Senator Tim Scott Makes History In South Carolina
Among the victories last night that wasn’t a surprise was one that is historically significant, in that Senator Tim Scott became the first African-American elected to the Senate from one of the states of the Confederacy since Reconstruction ended some 138 years ago:
Washington (CNN) — South Carolina’s Tim Scott on Tuesday became the first African-American senator to win election in the South since Reconstruction.
The Palmetto State Republican was appointed by Gov. Nikki Haley to the office after former Sen. Jim DeMint resigned in November 2012.
In this year’s midterms, he outlasted Democratic challenger Joyce Dickerson.
The election was only to fill the last two years of DeMint’s term. Scott will have to run again in 2016 in order to earn a full six-year term.
Scott’s win also made him the first African-American in U.S. history to be elected to both the House and the Senate.
In total, there have been nine African-Americans who were either elected or appointed, either by a Governor to fill a vacancy or by a state legislature using the method Senators were named prior to the adoption of the 17th Amendment who have actually served in the body. A tenth, P.B.S. Pinchback, was appointed to the Senate by the Louisiana legislature in 1875 but never served because the Senate refused to seat him in what ended up being one of the first efforts to pushback against Reconstruction itself. The first African-American who was actually elected to the Senate in the post 17th Amendment world was Republican Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, who served from 1967 to 1979. Of the six African-Americans who have served in the Senate after Brooke, three of them were popularly elected, Carol Mosley Braun and Barack Obama, and Cory Booker, who won a Special Election in New Jersey last year, and a second election to a full six year term yesterday. Scott, however, stands alone as, so far, the only African-American elected to the Senate from a state south of the Mason-Dixon Line and, indeed, the state that was in many ways the birthplace of the Confederacy itself.
Well aren’t SC citizens proud of themselves…they’re only about a half-century behind the times. Congratulations.
Republicans also elected their first black woman to Congress…Mia Love, a Haitian married to a Mormon (he’s white…gasp!!!).
Welcome to the 21st century, y’all.
Now try to catch up with everything else you’re still stuck in the dark ages on.
@C. Clavin: I don´t like Mia Love, but frankly, she can marry anyone that she wants to.
@Andre Kenji:
Please don’t mis-read my comment.
It’s about time Republicans edged toward the modern world.
Scott is to the Senate as Thomas is to the Supreme Court: and will serve the same role for those who want to roll back things to 1932.
Bitter tears mixed with ignorant hatred. Beta bitchez got the sadz today.
@stonetools: You got a REAL problem with blacks who choose to reject liberalism, don’t you? Why is that? Why do you single out blacks for special treatment? Why do you seem to believe that they owe something to liberals, and shouldn’t think for themselves? Why aren’t they allowed to hold higher principles than racial identity (as you define it)?
@Jenos Idanian #13: Please someone let me upclick Jenos’s comment again. Stonetools’s comment is both politically and racially disgusting.
@C. Clavin: yes, it is. But the race of Mia Love´s husband is completely irrelevant.
@Andre Kenji: But the race of Mia Love´s husband is completely irrelevant.
Not to certain leftists. That Mia Love married a white man is proof, to them, that she’s a self-hating black woman who’s trying to sleep her way into being white.
@bandit: You do know that with you “beta bitchez” shit that you are quoting the Men’s Right’s Activist idiots, like Elliot Roger (who killed a bunch of people because he couldn’t get laid), don’t you?
Good for Senator Scott.
Until there are more African-American Republicans in power, there will always be accusations of tokenism, and to some extent they are true, but this is how it starts, slowly chipping away at barriers, and demonstrating to the racists that yes, a black guy can do the job and that you don’t get to keep things as an old white guy club.
Pity it’s a job in an institution with an approval rating in the single digits….
Plus, it confuses the racists who have been making the Republican Party their home since the civil rights era, when the Dixiecrats began leaving the Democrats. They’re horrible people, those racists.
@Gustopher: You do know that with you “beta bitchez” shit that you are quoting the Men’s Right’s Activist idiots, like Elliot Roger (who killed a bunch of people because he couldn’t get laid), don’t you?
