Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), a conservative, even tea party stalwart in the Senate, gave an important lesson to his colleagues in an emotional and deeply personal floor speech Wednesday. He instructed them on what it's like to be profiled even as a U.S. senator: Law-making while Black.
I shuddered when I heard Eric Garner say “I cannot breathe.” I wept when I watched Walter Scott turn and run away and get shot and killed. And I broke when I heard the 4-year-old daughter of Philando Castile’s girlfriend tell her mother, “It’s OK, I’m right here with you”...
In the course of one year, I’ve been stopped seven times by law enforcement officers. Not four, not five, not six, but seven times in one year as an elected official. Was I speeding sometimes? Sure. But the vast majority of the times, I was pulled over for nothing more than driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood, or some other reason just as trivial...
It’s easy to identify a U.S. senator by our pin. I recall walking into an office building just last year after being here for five years on the Capitol, and the officer looked at me, with a little attitude, and said: “The pin, I know. You, I don’t. Show me your ID.” I’ll tell you, I was thinking to myself, “Either he thinks I’m committing a crime, impersonating a member of Congress” ― or, or what? Well, I’ll tell you that later that evening I received a phone call from his supervisor apologizing for the behavior. Mr. President, that is at least the third phone call that I’ve received from a supervisor or the chief of police since I’ve been in the Senate.
Scott said he decided to talk about these encounters, which left him "very scared," because he'd been hearing too many people—presumably fellow conservatives—trying to paint Alton Sterling and Philando Castile as criminals. "OK, then," he said. "I will share with you some of my own experiences." In addition to the disrespect he received just walking into a Senate office building, he talked about going to an event with two staffers and two officers—"All four were white, and me"—and being denied entry, although his four companions were let in. The officers refused to enter without him. This kind of thing, he says, "happens all across the country, whether we want to recognize it or not. It may not happen 1,000 times a day, but it happens too many times a day."
He implored his colleagues in the Senate to "recognize that just because you do not feel the pain, the anguish, of another does not mean it does not exist." Maybe hearing this from one of their own will wake conservatives up to this reality, to the reality of people of color everywhere. Conservative ones, too. But I'm not going to hold my breath. Watch his statement below.