With a video series on issues he sees as pertinent to the Black community, the U.S. Senate’s only Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, is putting forth what he characterizes as a positive response to partisan rhetoric on race that he’s best-positioned to rebut.
But that approach comes with some harsh words about President Joe Biden’s recent rhetoric.
In conjunction with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Scott told The Associated Press that he hoped recent constituent roundtables on topics like building generational wealth would refocus a fraught national conversation on race. The current climate, Scott said, was only exacerbated by Biden’s recent voting rights speech, which Scott called “misleading.”
Last week in Atlanta, Biden challenged senators to “stand against voter suppression” by changing Senate rules to pass voting rights legislation that Republicans are blocking from debate and votes. Biden likened the wrongs of 1960s-era civil rights battles to modern-day election subversion efforts, including GOP-backed laws passed after President Donald Trump lost reelection in 2020, then falsely claimed widespread voter fraud.
