Punditry

The New York Times has had roundtable discussions of presidential candidates as they enter the race, and had one on Tim Scott a couple of weeks ago.  It wasn't until the eighth comment that someone noted that  "Republican primary voters have been eager to consider Black candidates in recent cycles: Herman Cain in 2012, Ben Carson in 2016."  Neither one had any of the conventional qualifications to be president, neither one was especially well known, and Carson put very little effort into his campaign, so their performance suggests that many Republicans want to support a black candidate.  The participant who made this point was Daniel McCarthy, the most conservative of the group.  I don't think that's a coincidence:  most progressives see the story of the last decade or so as one of backlash, white supremacy, white nationalism, etc..  For example a news article about Republican "candidates of color"   said "In the early years of the Obama presidency, talk of a post-racial society .... was common. But later, an upsurge of white supremacist violence .... shattered that idealized post-racial notion ...." and then quoted Andra Gillespie, a professor of political science at Emory:  "You could have argued in 2006 and 2007 that racism was waning. That’s a lot less credible today.” 

 But if you look at surveys on issues involving race, opinions have continued to move in the same direction that they've been moving for many years--towards support for the principle of equality. Although it's less certain, it also seems that agreement that there is at least some discrimination against blacks has increased.    As far as blacks in elite positions, at one time many whites were opposed--for example, in 1958 the Gallup poll asked "if your party nominated a generally well-qualified man for president, would you vote for him if he happened to be a Negro?" and 53% said they would not.  As time went on, white people came to accept black representation in elite positions, and now many or most regard it as desirable.  I couldn't find any series of questions on this point, but Tim Scott was selected to give the official response to the State of the Union address in 2021, and he wasn't even the first black Republican to do that (JC Watts was, in 1997).  So as a black candidate who has served in the Senate and has good political skills, Scott is likely to be a strong contender.  

A couple of other observations:
1.  I looked up occurrences of "post-racial" in the New York Times in 2008-10.    There were over 100, so I didn't read them all, but the great majority involved people saying that it was a myth or an illusion.  I couldn't find any that said America really was a post-racial society, or on the verge of becoming one.  
2.  McCarthy said that "nearly one in five Black men nationwide voted for Donald Trump in 2020" and Michelle Goldberg said that "the Democratic Party is losing Black men."  These claims seem to be based on the 2020 exit polls, which showed 18% of black men voting for Trump.  Exit polls are useful because they come out soon after the election and include large samples from every state, but they are not regarded as particularly accurate.   The American National Election Studies take a long time to appear, but are regarded as high quality.  According to the ANES, 8.7% of black men and 5.9% of black women voted for Trump.  That's in line with the normal levels of black support for Republican candidates in recent decades.