Tim Scott is a conservative Republican senator from South Carolina. He also happens to be a black man. That rare combination would seem to make him a natural and much-needed mediator between his party and minority voters, but it is a role that Scott himself has tried hard to downplay, for example by refusing to join the Congressional Black Caucus. If his race is nonetheless part of his political identity, it is not because Scott has sought it out, but because others insist on thrusting that image upon him.
But in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, Scott cast all of that aside and went deeply personal. Among other things, he recounted some of his own too-numerous experiences with law enforcement, repeating the type of testimony that we've heard from many other successful black men, such as Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. To those of us without that first-hand experience, the consistency of these stories is remarkable.
"I shuddered when I heard Eric Garner say 'I can't move'," Scott confessed to his fellow senators. "I wept when I watched Walter Scott turn and run away and get shot and killed. And I broke when I heard the 4-year-old daughter of Philando Castile's girlfriend tell her mother 'It's OK, I'm right here with you'. These people are lost forever -- fathers, brothers, sons."
For those who might have forgotten the name "Walter Scott," this scene should remind you:
The senator and the murder victim were not related, but they shared more than a last name. That shooting from April 2015 occurred in North Charleston, S.C., the community where Tim Scott was born, so it must have literally struck home for him. (Scott also might have added the name of Atlantan Deravais Rogers to that list of victims.)
As President Obama did in his beautiful speech in Dallas, Scott stressed the importance of supporting law enforcement and of recognizing the many difficulties and dangers of their work. There is never, ever an acceptable reason for harming those who put their lives on the line for us, he said. However, there is also no acceptable reason for ignoring that we have a major problem to solve.
"I simply ask you this: Recognize that just because you do not feel the pain, the anguish of another does not mean it does not exist. To ignore their struggles, our struggles, does not make them disappear. It simply leaves you blind and the American family very vulnerable. Some search so hard to explain away the injustice that they are slowly wiping away who we are as a nation. But we must come together to fulfill what we all know is possible here in America: Peace, love and understanding. Fairness."
That's the core of it right there. By this point, after all this, if you still insist on dismissing the evidence that something important is going on and needs to be addressed, then that growing pile of evidence becomes taller still when your own denial is added to it.
Here is Scott's full speech:
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