Are you sure about that, or just making crap up? Even Urban Dictionary doesn’t have the term, and they have EVERYTHING.
@Jenos Idanian #13: The alpha and beta stuff is pretty common with the MRA folks. Also, pack animals. But, mostly, the MRA folks online these days.
But, if Bandit wants to use the tribal markers of MRA folks, I think he should go for it. I retract my comment.
hey just got here, anyone call him an oreo or zebra yet? oh, might as well….
@Gustopher: The alpha and beta stuff is pretty common with the MRA folks. Also, pack animals. But, mostly, the MRA folks online these days.
But, if Bandit wants to use the tribal markers of MRA folks, I think he should go for it. I retract my comment.
You wanna tar him with that association, it’s kind of on you to show the association you assert. I have no idea where he got the term from, and even went looking. The closest I can find is talks of “alpha males” and “beta males,” along with the corresponding “alpha females” and “beta females” and the one I’ve encountered most often in my personal online experience is AllahPundit of Hot Air, who occasionally refers to himself as a “beta male.”
And no, you’re not “retracting” your comment. You made the assertion, and when challenged, you restated it — and then you “retracted” it.
In the lingo at hand, that’s a passive-aggressive move, which is often the hallmark of a beta male. Is that how you’re choosing to identify yourself?
@C. Clavin: well all that democrat oppression took time to heal- now they’re free- and not because of democrats. still trying to keep guns from them too?!
@C. Clavin:
“The modern world”: where we criticize people for not being black enough and marrying the wrong color person.
Thanks.
@John: “The modern world”: where we criticize people for not being black enough and marrying the wrong color person.
That could be a fun little meme:
“The modern world:” where people’s politics are based on the color of their skin, not the content of their character.
“The modern world:” where you owe your political fealty to people who look like you,and you have no right to support those who think like you.
@bill:
Well, I know that Clarence Thomas was mentioned – that’s ALWAYS a buzz kill.
@Gustopher: The thing is that this guy is a Republican from a state where the Republicans think of the Tea Party as a bunch of commie hippies. And he was first appointed by a governor who is a right-wing maggot.
Those are not good references.
@Barry: The thing is that this guy is a Republican from a state where the Republicans think of the Tea Party as a bunch of commie hippies. And he was first appointed by a governor who is a right-wing maggot.
Let’s fill in a few blanks: the “where the Republicans think of the Tea Party as a bunch of commie hippies” is South Carolina, and the “governor who is a right-wing maggot” is Nikki Haley.
@Jenos Idanian #13: Thanks, Jenos. Barry, why do you consider Haley a maggot?
@Pinky: Thanks, Jenos. Barry, why do you consider Haley a maggot?
My hunch is that it’s because she, like Bobby Jindal, are Americans of Indian descent (the country, not the Native Americans). They aren’t the “right” kind of minorities, and they didn’t need handouts and the like to succeed.
Feel free to correct the record, Barry.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Continuing the theme:
“The modern world:” Where a bunch of old white men get to determine the meaning of Diversity(tm), and which ethnicities that includes.
@John: One suggested correction: “which ethnicities that includes, and excludes.”
Now, if we could only work “dead white males” in there somewhere… and heteronormative…
@Jenos Idanian #13: My first guess would be that Barry thinks “right-wing” and “maggot” are interchangeable. But still, “maggot”? That’s really hateful. You see that kind of name-calling in some cultures – not cultures we would want to emulate. Comparing your opponents to animals, like “capitalist dog” or “Jewish pig”, is some really creepy territory. I do have to wonder where that much hate comes from. And since it is a dehumanization, yes, I have to wonder if it’s racial.
@Pinky: As for stonetools, I generally disagree with the “in vino veritas” school of thought that slipups tell you what a person is really like. I’ve got a bad memory for this stuff, but I don’t recall him ever lashing racially before.
Martin Luther King had the right notion where persons should be judged by the content of their character, and not skin color. Congrats senator-elect…
@Paul Hooson:
well, that’s just totally racist.