SC’s Tim Scott: ‘Justice must be served’ in shooting of unarmed black man in Georgia
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is choosing again to enter the fray with public remarks condemning the shooting of an unarmed black man.
Scott, the only black Republican in the U.S. Senate, tweeted that “justice must be served” in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old African American who was fatally shot in Brunswick, Georgia, in February after a white father and son — Gregory and Travis McMichael — reportedly grabbed weapons and chased Arbery, who was out on a jog.
The men later told investigators they thought Arbery was a suspect in a local burglary. But a cell phone video from an unidentified witness contradicts that account and has led to a grand jury investigation and calls for charges.
The footage has gone viral and has prompted a grand jury investigation. The McMichaels were arrested and charged Thursday evening.
Scott said it’s clear what happened.
“Every.single.time. The excuses pour in — ‘he looked suspicious’ … ‘we thought he was committing a crime ’… The fact remains, #AhmaudArbery was hunted down from a pickup truck and murdered in cold blood,” Scott tweeted Wednesday. “My heart breaks for his family, and justice must be served.
“#IRunWithAhmaud, just as every person of color should be able to go for a jog or out to the store without fear,” Scott continued, using a trending hashtag to indicate solidarity with Arbery. “Congress can do our part — starting with finally fully passing anti-lynching legislation. However, as a nation, we have to admit some hard truths.”
Scott concluded: “#AhmaudArbery is far from the first person of color to meet this fate. But his life, or James Byrd’s, or Emmett Till’s, can’t be forgotten. The only way we can stop this is together, as one American family. It’s too late for Ahmaud; let’s ensure his memory powers a better future.”
James Byrd, Jr., was a black man murdered in Texas in 1998 after being dragged for three miles from the back of a car by three white supremacists. Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old, was killed in Mississippi in 1955 by a white lynch mob for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
As the Senate’s only black Republican, Scott has sometimes had an uneasy relationship with the expectation that he must always speak out on behalf of his party on matters of race — and that his white Republican colleagues are often reluctant to speak out until Scott goes first.
“I don’t want to consistently be the guy who has to point out all the challenges or inadequacies or things that are just inconsistent with reality, from my perspective, for the party or for the country,” Scott told The State in January of 2019, when he was one of the first Republican members of Congress to criticize U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, for telling The New York Times he didn’t understand why the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” were derogatory.
A few months earlier, in the fall of 2018, Scott found that the burden fell to him to decide whether Thomas Farr, a nominee to be a district judge in North Carolina, should be confirmed despite some evidence he helped orchestrate a coordinated effort to disenfranchise black voters nearly 20 years ago. Other Senate Republicans waited to say they, too, would oppose Farr until after Scott came forward to sink the nomination.
But Scott has often felt compelled to speak out of an emotional connection to current events.
In Sept. 2017, he questioned President Donald Trump’s “moral authority” for suggesting there were “good people” on “both sides” of a white supremacist rally that turned deadly in Charlottesville, Virginia. Scott’s comments prompted an invitation to the White House, where Scott sought to educate Trump about how his remarks fit into the context of the black experience in the United States.
In July of 2016, Scott delivered a series of Senate floor speeches timed with a spate of shootings of unarmed black men by law enforcement officers, recalling how he himself has been a victim of racial profiling — even as a sitting U.S. senator by members of the U.S. Capitol Police.
In those speeches, he referenced two of South Carolina’s racially-motivated murders from 2015: The massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church and the killing of Walter Scott.
If Scott finds challenges in being one of two black Republicans in the entire United States Congress, he finds it on both sides of the aisle. On Thursday afternoon, at 2:01 p.m., a black Democrat, U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, tweeted, “Where are the black Republicans today? Will @SenatorTimScott condemn this injustice?”
Scott had tweeted his condemnation 11 minutes earlier.
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 5:41 PM.
