomey (R-PA) worked on the business side and Rob Portman (R-OH) worked on the international side. For several months, it was just the three of us.
I loved every moment of working on the individual side, in part because it gave me a chance to focus on single mothers. I grew up in a home where there wasn’t always enough food on the table, the lights weren’t always on, and the phone wasn’t always connected. My mom did her best, but we definitely went without some of the basics on multiple occasions. As a result of the tax reform bill, single moms saw their federal taxes cut on average by 70%. This made a real difference in the lives of single moms and their families across the United States.
Today, we live in a world that thrives on creating narratives of division. But my childhood and my life have not been defined by my blackness. The vast majority of my life has been defined by family, friends, and mentors who loved me. The majority of my life has been defined by my acceptance of the love of Jesus and the way I choose to view the world — namely, through the twin lenses of hope and redemption.
There has been monumental change in our country over the past 50 years in regard to how we see race. Rather than ignore or play down our differences, we have learned to celebrate them. Yet I tell the stories because we must understand not just our collective story but also our individual journeys if we are to move forward together.
As a nation, we are fighting for our identity. There is no law that will change the hearts of humankind. There is no bill or policy powerful enough to stop racism. So what are we to do? What can bring change? What can we look to that can bring the transformation we need?I’ll tell you.
There is hope.
There is love.
There is redemption.
Adapted from America, A Redemption Story: Choosing Hope, Creating Unity. Copyright © 2022 by Tim Scott. Published by Thomas Nelson. Aug. 9, 2022.
