Sen. Tim Scott rebuked for saying LBJ’s welfare program was worse for Black families than slavery

Sen. Tim Scott grew up in North Charleston, South Carolina, not far from where the first shots of the Civil War were fired by Confederate batteries at Fort Sumter. So it was particularly surprising that the only Black candidate running for the Republican presidential nomination produced perhaps the most cringe-worthy moment at Wednesday night’s second Trump-less Republican presidential primary debate when talking about slavery.

The South Carolina senator was asked to respond to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ defense of his state’s new Black history education standards, which include teaching that enslaved people acquired skills that ultimately were used for their “personal benefit” through slavery.

RELATED STORY: From slavery to the Holocaust, there was no ‘useful,’ skill-based silver lining

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At first, Scott sounded like he was delivering a solid rebuke to DeSantis’ efforts to whitewash Black history when he stated: “There is not a redeeming quality in slavery. He and Kamala should have just taken the one sentence out. America has suffered because of slavery. But we’ve overcome that.”

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All Vice President Kamala Harris did was go to Florida in July to criticize the controversial new Black history education standards as “revisionist history.” She has absolutely no authority to take anything out of the curriculum.

But then Scott began playing to the white conservatives he needs to win over to have any hope of being a contender in the Republican presidential primary contest:

”We are the greatest nation on Earth because we faced our demons in the mirror and made a decision. So often we think that all the issues—you talk about crime and education and health care—we always think that those issues go back to slavery. Here’s the challenge, though. Families survived slavery. We survived poll taxes and literacy tests. We survived discrimination being woven into the laws of our country.

“What was hard to survive was Johnson’s Great Society, where they decided to put money—where they decided to take the Black father out of the household to get a check in the mail. And you can now measure that in unemployment and crime and devastation. If you want to restore hope, you’ve got to restore the family, restore capitalism and put Americans back at work together as one American family.”

And then Scott went on to reassure the mostly white audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, that systemic racism does not exist in the U.S., which certainly denies the reality of Donald Trump’s history of making remarks that appeal to racists:

“Our nation continues to go in the right direction. It’s why I can say I have been discriminated against. But America is not a racist country. Never ever doubt who we are. We are the greatest country on God’s green earth. And frankly, the city on the hill needs a brand-new leader. And I’m asking for your vote.”

His remarks drew one of the loudest bursts of applause from the audience during the two-hour debate. 

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who is Black, said in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Scott’s comments were “a load of crock,” The Hill reported. “Black man sitting up there talking about there’s no racism,” Steele said. “Discrimination but no racism?”

As for Scott’s own background, his parents divorced when he was 7. He said his mother worked double shifts as a nursing assistant at a hospital for minimal pay to avoid going on welfare. Scott could have just made a typical conservative argument about the supposed harm caused by welfare programs, but to suggest that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s landmark “Great Society” social welfare program was worse for Black families than slavery is just wrong.

For starters, enslaved men and women could not even be officially married because the law regarded them as property. Tera B. Hunter, a Princeton professor of African American studies, said in a 2010 NPR interview that “one of the horrors of slavery” is that slave marriages “had no official recognition, that husbands and wives and children could all be separated at any time at the whim of an owner.”

Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the 1619 Project that focused on the legacy of slavery, posted a thread on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, that eviscerated Scott’s comments in the debate. She wrote:

“Imagine being Black and running in a political party where you believe you need to disgrace your ancestors to have a chance.

“Tim Scott, the Second Middle Passage ALONE broke up about 1/3 of Black marriages. But, yes, anti-poverty program are the problem. 

“Also, just to be absolutely crystal clear, NOTHING Black people have experienced in this country is worse than slavery. Like, it’s not even close. So obvious that the only reason it needs to be said is to counter trolls and Black men trying to win MAGA voters.

”Btw, a lot of people did not survive slavery, Tim Scott. A lot of people did not survive poll taxes and were murdered for trying to vote. A lot of Black folks died for lack of healthcare and still do — see Black women and maternal health in your own state.”

The Second Middle Passage occurred from the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 until the start of the Civil War in 1861. Enslaved peoples were relocated from the upper South to the lower South to work in the fields as the cotton industry spread.

And what was the “Great Society” program that’s such anathema to conservatives like Scott? In a 1964 speech at the University of Michigan, Johnson introduced his vision of a Great Society that “rests on abundance and liberty for all … [and] demands an end to poverty and racial injustice.” 

The Urban Institute described the program as follows:

Over the next several years, this vision was embodied in a series of ambitious federal laws and programs aimed at breaking down the barriers blocking full and fair access to opportunity and prosperity. The Great Society legislation ranged widely across the social and economic policy landscape. It included landmark civil rights legislation, the creation of Medicaid and Medicare, new strategies for tackling urban blight and neighborhood distress, job training initiatives and expansion of minimum wage coverage, and support of early childhood education.

It was considered an ambitious and sweeping follow-up to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal domestic policy agenda of the 1930s.

And the Great Society’s legacy included such programs as Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the War on Poverty, the Jobs Corps, Volunteers in Service to America (a domestic version of the Peace Corps), increases in Social Security benefits, the Public Broadcasting Service, the National Endowment for the Arts, and various environmental protection laws.

But Johnson could not realize his dream because of his foreign policy, which resulted in the unpopular escalation of the Vietnam War. And with Democrats divided, Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968. The Republican administration criticized Great Society welfare programs as handouts that reduced the incentive for people to enter the workforce. That opinion has only become more engrained in the GOP over ensuing decades, especially after Ronald Reagan became president in 1981.

And that’s why we have Larry Kudlow, whom Trump appointed as director of the National Economic Council, calling Scott an inspiration, The Hill reported. Interviewed by Fox News host Sean Hannity after the GOP debate, Kudlow said:

“I got to give Tim Scott a lot of credit because he did this riff on Blacks, African Americans, somehow surviving through slavery and then went on to say that the Great Society of LBJ and all the Democratic presidents since then, have made the Black situation worse, not better.” …

”Whether he wins or loses or draws, that was something to behold. He’s very inspiring to say that kind of thing. The data, the evidence shows that Sen. Tim Scott is absolutely right. The worst thing to happen to minority groups and African Americans in particular in this country in the last 100 years was the Great Society.”