Liberals Think America Is A Worse Place Than Minorities Do
The liberal reaction to a Tim Scott speech provides another example of the racial demographics of the Great Awokening.
Wednesday night featured a pair of dueling speeches, with President Joe Biden laying out the Democratic agenda for the country and South Carolina Republican Tim Scott offering the GOP’s rebuttal.
The actual content of the speeches was fairly straightforward, with both sides largely sticking to their policy shibboleths. But it was Scott’s remarks, however banal that they were, that seemed to provoke the most fiery responses from liberal commentators.
The South Carolina senator, who is African American, acknowledged that he’s suffered from discrimination and believes that “our healing is not finished,” referring to his proposals for police reform.
He also criticized the critical race theory of the world, arguing that these blemishes on our country do not define it:
Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them, and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor. From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress at all, by doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal.
You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country. It’s backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination. And it’s wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.
Most Americans would not find Scott’s conclusions to be all that controversial: America has an imperfect past and a flawed present, but it is not fundamentally a racist society or country.
Liberals, however, were not having it.
The phrase “Uncle Tim” trended on Twitter following Scott’s speech, a reference to the slur “Uncle Tom,” which is frequently used against minorities, particularly African Americans, who are perceived as betraying their ethnic or racial group:
Left-leaning commentators and journalists made sure to leave little ambiguity about how they felt about Scott’s speech. Here’s a sampling from Twitter:
One of the developments in public opinion over the past few years is that liberals, particularly white liberals, have become increasingly fixated on the notion that America is a society consumed by racism, particularly white supremacy. Interestingly, this segment of society is more committed to this belief than members of minority groups and immigrants, who tend to have a more optimistic view of the United States and are often much more skeptical of anti-racist demands.
Here’s a few examples.
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