Tim Scott: America Not a ‘Racist Country’

During his announcement of entering the 2024 Republican presidential primary race, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., declared the U.S. is not a fundamentally racist country.

“For those who wonder if it is possible for a broken kid, in a broken home, to rise beyond their circumstances, the answer is yes,” Scott, the lone GOP Black senator, said Monday.

“For those of you who wonder if America is a racist country, take a look at how people come together. All of God’s people come together. Black ones and white ones, the red ones and brown ones, working together. Because love, unconditional love, binds hearts together.”

Scott then paraphrased Martin Luther King Jr.

“We are not defined by the color of our skin,” he said at Charleston Southern University. “We are defined by the content of our character. And if anyone tells you anything different, they’re lying.”

Scott later denounced critical race theory.

“I will be the president who destroys the liberal line that America is an evil country,” he told the crowd.

“We need to stop canceling our Founding Fathers and start celebrating them for the geniuses that they were. They weren’t perfect, but they believed we could become a more perfect union.”

Critical race theory is defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as the concept in which race is a socially constructed category ingrained in American law intended to maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites. It holds that the U.S. society is inherently or systemically racist.