What the Defeat of Strom Thurmond's Son Really Means

This week, Tim Scott — a Republican and Tea Party favorite — won his primary bid for an open U.S. House seat in South Carolina against Paul Thurmond, son of infamous the Dixiecrat and segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond. What's unusual about this story? Scott is black.

What's more, Scott won big, by a 69-31 margin. People are shocked, shocked — certain this turn of events means something significant about race relations in America and the South.

I agree that Scott's win, coupled with Nikki Haley's, is a sign of racial progress. But I don't think these results are surprising — or evidence that our country, South Carolina, the GOP or the Tea Party has moved past its problems with race. It's too soon to put another notch in the belt of post-racialism.

Let me be clear: I don't doubt that South Carolina — like the nation — is slowly marching beyond from its history of racism. It's simply that I'm not convinced this election is proof of the fact that we've arrived. To read into the South Carolina election results in that manner is to misunderstand our society's complex relationship with race. People who hold racial prejudices are not one-dimensional, mustache-twirling villains without human capacity for contradiction. One can, for example, believe that white culture is inherently superior to African-American culture and still vote for an individual black man who seems to share your political beliefs. Indeed, I don't doubt that some Democrats did just that in the 2008 election.

Tim Scott does have similar beliefs to many white, ultra-conservative South Carolinians. That's not surprising, either. The black community has always contained a diversity of opinion — we're not a monolith. And those of us who embrace the rhetoric of the right wing and are willing to minimize the continued existence of racism have often been embraced right back. Tim Scott, for example, calls Democrats "socialists," and describes Tea Party members as "colorblind." He supports steep tax cuts, Ronald Reagan and governing from the "far, conservative right." With his conservative bonafides, Scott would make the perfect "exception" for someone normally averse to black folks.

Lastly, racism has never been logical. Longtime South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond fought tooth and nail to deny equal rights to black Americans, while financially supporting and maintaining a relationship with his own biracial black daughter. Prejudice works in mysterious ways.

But the fact that a black man has routed a son of the States' Rights Party — that has to have some meaning, right? But what kind of meaning? That South Carolina — a state that removed the Confederate flag from its statehouse a mere 135 years following the Civil War, and where a prominent GOP activist was last seen apologizing for comparing our African-American First Lady to a gorilla — is actually quite racially tolerant? That Tea Party members aren't as racially biased as the offensive signs they bear would imply? That people of color can be wrongheaded and right-leaning, too?

It certainly is a good sign that — even within a party and a state with reputations for being less than racially enlightened — people of color can succeed. But it's hardly proof of racism's demise. A better indication of where we stand on race are the recent studies that demonstrate racial bias in South Carolina's jury selection. If we care about racial equality, we have to caution against letting the high-profile achievements of some distract us from the less buzz-worthy evidence of continued structural biases, and the work we have yet to do.

Photo Credit: blumpy