Seventeen years ago, in the middle of summer, I opened the front door of my tiny apartment building. Half a dozen police officers were waiting for me in the adjoining parking lot, their guns drawn and pointed directly at my chest.
My heart was racing, a sign that I was deathly afraid of being plugged with multiple bullets. Nevertheless, I projected a calm demeanor as I slowly, and without prompting from any of the attending officers, raised both of my hands into the air. It was my fifth adverse encounter with police officers in three years, so I knew how to initiate a de-escalation.
After a brief conversation with the lead officer, I was handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police cruiser. The closest psychiatric ward was located inside the Denver Health facility, a hospital situated about fifteen miles away from where I lived.
As I was being ferried to my third psychiatric ward in as many years, I looked through the window at my hometown, shook my head, and sighed. Because not too long before then I was a top ten graduate from George Washington High School, where I was voted Most Likely to Succeed by my contemporaries. My classmates assumed that if I were to be ferried anywhere as an adult, it would be to the capital building, where I would take my seat as Denver’s mayor. Juxtaposing my classmates’ theories with the ignominy of my situation was jarring, to say the least.
When the police cruiser’s momentum was temporarily halted by the stoplight, I noticed a bus stop positioned on the street corner. An older black man was waiting there, just beyond the entryway of the structure. He was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, his sunglasses suitably framing his elongated face. Our eyes locked onto each other for a few seconds before he pursed his lips and shook his head, signaling his profound disappointment.
I was distinctly familiar with the look, because my father often employed it when I was in his direct line of sight. And yet, the stranger’s initial perception of me hit differently on that day. It was more severe, penetrating the surface until it found its target: my pride. Ashamed, I turned away from the man and slid down the length of the seat.
Interestingly, that same year, Tim Scott was turning heads as a member of the Charleston, South Carolina County Council, where he served for an extended period, eventually becoming Council Chairman. Two years later, he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, serving as a conservative Republican who advocated for right-to-work laws and lower taxes for the rich. Another two years passed before he set his sights higher by running for federal office. He easily bested his Democratic opponent and became one of two black Republicans serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Fast forward another two calendar years, one year after the reelection of Barack Obama, America’s first black president. South Carolina needed an additional United States Senator and, Nikki Haley, the first female governor of South Asian descent, was presidingas governor. With an eye trained on posterity, Governor Haley appointed Tim Scott as the other South Carolina United States Center in 2013, making him the first black man or woman to serve as a U.S. Senator in the deep southern portion of the United States. Tim Scott was making history, albeit not on the same level as Barack Obama or Thurgood Marshall. Nevertheless, he was still a consequential man who was creating history every few years, buttressing his resume as a potential presidential candidate. Traditionally, his story would be treated as remarkable and worthy of praise.
As a senator, Mr. Scott routinely expressed his conservative credentials through his voting record, solidifying his profile for hard-right conservatives who hated President Barack Obama, the “militant” Kenyan who violated the constitution with his very existence. The Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, was Obama’s greatest achievement, as well as the preeminent target for repeal by the conservatives in Congress. Senator Tim Scott joined them on multiple votes, pledging his allegiance to the angry white men who would do anything to facilitate President Obama’s failure.
When a newly installed President Donald Trump, a racist and chief purveyor of fanciful and pernicious conspiracy theories, attempted to repeal Obamacare in 2017, Scott voted in favor, knowing that the healthcare law facilitated more viable lives for his people. It was a white republican man, John McCain, once an opponent of Obama for the presidency, who famously saved the law by raising his thumb in the air. Time Scott should have been the third Republican (in addition to Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins) who stepped up to stave off the death of the healthcare law.
Because on various occasions, Senator Scott has exhibited an understanding of the race dynamic in this country. After a spate of police-involved murders of black civilians further strained race relations, Senator Scott and Democratic Senator Corey Booker of New Jersey, the only two black men in the senate, worked diligently to create a bill that addressed police violence, though nothing concrete materialized from their dogged efforts. Also, when President Trump nominated an openly racist person for a spot on the federal court, Senator Scott withheld his approbation. So, despite acting in lockstep with politicians who embody threats to black progress, Senator Scott expressed a willingness to lead his colleagues on some very salient issues concerning race.
