The Republican Party should recognize racial inequality in the United States instead of continuing to push the idea that equal opportunity exists, former President Barack Obama said on "The Axe Files" podcast released Thursday.
Asked about comments by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, that Republicans are "doing a fabulous job of making progress" on race, Obama said there needs to be an "honest accounting of our past and our present" in the GOP.
"I'm not being cynical about Tim Scott individually," Obama told host David Axelrod, his former senior advisor. "I am maybe suggesting that the rhetoric of 'Can't we all get along?' — and those quotes you made about, you know, from my speech in 2004 about there's a 'United States of America' — that has to be undergirded with an honest accounting of our past and our present."
Obama added that he hadn't listened to Scott's campaign speeches.
"And so, if a Republican, who may even be sincere in saying 'I want us all to live together,' doesn't have a plan for how do we address crippling generational poverty that is a consequence of hundreds of years of racism in this society and we need to do something about that. ... If somebody is not proposing, both acknowledging and proposing elements that say, 'No, we can't just ignore all that and pretend as if everything's equal and fair. We actually have to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.' If they're not doing that, then I think people are rightly skeptical," said Obama, the first Black U.S. president.
"Maybe there will come a time in which — and this goes to the point I made earlier about within the Republican Party — people who are actually more conservative in some fashion but are serious about working-class issues, there may come a time where there's somebody in the Republican Party that is more serious about actually addressing some of the deep inequality that still exists in our society that tracks race and is a consequence of our racial history."
Scott, the lone Black Republican senator, said this month on ABC's "The View" that "both sides of the aisle can do a better job on the issue of race" and pledged that there would be "less CRT and more ABCs," referring to the teaching of critical race theory in schools, if he is elected.
Scott said the U.S. is not fundamentally racist when he announced his presidential candidacy last month.
"For those who wonder if it is possible for a broken kid, in a broken home, to rise beyond their circumstances, the answer is yes," Scott said.
"For those of you who wonder if America is a racist country, take a look at how people come together. All of God's people come together. Black ones and white ones, the red ones and brown ones, working together. Because love, unconditional love, binds hearts together."
Paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Scott said that Americans are "not defined by the color of our skin" but instead by "the content of our character."
"And if anyone tells you anything different, they're lying," he said.
Critical race theory is defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as the concept in which race is a socially constructed category ingrained in American law intended to maintain social, economic and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites. It teaches that U.S. society is inherently or systemically racist.