If newly announced Republican presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is correct about being the embodiment of American racial progress, then Robin DiAngelo, cultural phenomenon and bestselling author of White Fragility, is wrong in asserting that racism is an all-pervading and ineradicable force in America. If our nation has indeed made enormous progress in race relations in recent generations, a hypothesis that Scott is fond of expounding in the incredible story of his own family, then it cannot be the irredeemably racist hellhole that DEI hucksters like DiAngelo often describe. These visions are not simply different but antithetical to one another.

Scott’s candidacy in the Republican primary, as well as his decision to make his racial identity and traditional Christian values the focal point of his campaign, presents a clear contrast for a nation struggling to discern its own true character. Scott’s interpretation of the American story acknowledges the grave moral evil of slavery and its terrible legacy but insists on striving toward racial harmony within the framework of Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to judge others by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. This commitment is shaped by his Christian understanding of the inherent value of each human life, as well as the example set by his elders. This includes his grandfather, who was forced out of school in third grade and into the cotton fields without having been taught to read or write, and his mother, who worked 16 hours days as a nurse assistant to provide for him, which enabled him to pursue college and eventually be sworn in as a U.S. representative and then as a senator.

If the rise of the Scott family within a national power structure cannot be described as “meteoric,” then nothing can. And for this, he gives all the credit to hard work, perseverance, and good old-fashioned Christian hope. (You can see why they loathe him).

In contrast, DiAngelo’s hyper-racialist, zero-sum vision of America, which has become the default orientation of every major cultural institution from government to education to Hollywood, though its purveyors claim permanent outsider status, describes the nation in dark and fatalistic terms. To them, America is ultimately a malignant force in world history, one that is currently ruled by the insidious ideology of white supremacy. In this vision, the better angels of our nature are unqualified to heal the nation’s wounds. To appeal to them at all would give up the game, as doing so would require an admission that progress in race relations is, in fact, possible.

This is a potentiality DiAngelo and her ilk would never allow for, lest they find themselves suddenly without employment or purpose. Their tedious and self-serving pessimism has nothing to do with solving problems or improving the circumstances of a single nontenured soul. No, they are only interested in maintaining authority and inflicting pain, whether in neo-Maoist struggle sessions now familiar to every college freshman and corporate office or through the implementation of “good discrimination” based on the crude math of intersectional theory.

One can imagine Scott’s grandfather getting a big laugh out of their self-important pledge to “do the work,” which involves no real work, of course — or at least nothing like the work of his hands or the work of Scott's mother. "Doing the work" in the DEI sense only involves ritualistic self-examination and a commitment to hating the right people. For corporations, school boards, and filmmakers, it demands even less: only the money it costs to hire a few token diversity consultants and make a few token gestures such as a raised black fist in an advertisement to sell a product made by black children for pennies on the dollar in a Third World country.

Scott is about to have all hell unleashed upon him by this viscous and joyless cohort and their powerful allies. His existence threatens their entire sham industry. I hope he has good, competent people watching his back.

"I am America," he said when he announced his campaign on Monday. DiAngelo better hope not because that would spell the end of her career and the final nail in her shallow social theory.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner and the founder of Crush the College Essay. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, the National Catholic Register, and the American Spectator.