Initially reluctant to focus on race, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina is now a leading Republican voice, teaching his party what it’s like to be a Black man in America when the police lights are flashing in the rearview mirror.
“That he has to sit there with those senators and go through his experiences and hope that they have some measure of empathy,” said Bass, who is leading Democrats’ policing bill and working with Scott, whom she has known for years.
As massive demonstrations over the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minnesota spilled into a worldwide reckoning over police tactics and racial injustice, Scott quietly approached Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the GOP senators’ weekly private luncheon.
Broaching law enforcement changes is a new priority for the GOP, which proudly calls itself the party of Lincoln but has wrestled with race in the modern era, becoming more aligned with the “law and order” approach now embraced by President Donald Trump than a civil rights platform.
If anything, Scott objects not to those in his party learning the toll of racism, but critics from the left who question his policy decisions as a Black man.
