WaPo “Fact Check” Reveals Sen. Tim Scott’s Ancestors Once Owned Land — So What?
Reactions: “How Legitimate is Your Blackness?” and “Oh look, a privileged, rich, white man is investigating a black man’s family because the rich white man doesn’t like the things that the black man says.”
Out of all the things Washington Post “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler to fact-check he chose Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s grandfather. Kessler chose to fact-check the only black Republican senator’s grandfather’s history.
Totally not a coincidence Kessler’s piece comes out the day after Scott was chosen to deliver the Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union.
Scott has said his grandfather Artis Ware had to drop out of elementary school to pick cotton. He claimed his family went from “cotton to Congress.” You can watch the video of Scott explaining his family history at the bottom of this post.
Kessler pointed out that Scott’s family owned the land because…that’s a controversy? How dare Scott’s family make something of themselves after slavery and during the Great Depression?
The responses to Kessler are gold.
Oh man. Is this the first in a series: "How legitimate is your blackness?" https://t.co/jTIwC5pcDw
— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) April 23, 2021
Glenn is legit telling a black guy that his family’s experience in America wasn’t black enough. https://t.co/KR7uRk8Rnq
— Thomas Cochrane (@EarlofDundonald) April 23, 2021
Wow. If only the media researched other stories this thoroughly. You know, like actual accounts of what happened during a police shooting, or real science regarding Covid/lockdowns/masks/vaccine. You know, the things that stir us up. https://t.co/LKhEvni0Me
— jbailey (@jqbailey) April 23, 2021
Black family had it bad but not THAT bad because they worked hard and became land owners.
Is that the point of this hit piece?
Or is the point that Scott doesn’t give a two hour long history lesson of the south in a five minute stump speech?
I’m a bit confused here. 🤷🏻♂️ https://t.co/nw9I8TVFa1
— Wesley Donehue (@simulatedwesley) April 23, 2021
Who thought this was a good idea? https://t.co/019Sxf9V9l
— Bakari Sellers (@Bakari_Sellers) April 23, 2021
LOOK! A BLACK GUY WHO ISN’T A DEMOCRAT! GET HIM! https://t.co/KEqNS27oq7
— Nick Searcy, INTERNATIONAL FILM & TELEVISION STAR (@yesnicksearcy) April 23, 2021
Actually, Tim Scott’s grandfather left school to pick cotton, but it was for a family farm that was larger than most, making the back-breaking work much easier than, say, using white privilege to sit at a keyboard and attack a black man and his family for daring to have success. https://t.co/LwYPcIlYP8
— Razor (@hale_razor) April 23, 2021
It’s OK when @GlennKesslerWP is a bigot because his bigotry is only aimed at black people who AREN’T Democrats. The @washingtonpost approves. https://t.co/CTQ2XhmTQX
— WuHan “Recreationally Stabby” Solo (@MURedskn) April 23, 2021
Local extremely white liberal helpfully explains a black man’s family history. https://t.co/9xhzrqogBv
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 23, 2021
"That black Republican from the Jim Crow South had it easy. But pulling out your driver's license to vote is oppression." https://t.co/oOIVJPFKuQ
— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) April 23, 2021
White guy tells black cotton pickers in the early 1900s they didn't have it so bad. Good thing he typed his words because the white hood might have muffled him if he had spoken. https://t.co/hWyUdtAzpQ
— Physics Geek (@physicsgeek) April 23, 2021
Oh look, a privileged, rich, white man is investigating a black man's family because the rich white man doesn't like the things that the black man says. https://t.co/XWHyQwY8Wj
— AceSix4 (@AceSix4) April 23, 2021
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Black Lives Matter*
*Terms and conditions apply
The Democrat-affiliated Some, Select Black Lives Matter is a Pro-Choice sect, incorporated under the diversity racket.
!BabyLivesMatter
Clearly the Scott family family valued their children enough to shepherd them to live productive lives. Why can’t other blacks learn from their example.
Clearly they sacrificed to build a good life, deferred gratification was crucial. In a way, Raising children well is a form of delayed gratification.
It is a shame that other blacks are not learning from the example the Scott family represents.
There were many people of black who enjoyed Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, without the encumbrances of slavery and diversity.
