Tim Scott expounded on the atrocities of US slavery in a subtle, but sharp rebuke of Republican presidential rival Ron DeSantis’s rhetoric on the period and the Florida governor’s state curriculum.
“There is no silver lining in slavery,” Scott said Thursday evening in Ankeny, Iowa. “Slavery was really about separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating. I would hope every person in our country and certainly someone running for president would appreciate that.”
His comments come amid a controversy over the teaching of Black history spurred by Florida’s new social studies standards that include a line saying that formerly enslaved Black Americans gained beneficial life skills from slavery.
Asked about the curriculum last week, DeSantis said that he wasn’t involved, but offered a defense.
“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” DeSantis said Friday.
DeSantis has drawn bipartisan criticism for defending that curriculum, including from Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black, Asian and woman US vice president, as well as other Republican 2024 presidential aspirants.
“People have bad days. Sometimes they regret what they say, and we should ask them again, go clarify their positions,” Scott said Thursday.
Scott, a US Senator from South Carolina is the only Black Republican in the chamber. A Fox Business poll released on July 23 showed former President Donald Trump leading in Iowa at 46%, followed by DeSantis at 16% and Scott in third place at 11%.
The backlash over DeSantis’s comments comes as he’s trying to steady an underwhelming start to his presidential campaign, marked in part by his quarreling in culture wars. He has fired staffers and shaken up his leadership team in recent weeks.
US Representative Byron Donalds, the lone Black Republican in Florida’s congressional delegation, also pushed back against the new curriculum. Donalds tweeted that the new standards are “good, robust, & accurate” but added that “the attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong & needs to be adjusted.”
Other Republican contenders have also criticized DeSantis, including longshot Will Hurd, who said “implying that there is an upside to slavery is absolutely wrong,” in an interview Monday with Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power.”
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, another Republican 2024 hopeful, said DeSantis was wrong to try to avoid responsibility for the state’s curriculum. “‘I didn’t do it,’ and ‘I’m not involved in it’ are not the words of leadership,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday.
