Scott’s thinking on matters of race actually began to shift much earlier, in 2015, after his hometown, Charleston, confronted two tragedies in quick succession: the shooting by a white police officer of an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, and then the massacre by a white supremacist of nine black churchgoers as they prayed at Emanuel A.M.E. “More than at any time I can remember, people of all ages and races are standing up together for the idea that Lady Justice must be blind.”įriends and colleagues say Mr. “We can all sense the opportunity that is before us,” he said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. Scott and his view of what can reasonably become law. The emerging bill is expected to be far narrower than the sweeping law enforcement overhaul that Democrats have proposed and far short of what civil rights leaders say is necessary, but its very existence reflects a personal and political journey for Mr. Scott was the one who stood up in a roomful of white Republicans and made a private pitch for a proposal that could answer the strident calls for change - without betraying bedrock party principles. It fell to him in 2017 to privately counsel President Trump about the long history of racism. Scott has bit by bit - sometimes reluctantly - become a leader in his party on matters of race.Īfter years of silence, he has spoken publicly on the Senate floor about being racially profiled by the police as a senator on Capitol Hill. Once determined to make his name on issues like tax cuts and entrepreneurship, rather than his historic status as the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction, Mr. Scott plans to unveil on Wednesday, was the culmination of a subtle transformation for the South Carolina Republican over the past five years. The offer, which set in motion the hasty drafting of legislation that Mr. The two men agreed that there was no one better for the job. Scott who marched up to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, and asked to write his party’s legislative response. WASHINGTON - Senator Tim Scott has spent much of his career trying to avoid letting the color of his skin define his political identity, keeping a line at the ready to offer to new acquaintances: “I am a Christian who is a conservative,” he likes to say, “- and you may have noticed, I’m black.”īut when protests for racial justice erupted across the nation this month, thrusting Republicans onto the defensive as the public clamored for action to address systemic racism in policing, it was Mr.
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