Obviously Tim’s a Republican because his ancestors were “uppity,” right Kessler?
Glenn Kessler might be blacker than Tim Scott now. Sometimes a backfire leaves everything covered in soot.
It seems like both sides are being stupid but perhaps I don’t know the rules of being authentic as an art form.
I honestly do know much about Tim Scott, but I do not have reason to doubt he has lived anything other than an exemplary life. My family owned and farmed land in he Deep South in the 1930’s and were dirt stinking poor and made great personal sacrifices to maintain ownership of the land and even physically survive the period. We had no electricity and no running water. Most of the meat that got to the table was from hunting. Unless Tim Scott’s grandfather was actually sitting on the front portico sipping mint julips while exploited immigrant labor harvested the family crops, I do not see a problem.
It is very possible, even probable, that the family could own land, even more than average, and be impoverished. It is likely they were leveraged to the point of near insolvency as most farmers of the period were, and life was extremely difficult and precarious.
I doubt Kessler could last even 30 minutes in August in a field in South Carolina or much more than 45 minutes in a non-airconditioned house during the same.
I’d rather be in a knife fight than relive those times.
BSR: As a child in the ‘30s (born in 1930) I was taken to visit kinfolk who were what we called “dirt farmers”. (I wonder what other kinds there were back then.) My mother had two brothers who farmed, and believe me they lived a Spartan life. Open fireplace for heat, iron stove for cooking, outdoor privy for … you know. With corn cobs and shucks for tp. Black farmers probably the same. A neighbor of my uncle George in Mississippi called himself “Farmer Jones”, showed how to make square socks (fold a square cloth around your foot). In Texas they shot wild hogs and armadillos (Hoover hogs) for a meat supplement.
No thanks, Kessler. Bet you have no idea what a real struggle for existence looks like.
Thanks for posting this; that’s the kind of personal glimpse into history that I really appreciate!
In another story, I read Scott describes his grandfather as a “sharecropper”. Sharecropping meant some part of the product from the farm was to pay someone else for partial or complete financial underwriting of that year’s crop. For many transitioning from slave to free mana and their children , scratching out a living on a dirt farm without much money meatnt sharecropping. Owning dirt was nothing without having the seed and supplies to bring in a crop. About the only time Kessler may have gotten dirt under his fingernails was an inadvertent fall as a child.
This is probably surprising to Democrats that slither through the urban sprawls of overpriced land in San Fran, NYC, Seattle, Chicago, LA, Etc. but land was actually not that valuable at one point in time, particularly in the post-Civil war pillaged South.
Nope, When we sold off Granddad’s farm there was not much left after paying off the liens. The land itself was only a few hundred dollars an acre. The house basically had no value and could not be sold separate from the land.
More white people picked cotton than black people. Like you most were dirt poor.
Quite often, hardship builds character.
I understand that Kessler is on one side, but what is the other, and how is it being stupid?
This is also coming from a man whose grandfather was openly pro-Nazi, and his great grandfather started Shell oil company. So if we are going to go down this road his past is FAR more problematic than Tim Scott’s is.
Arthur Schwartz
@ArthurSchwartz
·
11h
Just @GlennKesslerWP
’s grandfather proudly giving the Hitler salute at a Nazi funeral.
https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/1385605098777190409
How is it possible that Scott’s black ancestors owned land and were prosperous in this horribly raaaaaacist country where white cops routinely hunt and shoot innocent blacks for no reason, blacks are prevented from voting by horribly oppressive laws (that require things like showing an i.d.), and blacks are routinely discriminated against and are prevented from succeeding by the structural raaaaacism woven into all our founding documents and systems?
Why, it’s almost as if everything the left has been saying has been a pack of filthy lies!
“blacks are prevented from voting by horribly oppressive laws (that require things like showing an i.d.), and blacks are routinely discriminated against and are prevented from succeeding…”
I must take some exception to your statements. Scott’s ancestors in all probability faced real barriers to voting and suffered both social and legal discrimination which made their lives much more difficult. It is true that decedents of slaves were not equally ill-treated across the South. Today’s historical narratives are often misleading and highly simplistic. Southern society and discrimination was much more complex and extended not just to race but to complex webs of social status and family lineages regardless of race. Poor “whites” were often not treated much better than “blacks.” Carpet Bagger was the worst insult you give a person. Worse than any other. There was a complex stratum where certain people in the ‘black” community had more status and were more prosperous than certain “whites.” But make no mistake that discrimination, cultural, social, economic, and compelled by law, was real, quite unjust, and more than a mere trifling burden.
