Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) on Friday responded to the backlash he has received for saying that “woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy.”
The remark came in response to MSNBC’s Joy Reid referring to Scott as a “patina of diversity” and a “token wrong.”
Scott, reacting to CNN’s Don Lemon blasting him for likening “woke supremacy” to white supremacy earlier this week, said that until people on the left speak out against hatred directed at black conservatives for their beliefs, the United States will continue to be divided.
“I would say that white supremacy and woke supremacy from their roots in racism and discrimination. It is bad. I am not talking about tomorrow or yesterday. I’m talking about today. If we don’t deal with it today, we are going to have something on our hands that we can’t deal with,” Scott outlined. “It was the woke supremacists, by the way, who said that me and Herschel Walker were the ‘coon squad.’ If you watch the folks who are yelling the loudest right now, it includes people who are at their wits’ end because there are African-Americans who willing to speak their minds from a conservative perspective. Why that requires people to call my office and threaten my life; why that requires me to have a security detail because I decide to stand up for my values, my convictions based on my faith, I don’t understand that.”
He continued, “So, Don Lemon can say whatever Don Lemon wants to say, but until he has taken a serious look at what is happening on his side of the aisle and come out strong against that, we’re going to continue to have a conversation in America that keeps us divided and not building a bridge so that we can live in this nation together.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent