The Washington Post's No Good, Horrible, Very Bad Whitewashing of Racist Reactions to Tim Scott's Speech

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

As we previously reported, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) was subjected to a barrage of racist abuse posted on Twitter from so-called “tolerant” leftists after he gave the Republican response to President Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night.

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Not only were vile comments like “token black Republican” spewed, but the offensive term “Uncle Tim” (crafted for Scott out of the racist slur “Uncle Tom”) trended for roughly 11 hours overnight before Twitter finally found the time to block it from the trending column.

But if you only read the Washington Post’s “report” on the left’s reactions to Scott’s speech, you would never know how despicable and ugly the reactions actually got.

First, let’s take a look at their tweet promoting the story. Predictably, they trotted out the lazy “pounce and seize” terminology to make the thrust of the story about Republican reactions to the speech, more so than how disgusting the left’s reactions to Scott’s speech were:

The first few paragraphs of the article quoted from Scott’s speech and talked about the statements from various Republicans, including some of Scott’s Senate colleagues, praising him for what he had to say in talking about his experiences and for stating that America is “not a racist country.” But, it was when they got to how those “activists” on the left reacted to the speech that the real whitewashing of what happened began:

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Democrats generally treated Scott’s words with caution, but many Black activists, who publicly criticized Scott into the wee hours Thursday morning, deemed him the latest in a line of Black apologists who give political and racial cover to White grievance.

On Twitter, Scott was compared to figures like conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has spoke of George Floyd’s drug use and criminal history.

“Trotting out sycophantic Black folks who will serve as apologists for white supremacy is a tried-and-true tactic that racists have used for centuries,” said Bishop Talbert Swan, president of the Greater Springfield, Mass., chapter of the NAACP. He was among those who spent the hours after Scott’s speech tweeting using the #UncleTim hashtag, a derisive reference to Uncle Tom.

“These are your go-to people for white supremacists to put in front of Black people and say, ‘See, even your own people are saying we’re not racist, that America isn’t racist,’ ” Swan said.

The mention of Swan’s use of the “#UncleTim” hashtag was the only reference of what happened on Twitter anywhere in the piece. Not only that, but the article failed to mention the far more reprehensible comments from Swan that got a lot of attention on Twitter in the aftermath:

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There was plenty more where that came from.

No one should be surprised by the WaPo’s burying the real story here, however, considering one of their political reporters’ responses to Scott’s speech was to insinuate it he gave it to please his white supporters:

Let’s also not forget their “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler’s absurd “analysis” of Scott’s story of his family’s history from last week.

Apparently to the Washington Post, the only “lived experiences” that matter are those that come from minorities (whether they be black, Hispanic, women, etc.) on the left who toe the liberal line. Any minority who dares to think differently, like Scott, gets diminished as merely the “sole black Republican” in the Senate who stirred up controversy.

If my above argument isn’t convincing enough, imagine for five seconds if prominent Republican activists had reacted to a speech from Vice President Harris or Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) in the same way Bishop Swan and others on the left did to Scott’s. The WaPo article would read quite differently, there would be at least a week’s worth of outrage on CNN and MSNBC, and I’m certain white liberals wouldn’t be lecturing either of them on how they didn’t understand the sensitive subject matter they were discussing.

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I know there are many examples that explain why modern journalism is dead, but I can’t think of a more fitting one at the moment than what came out of the Washington Post about Tim Scott’s speech. Maybe they’d be ashamed of themselves — if they actually had any shame.

Flashback: Tim Scott Unleashes Hell in Speech Laying Out Real Reasons Why Senate Dems Blocked Police Reform Debate

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