Afew months ago, I happened to hear GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina explain how all Americans have benefited from systemic racism. It was an eye-opening and helpful explanation. Paraphrasing the senator, he explained how every institution, every policy created around all facets of American life — education, health care, economics, politics, land ownership — are based on the concept of black inferiority. This is the truth that we must understand and accept before we can sort out our lives as Americans with different skin colors.

It doesn’t matter that your ancestors never owned slaves. It doesn’t matter that this two-tiered system began 400 years ago. It doesn’t matter that you played no role in its beginning. We have all benefited from racist laws, regulations and implicit bias as a result of this nation’s earliest decisions. This is what is meant by the systemic racism Scott spelled out for his listeners.

Imagine my surprise and shock then, to hear the senator insist that the United States “is not a racist country” in the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s address to Congress earlier this year. How can that be when he so cogently described this American condition earlier this year? I believe the remarks I refer to above are a useful explanation in helping citizens understand the complexity of racism.

So it was with dismay that I read in Sherry Quintero Morrison’s reaction to Scott’s speech all the ways how so many fail to understand, acknowledge or accept this centuries-old truth (“All things are possible in America,” My View, May 30). She offers the tired “exceptionalist” argument that anything is possible in America, that we have a society where dreams are fulfilled (because Scott’s grandfather saw his family go from cotton to Congress in 94 years), that Americans are creative and intuitive and the envy of many. Yes, but ...

Our Constitution guarantees inalienable rights to all citizens, but beneath the lofty words is the implicit reality of a twotiered system based on skin color. The author notes that “we have the thorn of slavery” embedded in our skin/culture as though it could be removed as easily as a puncture wound from the stem of a rose.

Racism goes much deeper and wounds us all. The past year has provided some slim hope that more Americans might be beginning to understand the deeper meaning of the disease that has crippled this country since its birth. Let’s give America a chance to heal.