South Carolina lawmaker slammed for racist post claiming 'blacks can't seem to succeed'

A South Carolina Republican justified his opposition to a hate crimes bill on Wednesday by saying he was sick of being “vilified” for being white. He then complained that white people are treated as “the reason that blacks can’t seem to succeed in our country.”

State Rep. Vic Dabney reportedly posted — and later deleted — the comments on his Facebook page.

He wrote that he opposed the legislation — which passed in state House of Representatives on Wednesday — because he’d spent 63 years “watching our society give in to the Liberals…. and it’s never enough.”

“It’s our whiteness and our ‘straightness’ that keeps getting in the way,” he added. “No matter how much we give in to them, we just can’t seem to get it right.”

A Democratic colleague, state Rep. John King, called on him to resign over the clearly racist comments, saying:

His statement was overtly racist and deeply offensive to me, my colleagues, and all South Carolinians who believe our elected officials must do better. Claiming that ‘blacks can’t seem to succeed in our society,’ asserting offensive stereotypes about black families, and spreading outright lies about crime statistics — there is no place for this in the South Carolina General Assembly. We have a problem when racists like Vic Dabney feel comfortable expressing their bigotry. But we have an even bigger problem when we allow racist statements to go unaddressed.

“This is a Republican member of the SC legislature. Read his words & feel his hate. It is these type of folks drafting laws about voting & hate crimes,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, who was his party’s nominee for Senate in South Carolina last year, tweeted Wednesday. “If Ronna [McDaniel, the Republican National Committee’s chair] thinks we’re just going to trust them when her members write crap like this… sorry but no! #WeWillNotGoBack.”

“I have no reason to apologise [sic], so therefore I haven’t,” Dabney said in an email. “And no, I won’t be resigning.”

Beyond being racist, Dabney’s comments are not remotely accurate. His own state is home to prominent and accomplished Black people of both parties, including Republican Sen. Tim Scott and House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a Democrat.

Dabney was elected in 2020 as a pro-Donald Trump conservative Republican candidate. His campaign website noted that he “believes that the right to life is the first inalienable right. He believe [sic] that all human life has worth and therefore supports vigorous legal protection at all stages of life, from the unborn child to the elderly to the informed [sic] and disabled.”

But that apparently does not include protecting South Carolinians against crimes aimed at terrorizing people based on their race, age, religion, sex, gender, national origin, disability or sexual orientation — the groups covered by the hate crimes legislation.

A review of Dabney’s other recent Facebook posts reveals he shared an anti-socialism post by racist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and attacked supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement as “racist.”

This article was updated with a response from South Carolina State Rep. Vic Dabney.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.