Tipsheet

Tim Scott Claps Back at Founder of 1619 Project

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  October 01, 2023 3:00 PM

Liberals have been ruthless in going against Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) for daring to be a black conservative. It's something that's unfortunately been happening for a while now, but it really ramped up with his run for president. During Wednesday's second RNC debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, Scott dared to call out the failures of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and how they negatively impacted black families. That didn't sit too well with Nikole Hannah-Jones, the founder of the historically inaccurate 1619 Project.

Hannah-Jones reposted Aaron Rupar's clip of Scott's comments at the debate, with both of them adding their own commentary that misunderstood the points the senator was making. In addition to claiming Scott "believe[s] you need to disgrace your ancestors," Hannah-Jones suggested Scott wouldn't have chance at the nomination if he didn't do so. 

"Here’s the challenge though. Black families survived slavery. We survived poll taxes and literacy tests. We survived discrimination being woven into the laws of our country," Scott said during the debate. "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, in crime, in devastation."

Rupar's clip cut off at a pivotal moment, though. "If you want to restore hope, you’ve got to restore the family, restored capitalism and put Americans back at work together as one American family," he went on to say. "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."

In addition to posting a more complete clip, Scott on Thursday reposted Hannah-Jones to respond directly, reminding how "folks like you say to shut up & sit down." He also said the "disgrace is those who seek to indoctrinate America’s children & lie about the greatest country on God’s green earth" and vowed to "defend the American Dream for the next generation."

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Although Hannah-Jones continued with more posts and threads, she did not address Scott's key point of how "they decided to take the black father out of the household to get a check in the mail."

In a column posted to Townhall in July, William Marshall shared the insight provided by Dr. Jack Cashill's "Untenable: The True Story of White Ethic Flight from America’s Cities." As Marshall highlighted:

Cashill dove into newspaper archives, census data, other books related to Newark’s history, and memoirs by significant Newark natives who recounted their own experiences growing up there, as well as conducting countless interviews of others who came of age in Newark in the middle of the twentieth century. 

...

Cashill discusses at length what would become the heart of the destruction of black society, and by extension much of the rest of society, in Newark as well as many other American cities – the launch of Lyndon B. Johnson’s woefully misnamed “Great Society” programs in the mid-60s.

That destruction, as Cashill notes, was prophesied by a brilliant young sociologist and historian, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, later to become a US Senator, in his seminal paper, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” which predicted that government handouts to black mothers would lead to the abandonment of those women by the fathers of their children. 

That abandonment by their fathers in turn would leave a cruel void in the lives of young black boys, who had no one to provide them with a moral code, discipline and love that only a father can provide. The absence of those vital character-building assets, destructive to any child of any ethnic or racial composition, would lead to a loss of respect by these young men for other members of society, skyrocketing crime rates, and the destruction of the society around them, as Cashill saw up close and personal in Newark.

And, in a Townhall column posted the same day as that second debate, Chris Talgo highlighted issues with the Great Society and how it contributed to the absence of fathers and the problems with it at length:

As the U.S. Department of Justice notes, “the most reliable indicator of violent crime in a community is the proportion of fatherless families. Fathers typically offer economic stability, a role model for boys, greater household security, and reduced stress for mothers. This is especially true for families with adolescent boys, the most crime-prone cohort. Children from single-parent families are more prone than children from two-parent families to use drugs, be gang members, be expelled from school, be committed to reform institutions, and become juvenile murderers. Single parenthood inevitably reduces the amount of time a child has in interaction with someone who is attentive to the child's needs, including the provision of moral guidance and discipline.”

...

However, that begs the question: Why is the family unit in such a state of disrepair, particularly in urban America? On this note, many theories exist, but the best evidence suggests that the creation of the welfare state in the 1960s is at least partially to blame.

Consider. In 1960, 5.3 percent of American babies were to born to unmarried mothers. By 2020, that had increased to an astounding 40.5 percent.

In the mid-1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared “war on poverty” and began implementing the vast welfare programs known as the Great Society.

Unfortunately, LBJ’s Great Society created a perverse incentive system, whereby single mothers were offered generous welfare benefits as long as they remained unmarried. Moreover, the more children they had out-of-wedlock, the more transfer payments they received.

Nearly six decades into this failed experiment in social engineering, we are at a breaking point. Our inner-cities, once vibrant meccas for business and industry, have become blighted, lawless wastelands, wherein shootings and murders have become commonplace and practically accepted as a way of life by spineless leaders who are afraid to call a spade a spade.

Hannah-Jones' The 1619 Project has been criticized at length for its inaccuracy, though Hannah-Jones has been rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize, that many demanded be revoked, and the project was made into a Hulu program, also criticized. Not only is the project inaccurate, but dissent is silenced. The Hulu account over X ultimately restricted replies when promoting the "documentary" in January, but not before over 1,300 replies came pouring in criticizing the platform.

In late August, Scott revealed a plan that would "defend America's children, empower parents, and protect kids online." The plan includes priorities such as “Family First Culture: Defend Our Children,” “Education: Empowered Parents,” and “Stop Big Tech: Protect Children Online.”