After serving in the United States Senate for close to eleven years, Scott enjoyed a collegial relationship with most of the other senators, and he was at least tolerated by black people across the country. In late 2023, Tim Scott set his sights higher by announcing his candidacy for President of the United States.
At the incipient stages of the presidential campaign, there was bipartisan agreement about Senator Tim Scott. If he were able to attract a following in the republican primary and win, he would pose a mortal threat to President Biden. Because Tim Scott was decades younger than our current president, generally good-natured, and his personal story was appealing to the public. He had been raised poor, the son of a single mother, and he fought hard to escape his unfortunate circumstances. Yes, Tim Scott typified the widely sought-after American dream, and crucially, he was the antidote to a prevailing sentiment percolating throughout the black community: racism was holding us back.
Senator Tim Scott tried for months to build momentum amongst the republican rabble horde for his doomed candidacy by attending all the scheduled Republican primary debates, exhorting his evangelical beliefs, and announcing his first marital engagement at age fifty-seven. Nothing worked for Senator Scott, as he remained mired at the bottom of the polls until the first weekend of November 2023, when he announced his departure from the presidential race. It was a particularly humiliating admission of defeat for Tim Scott.
At least Senator Scott kept his job in the United States Senate, which guarantees his influence on American public policy. Still, Scott remains ambitious, consistently seeking new avenues to gain even more power. He found his opportunity about two months ago, as he stood behind the winner of the New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump. Senator Scott stared at Trump with googly eyes, begging for attention. As he bragged about his “overwhelming” victory, a jovial and cocksure Trump opined that Scott must “really hate” Nikki Haley, who had been Trump’s most viable competitor. Sensing an opportunity, Senator Scott moved forward until he was standing face-to-face with Donald Trump, prompting faux alarm from the front-running presidential candidate.
“Uh, oh,” said Trump.
Senator Scott smiled wide, projecting his larger-than-normal gums and said, “I just love you.”
My head hung forward as I shook it from side to side, for I was feeling like the black man at the bus station, the one who’d expressed profound disappointment when he saw me sitting in the back of that police cruiser. Senator Tim Scott, an exalted member of the Washington D.C. class, was no better than that unfortunate thirty-year-old black man. He might as well have just referred to Trump as his ‘Massa’.
I woke up early the next morning, knowing that Scott’s genuflection before Trump would be a topic of conservation on the news programs. The Reverend Al Sharpton, a prominent black man and former candidate for president, attended a discussion panel on the Morning Joe television show. When asked for his opinion on the Tim Scott debacle, Mr. Sharpton did not mince his words: “It’s not a good thing in my life to watch Tim do that. He has a right to be Republican; he has a right to do Donald Trump. But to do it in such a way that is so humiliating is troubling. There are few moments in my life I have been more embarrassed than to watch Tim Scott. It was humiliating to watch what Tim Scott did as a sitting senator.”
Other prominent black Americans piled on, expressing their profound disappointment with the disemboweled Senator. Senator Scott responded to his detractors during an interview on Fox News, accusing liberals and other detractors of being racist: “The most racist people in the country are liberals.”
Scott continued: “They’re trying to make sure that any other minority who thinks for themselves and consider the GOP — they want to send a message to every single one of them. Step outta line and we’ll attack you too.”
Mr. Scott expressed the common refrain of black conservatives, calling other well-meaning people who lambast their tomfoolery racist. Also, Scott, and other prominent black conservatives, refer to themselves as freethinkers, blessed with a special insight that ninety percent of black folks who routinely vote for democrats certainly lack. They think we have trapped ourselves on a psychological plantation, our minds warped and weakened by a slavish devotion to our democratic overlords. And yet, the first black president is a Democrat, the overwhelming majority of black people serving in the United States House and Senate are Democrats, and the first female vice president is a black Democrat.
It is the black conservatives, individuals like Tim Scott, who are being bamboozled and led askew by Republicans, increasingly radical theocrats who are trying to strip away freedoms from people who look like Tim Scott. Mr. Scott is the one exhibiting an abject feeble-mindedness, coupled with a healthy disrespect for black people who think differently from him. He just wants money and power, and he will do whatever it takes to achieve his goals, even if his actions make him an object of shame. Eventually, his time in the limelight will pass, and black people will sigh and shake their heads as we consider his legacy.