Black MAGA Tim Scott enters the 2024 presidential race

No, Scott’s chances are slim—just like every other Republican candidate not named Donald Trump—because as I often mention, the former president has a vise grip on the hearts and minds of openly bigoted Republican Primary voters that makes his third bid as the GOP presidential standard bearer practically inevitable.

As long expected, yesterday, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) officially launched his bid for his party’s nomination for President in 2024. Now that he is all in, what are his actual chances of winning the nomination?

Well, to put it kindly, they are about as good as a snowball’s chance in Hell!

Those slim chances are not because Scott lacks the intelligence or conservative credentials to lead his party; the former football player at Presbyterian College and honors graduate of Charleston Southern University earned a degree in political science before launching a successful career in insurance sales and for the last 10 years, by serving as the junior senator from the Palmetto State.

Now, you may have noticed that in the first four paragraphs of today’s blog, that I didn’t mention the proverbial “elephant” in the GOP room— which is that Scott is a Black man. While the Senator will never be mistaken for an unapologetic critic of white supremacy like Ol’ Hobbs, to his credit, he has shown the ability to advocate for a few measures that positively impact(ed) the Black community such as greater HBCU funding, economic Opportunity Zones, and the First Step Act that helped former felons of all races to avoid recidivism and reentry into the federal prison system.

But the problem for Scott is that he is a Black man running in a party that’s filled with active racists and proud racist adjacent types—those timid souls in public who privately support openly racist candidates! Racist candidates, I remind, like Scott’s self described good friend—former President Donald Trump! Now, you may be asking yourself, “Hobbs, how can you call Trump a racist when he considers Black men like Sen. Tim Scott, Kanye West, and the recently deceased Jim Brown as his personal friends?”

My simple response is that from plantation days to this very hour, racist masters and overseers during slavery, racist sharecrop land and company store owners during Jim Crow, and racists from all walks of life today have always had one or two Blacks that they used, liked, or both! Back in the day, the “preferred” Black was one who was quick to kiss up to “Massa” or “Captain Boss” and help further their evil aims towards the masses of Black people.

Vang first worked at Blue Cross from 2010 to 2017, when she was assistant treasurer and director of treasury operations. She spent the next four years at American Family Insurance as corporate treasurer and investor relations leader before returning to Blue Cross in 2021. She has also held treasury and financial roles at Lawson Software, G&K Services, and Ecolab. Vang holds an MBA and B.S. from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management and is a Certified Treasury Professional (CTP). In addition to the Center’s board, she sits on the boards of the Association of Financial Professionals, Science Museum of Minnesota, and Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation.

Irma McClaurin receives honorary Doctor of Social Studies degree from Grinnell college

A multi-talented artist, writer and leader, Irma McClaurin believes one must “change minds, change hearts and change behavior to achieve transformation.” Never content to settle, throughout her career, she has taken on numerous roles and invariably become a standout in all of them.

McClaurin earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies at Grinnell, becoming one of the first members of her family to graduate from college. She made an early splash as a poet: in 1975, she won the Gwendolyn Brooks Award for poetry. She went on to earn an MFA in English and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and made her mark as an academic entrepreneur.

In addition to tenured faculty roles at Grinnell College, the University of Florida, and the University of Minnesota, her accomplishments have include founding the Africana Women’s Studies Program at Bennett College for Women, launching the Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center at the University of Minnesota, serving as Deputy Provost at Fisk University and working for the United States government.

In 2010, McClaurin was named president of Shaw University, where she became theinstitution’s first permanent female president and guided it through recovery from a devastating tornado. She was a Program Officer for Education and Scholarship at the Ford Foundation and also served as Chief Diversity Officer at Teach for America.

Throughout her career, McClaurin has been a thoughtful and recognized writer: she has authored or edited several academic books and volumes of poetry. Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics, was selected as a 2002 Outstanding Academic Title by Choice magazine. In 2015, she received the Emory O. Jackson National Column Writing Award from the National Newspaper Publishers Association for a column she published in Insight News, where she is Culture and Education Editor Today, she continues