Here's why I admire Sen Tim Scott – and why you should too

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I have always liked U.S. Sen. Tim Scott. I’ve met him a few times and we had a great time when he came to tour the construction site for my Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center on the South Side of Chicago.

We have much in common – we both descend from that horrible America legacy of slavery, we’re country boys at heart born to single mothers, we’ve endured racism, and we live out in the open as Black conservatives.

But that’s not why I’ve grown to admire Tim Scott over the years – admiration can only come with the test of time.

What I admire in him is neither grand nor sensational and that should surprise no one since Scott is a rather humble and disciplined man. He’s a worker, a doer and a believer. What I admire in the man is something that is deeply personal to me: he never uses his Black skin to his advantage.

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This may seem insignificant to some of you or obvious to others – after all, we should live Martin Luther King’s dream where we are judged by not our skins but by our characters. But we have profoundly betrayed that dream.

We have all become complicit in exploiting our skins for the cheap thrill of power. I’ve seen Blacks do it all my life. And, in more recent years, I’ve seen Whites embrace their skins