Back home, in the wake of police shootings around the nation, he’s shared how he was stopped by police “numerous times” while a member of the Charleston County Council. In Washington, his colleagues in Congress have been with him when Capitol Hill Police officers stop to question him.

“He tells them, ‘I know I look young for a senator,’ ” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told The New York Times’s Jennifer Steinhauer last July.

This time, Scott isn’t reluctantly addressing news events that revolve around race. He is deliberately drawing attention to them. The shift might have to do with how he’s perceived his party’s response in the wake of so much bloodshed between black men and police: lacking.

Scott told Dumain he was “surprised” more of his Republican colleagues didn’t release statements after two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, were killed by white police officers last week, while nearly all released statements on the murder of Dallas police officers.