Sen Tim Scott (R-SC) debated with Sunny Hostin, a co-host on The View, about the existence of systemic racism, in the senator’s latest media outreach as he seeks the Republican nomination for president.
Mr Scott, the first Black Senator from the South to win an election since the Reconstruction era, went on the show to discuss his candidacy and respond to criticisms. Ms Hostin asked if he believed in systemic racism.
Mr Scott said that he went on the show because he wanted to contest the idea that a successful African American person is an exception rather than the rule in the United States of America.
“That is a dangerous, offensive, disgusting message to send to our young people today, that the only way to succeed is by being the exception,” he said. “I will tell you that if my life is the exception, I can't imagine it is.”
Mr Scott rattled off examples of how the United States elected a Black president in Barack Obama and two Black Americans – Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice – served as US secretaries of state. Furthermore, he added, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is half Black, is the current Vice President of the United States.
“The fact of the matter is that progress in America is palpable. It can be measured in generations,” he said. Mr Scott noted how his grandfather grew up in the deep south and had to step off a sidewalk and not make eye contact when a white person approached.
“That man believed then what some doubt now – in the goodness of America,” he said. “Because he believed that having faith in God, faith in himself, and faith in what the future could hold for his kids, would unleash opportunities in ways that you cannot imagine.”
Mr Scott has said that his candidacy as a Black man and a Republican challenges liberal orthodoxy about racism in the United States. He is one of a growing field of Republicans to challenge former president Donald Trump for the GOP nomination for president.
On Monday, former vice president Mike Pence filed paperwork to run for president. In addition, North Dakota Gov Doug Burgum and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie are expected to announce their bids this week.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who appointed Mr Scott to his Senate seat in 2013, is also running for the GOP nomination, as is former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and Florida Gov Ron DeSantis.
