It was an unfamiliar sight: a Republican candidate in a Black church.

And a Black church in an overwhelmingly Black urban neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.

But Tim Scott, a Black man in an overwhelmingly White GOP, is used to being an unfamiliar sight.

After months on the campaign trail speaking to primarily White audiences in Iowa and South Carolina with little attention given to race, Scott was appealing directly to Black people, something many Black conservatives hoped he would do since he announced his White House bid.

But 19 days later, Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, dropped out before any presidential preference votes were cast.

"I wish he had talked about urban issues a little bit more, what Black communities are being faced with," said Corey Brooks, a Black conservative and the pastor of New Beginnings Church, where Scott spoke in Chicago. “It would’ve been nice for him to go all out addressing those issues.”

Black conservatives, like Brooks and others interviewed for this story, said they saw Scott’s campaign as both a sign of how far they’ve come in the GOP and the limits that remain.

Many Black Republicans almost universally adore Scott, South Carolina's junior U.S. senator, and viewed his candidacy as a milestone.

It was the first-ever White House bid by a Black Republican officeholder, and, in contrast to the campaigns of businessman Herman Cain, surgeon Ben Carson and diplomat Alan Keyes, Scott's campaign had massive resources and establishment credibility.

Stephen Gilchrist, a Black Republican who is also chairman of the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce, described Scott's candidacy as "an eye-opening experience."

"African Americans can not only compete as president of the United States and in some cases win, there are two lanes for us to choose now," he said, referring to the ability for Black candidates to mount serious runs as either Democrats or Republicans. 

Yet some Black conservatives were disappointed Scott did not tackle thorny issues of race more directly or even make much of a conservative pitch to Black voters while he was on the campaign trail.

But that is easier said than done. Black candidates in Republican primaries face a fundamental challenge in talking about race.

Most Republicans view race in America in starkly different terms than the vast majority of Black people.

Eighty percent of Black people believe they face "a lot" of discrimination, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found. Fourteen percent of Republicans say the same. GOP voters are also more likely to say White people face a lot of discrimination.

Among African Americans on the right, in contrast to Black Americans overall, there’s a sizable fraction that believe, like most White Republicans, that racism on a societal level is largely a thing of the past and that government policy should be race-blind.

But there’s an expectation among White conservatives that Black Republicans will sound like them on race and won’t say anything that could make them uncomfortable, said Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011 and fierce critic of President Donald Trump. 

There’s a temptation for Black Republican candidates with a divergent view on race to gloss over it to win in primaries, Steele told The Post and Courier.

Scott, he said, “fell into the trap.”

During the campaign, Scott would laud the progress African Americans have made in recent decades and argue that the remaining disparities are the fault of Democratic policies rather than racism.

“The problems around us can’t be the progressives’ fault if everything can be based and blamed on systemic racism,” he said during his speech in Chicago. 

In June, when pressed by the hosts of the syndicated TV talk show "The View" about whether he believes in systemic racism, Scott declined to give an answer, stressing instead the progress that African Americans have made in recent decades.

His personal story, on which much of his campaign’s messaging was built, served as an example.

The version of the story of his rise from poverty in North Charleston that Scott told over and over on the campaign trail was heavy on hard work and opportunity but light on any barriers he may have faced because he was Black.

“America is not a racist country” was a line that figured in almost all of his campaign speeches.

Scott did notably clash with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the Sunshine State's education standards which said slaves developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.” Scott quickly came out against that standard, saying there was “no silver lining to slavery."

That frustrated Steele because it highlighted the incongruity between the rest of Scott's campaign message on race and what the senator has said and done earlier in his career, pointing to Scott’s Senate floor speech in 2016 where he described being racially profiled by police.

"OK, you push back on that … because the political winds were pushing up against DeSantis or do you genuinely believe that?” Steele said. "And if you genuinely believe that, then the rest of the (expletive) you’re saying on race doesn’t make sense."

Broadly, Scott has largely stuck to Republicans' positions on race, such as when he praised the June U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found affirmative action in college admissions unconstitutional.  

These positions, coupled with a compelling personal biography, have earned him electoral success in a majority White party, but he also made “smart, strategic deviations” like on the Florida education standards to maintain some credibility with the Black community, said Georgetown University professor Corey Fields, who studies Black conservatism.

“He’s trying to thread the needle,” he said.

Maurice Washington, the former chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party who has known Scott since the 1990s and is Black, said he doesn’t think Scott has modified his views to suit White conservatives or anyone else.

He recalled campaigning with Scott for a Charleston-area state Senate seat in an overwhelmingly Black district in 1996. Washington said Scott was saying the same things on race — stressing personal responsibility and progress — to those Black voters that he said this summer to White Iowans.

Even among Black Republicans who think Scott is right on race, many wish he had talked more about it and played up the work he’s done on issues that matter most to Black people.

Washington was quick to cite Scott’s attempt to pass a police reform package after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police; his work to increase funding to HBCUs; and his key role in the passage of the First Step Act, which seeks to reduce recidivism and the federal prison population.

“Those are big deals, but for whatever reason he didn’t go there, which I’m puzzled by,” Washington said.

“If the party is to grow and attract people of color, we cannot be afraid to speak candidly, robustly to issues that are near and dear to the hearts of Black and Brown people,” he said.

Some Black conservatives say they understand why he didn’t talk more about those issues.

“The facts are, whether you’re Indian, whether you’re Black, whether you’re White, in a Republican primary where the electorate is majority White, you can’t have a message that you’re tailoring to a small group of people,” said Samuel Rivers Jr., an ardent Scott supporter who was the South Carolina House of Representatives’ only Black Republican from 2012 to 2018, representing Goose Creek.

Scott might’ve done slightly better in the primary had he staked out a more vocal and distinctive position on race as that may have brought him more media attention, Georgetown University’s Fields said.

Many Black Republicans agree that in a primary dominated by Trump, no matter what Scott said on race, he still would’ve failed. 

They wish he would’ve stayed in the race a little longer, though. Without him, they wonder if race will get any discussion at all.

Pastor Brooks invited every candidate to visit his church, not just Scott. But so far this cycle, no one else has shown up.