Freshman tear high school in North Carolina meant studying NC history. This was circa 1964 so the textbook was written before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the hierarchy of society in the South… at least in NC… the “poor white trash” were at the bottom. They had no real excuse like the Blacks… and everybody knew that.
The poor white trash version of a black person was what we now refer to as the “N-word.” They were one step below “white trash.” At the top of the non-white hierarchy were “colored gentlemen” who were usually a professional class being doctors, professors, school teacher, and lawyers, mostly. Not numerous, but they were allowed in white homes during certain occasions to socially mingle when white trash would never be allowed into a home for any reason whatsoever.
There were “white: and “black” families with very close personal bonds, and the older men in particular would be very close confidants, and you did not mess with these trusted advisor for all Hell would descend upon you. They would attain the title “Uncle” or “Aunt” which meant they were like family and had the authority of elders in that family, and again, you obeyed them and did what they told you to do, depending upon the family’s social status and rank relative to your own. I understand this authority was derived from the “white” side of the family.
My family was not white trash, but certainly of a lower caste. There were “black” people who were allowed to correct our behavior and keep us in line. I was slapped around by quite a number of older “black” men and women, and deserved every bit of it.
The texture of life was complicated. There was a lot wrong with the old South, to include a high degree of corruption, but positive attributes as well. It’s a shame that what was good about it was cast aside with the bad, but the bad needed to go.
One last thing. My ancestors on my father’s side were drafted into the Confederate Army. They did not have much choice about. One was killed, one was maimed for life, and the other deserted and somehow survived the war in hiding and on the run as if he were caught would have been executed. When people spit on and want to tear down our monuments to these people it boils my blood. I despise their intolerance and ignorance. Sometimes in life, all you get are bad choices. Choosing does not make you evil. It may mean you made a bad choice in the eyes of others who are not in your position, but it does not make you evil. I hope they are never faced with such choices.
Sorry that you got BSR genuflecting. Old people do that.
Robin,
Thanks for that. There are many folks.who simply do not or will not recognize the complex tapestry of the ‘South’. They view the antebellum period as exclusively plantation owners (evil white) and their slaves.
In fact there was a majority of a yoemanry composed of smaller farms and tradesman who were not part of the plantocracy and were assuredly not part of the upper class. My ancestors among them.
I can very much relate to Senator Scott. My Grandfather, born in 1906, was forced to leave school in 8th grade to work on the farm. That small farm was inherited by his eldest brother of 5 brothers and 7 sisters.
Later he was forced into ‘town’ to make his own way and of course send cash back home to support his younger siblings. He went to work in Birmingham for a steel mill, until the crash of ’29 and the depression. He and four men shared a full time job, each working one day a week and were more than happy to get it.
This idea that everyone ‘white’ alive in the South is defended from plantation living slave owners is totally false. The post civil war/post reconstruction era was rife with the political and economic exploitation of everyone not part of the elite; black, white, brown alike.
The biggest barriers to voting immediately after the Civil War was intimidation at the ballot box by Democrats (and the KKK, but I repeat myself). Then the Democrats and anti-black Republicans had the idea of having competing Republican State Conventions and electing anti-black delegates and trying to get them accepted at the Republican National Convention. (didn’t work too well)
Then came poll taxes, literacy tests etc etc. Showing ID was never seriously considered a real impediment to black voting any more than it was to poor white voting.
There are plenty of whites who should be subjected to literacy testing.
Yes, and after all that is said and done, these blacks coped with all those Jim Crow obstacles and still became relatively prosperous. That’s the point, isn’t it? They didn’t whine all day about invisible systemic injustices, and sustain faceplants over microaggressions.
And in related news, Kamala Harris’ family owned…… slaves.
In other words, like most descendants of slaves, she is also descended from one of those slaves’ owner.
I don’t believe this is accurate. No illegitimacy is involved here. Her direct legitimate ancestors commercially traded in slaves.
