A couple weeks ago, Joy Behar went on a little rant about Sen. Tim Scott and Clarence Thomas, saying that neither one of them understand systemic racism in America. She was backed up by Sunny Hostin who agreed with Behar’s view.

White woman Joy Behar declares that Justice Clarence Thomas and Sen. Tim Scott have no clue what it's like to be a black man in America.
"[They believe] in pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, rather than understanding the racism that African Americans face in this country." pic.twitter.com/zIFFge8YrV

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) May 23, 2023

Today, Sen. Scott appeared on the View and got a chance to defend himself. It started with Sunny Hostin claiming that her success, as well as that of Sen. Scott and Whoopi Goldberg were all “the exception” but not the rule. She then turned to the question of systemic racism and asked Sen. Scott to define it.

Sen. Scott started by calling the idea that a black person could only succeed by being the exception a “dangerous, offensive, disgusting message.” He added that he didn’t see his own life as the exception.”

“But it is,” Hostin interjected.

“But it’s not actually,” Scott replied. He continued, “The fact of the matter is we’ve had and African-American president an African-American vice-president. We’ve had two African-Americans to be Secretary of State. In my home city the police chief is an African-American who is now running for mayor. The head of the highway patrol for South Carolina is an African-American.”

“Still exceptions,” Hostin said.

He cited the fact that the black unemployment rate is currently below 5% for the first time in they country’s history and Hostin replied that homeless people were disproportionately black. At this point, Sen. Scott politely asked her to stop interrupting and told a personal story.

“Progress in America is palpable; it can be measured in generations,” he said. He continued, “I look back at the fact that my grandfather born in 1921 in Salley, South Carolina when he was on a sidewalk, a white person was coming he had to step off and not make eye-contact.”

He pointed out that today every major network has black hosts and anchors. “So what I’m suggesting is yesterday’s exception is today’s rule.”

Perhaps sensing that Sen. Scott was on a roll, Hostin interjected “So America has met its promise?” This is a dodge. Sen. Scott never claimed the country had achieved perfection, merely that a great deal had changed in the past 100 years.

“The concept of America is that we are going to become a more perfect union, that in fact the challenges that we faced 50 years ago and 60 years ago should not be the same challenges that we face today,” Scott replied. He continued, “When my mother was born about 10% of African-Americans got a high school degree, diploma. Today, it’s over 90 percent.”

At this point, Whoopi Goldberg interrupted to go to a commercial and Sen. Scott made a joke about just getting started. After the break, Goldberg asked why these sorts of conversations were never discussed by Republicans.

Anyway, there’s more to the discussion but you have to hand it to Sen. Scott for walking into the lion’s den, so to speak, and doing a pretty good job defending his views when he was clearly outnumbered on the panel. At least three of the co-hosts (Hostin, Goldberg and Navarro) were out to make him look bad and he held his own.

Frankly, it would be interesting to see a debate between Sen. Scott and Hostin without the constant need to cut to commercial. Hostin certainly can make the case that black Americans are still lagging in important indicators like family wealth. But it always strikes me as disingenuous when people on the left are resistant to acknowledging racial progress at all, as if nothing of significance has change.

My own view is that refusing to acknowledge past change just undercuts their own argument for future change. A smarter approach would be to point out all the ways in which things have improved and then add ‘I want more of that because more is needed.’ That’s a decent argument but for some reason almost no one on the left ever makes it. What’s not a decent argument is pretending it’s still 1860, 1920 or even 1960 and nothing much has really changed. That view obviously isn’t true and unfortunately implies that change isn’t really possible. It’s a losing message but seems to be the most common one on the left at the moment.

Here’s the full segment with Sen. Scott. You can skip in about 3 1/2 minutes to see the exchange with Sunny Hostin.