Tulsa City Council chairman attacks Sen. Tim Scott with racial slur

In a social media post last Wednesday, Tulsa City Council chairman Vanessa Hall Harper labeled U. S. Sen Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) with a racist slur. As of this writing, Hall Harper has yet to retract or apologize for the slur, which remains posted on her personal Facebook profile, accessible to anyone on or off Facebook.

Reacting to Sen. Scott's response to Joe Biden's address to a joint session of Congress last Wednesday, April 28, 2021, Hall Harper posted the picture above, paraphrasing a sentence from Scott's speech, followed by a single word reaction:

"America is not racist"....SAMBO!!!!

Sen. Scott delivered a slightly different line as part of the following passage of his speech:

When America comes together, we've made tremendous progress. But powerful forces want to pull us apart.

A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic -- and if they looked a certain way, they were inferior.

Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them -- and if they look a certain way, they're an oppressor.

From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven't made any progress. By doubling down on the divisions we've worked so hard to heal.

You know this stuff is wrong.

Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.

It's backwards to fight discrimination with different discrimination.

And it's wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.

The photo on the right in Hall Harper's post is Sen. Scott. A reverse image search links the image on the left to the homepage of black-face.com, where it is an illustration in a series of negative stereotypes of African Americans with the caption: "The Buck is a large Black man who is proud, sometimes menacing, and always interested in White women." A further reverse image search on Yandex.com suggests that it was based on the following 1907 poster, reversed and converted to grayscale:

That's African-American comedian, bandleader, and impresario Billy King (1875 - 1951). King wrote, produced, and directed musicals, and led a touring company called the Billy King Road Show, which evolved into the legendary Oklahoma City Blue Devils big band, which in turn spawned the Count Basie Orchestra.

Although Hall Harper did not elaborate on her remark, it could be inferred that she disapproved of Sen. Scott's speech, regarding him as a negative stereotype, a traitor to his race, inauthentic. The term "Sambo" traces back to the book The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman, originally a fable set in India, in which a boy outwits a group of tigers, who turn into ghee. Illustrations used for American editions of the book drew on negative stereotypes of African Americans, and the name Sambo itself became a derogatory term, even without the "Little Black" prefix.

(In 2020, in response to a petition drive, the original and last surviving location of the Sambo chain of pancake restaurants changed its name to Chad's. The chain used illustrations depicting the Sambo story with an Indian character. All but a few locations of the chain had dropped the name in the early 1980s. Tulsa had a Sambo's at 31st and Sandusky, which was converted to a Goldie's Patio Grill location decades ago. The Goldie's location, which retained many of the original Sambo's furnishings, closed with the pandemic in March 2020 and has not reopened since.)

Many more leftists on social media labeled Sen. Scott an "Uncle Tim," a play on his first name and the term "Uncle Tom," used over the last half century as a slur against African Americans who object to leftist social policies. So many people used the derogatory term that it became a trending topic on Twitter for nearly 12 hours until the social media platform was shamed into removing it.

Councilor Hall Harper has not yet, however, been shamed into removing her post about Sen. Scott. Her juxtaposition of photos of Billy King and Tim Scott inadvertently reinforces Scott's assertion of America's significant progress toward reconciliation and racial equality. Despite his great talents, King's career was limited by unjust discrimination, both official and unofficial. Today, the color of one's skin is no barrier to achieving the highest position in any field, whether as President of the United States, the billionaire head of a media conglomerate, a U. S. Senator from a state once known for slavery and discrimination, or even the chairman of the Tulsa City Council.