Is she descended from slaves? I thought her parentage was Indian (not American Indian) and Carribbean or something.
they were the plantation owners who did the raping. they enjoyed Brown Sugar just like Barries slaveowning family did,
Well according to Harris’ father it was legitimate descent. Part of her irish roots. “My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town) and to my maternal grandmother Miss Iris (née Iris Finegan, farmer and educator, from Aenon Town and Inverness, ancestry unknown to me),” he wrote in a lengthy op-ed earlier this year for Jamaica Global.”
While I do not doubt that there was rape, I also think more than a bit of it was consensual.
Please don’t embarrass your self with ignorance.
Must, at all costs, preserve the narrative! Dinosaur media, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat party, carries as much water as needed for the Dems/Progs.
Just this week we were told it was none of our business how much property or how many houses a black person owns, or how she paid for them. Remind me why I am supposed to care now?
I guess that means any freed blacks who benefitted from “forty acres and a mule” are practically White Supremacists (TM).
Especially if they worked hard and raised children well.
The Washington Post is racist. That’s my take. lol
Democracy dies in blackness.
I find it interesting that so many seem to think people had to hunt to put meat on the table. Actually, those who had access to land RAISED THEIR OWN FOOD!!! They had cattle and hogs and raised vegetables in gardens. I grew up on a farm in West Tennessee and while we hunted, it was only in season and was more because my family liked squirrels, rabbits and qual not to mention hunting was – and still is – a sport. Pioneers may have hunted for food but once they established farms, they raised their food themselves. As for Tim Scott’s grandfather owning a land, there have been black landowners since the establishment of Virginia in the 1600s. For that matter, there were black slaveowners, including in South Carolina. In fact, there were dozens of black slaveowners in Charleston alone.
“I find it interesting that so many seem to think people had to hunt to put meat on the table. Actually, those who had access to land RAISED THEIR OWN FOOD!!!”
I’m sorry. I and most everyone I knew prior to the Second World War put most meat on the table via hunting. Meat was scarce. Hogs and cattle were expensive to raise and maintain, and no one could afford to buy meat in any event, so what were you going to do with them. I remember my grandfather tried to buy a few hogs at one point but they got sick and had to be killed. It was a financial disaster for us. It was hard to keep chickens because the wild life (ground and air) preyed upon them and their eggs. We tried to keep dogs to chase away this wildlife but they were often eaten by larger wildlife such as alligators. I remember eating a large turtle for Thanksgiving dinner once. When I saw meat for sale in a store for the first time I was amazed. We were not the poorest people around by any means.
I am not sure people who did not live it can comprehend the poverty of the rural South before WWII. There was remarkable improvement from 1940 through 1960 for everyone.
I bravely ran away from this as soon and as fast as I could, and kept running. My brother stayed and eventually developed a prosperous life, a feat more more impressive than anything I have done,
The bottom line return to the headline, Glenn Kessler is an ignoramus. I have little doubt Tim Scott’s grandfather lived a very hard life. The fact that Tim Scott can become a US Senator is a testament to the promise of America. Kessler should celebrate this. But instead, he is a mean, nasty, cruel, petty moron, and unless Tim Scott’s grandfather went around murdering people and torturing puppies, he was a far better man then Glenn Kessler will ever be or can even conceive of being.
.
Herr Kessler, your Großvater was a nazi. BTW what’s the difference between nazis like your großvater and Good Germans? your Großvater gave the orders to commit genocide, the good Germans carried it out
To Kessler blacks aren’t authentic unless they’re dependent layabouts and slackers.
White and black trash a similar in nature, but so far it is black trash demanding stuff.
… who address him as massuh.
Too bad Glenn doesn’t have the time to investigate Maxine Waters or James Clyburn’s family history.
Unfortunately this “fact check” will not actually contain a backlash.
The left knows they are hypocritical they don’t care.
They’re masters of doublethink
Maybe now they’ll finally research the family past of the vice faker-in-chief Kamala’s family who owned slaves in the Carribean
Watch out Mark Robinson . . . you’re next, because your experience as a Black man isn’t genuine-enough (doesn’t match the SJW’s template of what a dependable vote-getter should be), you aren’t really “our kind” of people.