For saying ‘America is not a racist country’, Scott has been branded an Uncle Tom.
The rebuttal speech to a US president’s address to Congress is usually a non-event. Not this year. Republican senator Tim Scott provided a solid, policy-filled response to Joe Biden’s speech marking his first 100 days in the White House. But the remarks by Scott, an African-American, on the use of race in American politics are what really set it apart, especially when he declared that ‘America is not a racist country’. That simple statement, which in the recent past would have been uncontroversial, led to a deluge of frothing-at-the-mouth outrage from those who are convinced that the US is fundamentally and irredeemably racist.
