Senator Tim Scott Defends His Comments On Racism For CBS’ ‘Face The Nation’

​Sen. Tim Scott underlined his controversial “America is not a racist country” comment today on CBS’ Face The Nation.

The South Carolina Republican made that remark on America in his rebuttal last week to President Biden’s first address to Congress. His remarks drew fire and racist comments from those who disagreed with his assertion that the US cannot replace one type of discrimination with another.

Twitter eventually stepped in last week to stop a trending string of comments that used the slur “Uncle Tim” to describe him in the wake of his comments.

“I’ve been saying for a long time: America is not a racist country,” Scott said. “The question is, is there a lingering effect after a couple of centuries of racism and discrimination in this nation. The answer is absolutely. The question we should be debating and fighting over is how do we resolve those issues going forward. One side says, ‘I’m going to take from some to give to others.’ Fighting bigotry with bigotry is hypocrisy, it just doesn’t work.”

Scott pointed to his Republican colleagues as working hard to expand opportunites.

“One of the reasons why we have fought for and won the highest level of funding for historically black colleges, Republicans believing in that fight, is because I understand that if I can level the playing field in education, we will actually see human flourishing like we’ve never seen before,” he said.

Face the Nation host John Dickerson also asked Scott about the pandemic’s affect on black communities.

“When you pass a Covid package with $2 trillion of spending, and in your package you hide in there: If you are a black farmer, we will give you resources, but if you are a white farmer, you’re excluded from those same resources. That’s taking from one to give them the other,” Scott said. He is referring to a US Department of Agriculture initiative that has brought a number of lawsuits from white farmers.

“So we’re going to reverse that and call that a way of creating fairness in our country. That doesn’t really work,” Scott said.