Nikki Haley has come to generally be seen as the least horrible choice of all the Republican presidential candidates left in the 2024 race. Of course, this is an incredibly low bar with Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis being the other options. However, she’s been undermining her “reasonable” image lately when it comes to race and racial relations.
The former governor of South Carolina made headlines recently for her response to a pretty basic question at a town hall in New Hampshire: “What was the cause of the Civil War?” The answer is obviously slavery. Some states (like hers!) wanted to keep it and some didn’t. But could she just say that? No, she couldn’t. She said it was about how the government would run … and freedoms. No mention of slavery. To which she got called out by a voter and subsequently much of the country at large. She didn’t seem to learn though, as she has made another extremely questionable racial statement.
In a Fox News interview with Brian Kilmeade, Haley was asked if the GOP is a racist party. Her response? “We’re not a racist country, Brian. We’ve never been a racist country.” But wait, there’s more! She went on to add: “I know I faced racism when I was growing up. But I can tell you, today is a lot better than it was then. Our goal is to lift up everybody. Not go and divide people on race or gender or party or anything else. We’ve had enough of that in America.”
So Haley has experienced racism but that’s just an individual-level problem? Systemic racism doesn’t exist? Sure. This is clearly illogical but she wasn’t called out for it at that moment because, well, Fox News. I hope someone asks her that question again and makes her elaborate in a different setting that doesn’t have a deep foundation of racism itself.
Furthermore, the idea that the goal of denying racism exists at an institutional level is to “lift up everybody” is ridiculous and only serves to benefit those racist systems and the (white) people at the top. She then goes on to say the goal is not to divide people on race or gender or anything else etc. Really? Remind me again what party she’s running under. Her own problematic views aside, she worked directly under Divider in Chief Donald Trump and refuses to say outright that she won’t support him if he were the nominee.
The official Haley campaign released a statement doubling down on the statements she made during the Fox News interview. “America has always had racism, but America has never been a racist country,” a Haley spokesperson said, per CNN.
The spokesperson added: “The liberal media always fails to get that distinction. It can throw a fit, but that doesn’t change Nikki’s belief that America is special because its people are always striving to do better and live up to our founding ideals of freedom and equality.”
Talk about a divisive statement! Undercutting all the Black and brown people constantly working to call out and fight racism, just to blame the “liberal media” for all of it. People have to hold these candidates’ feet to the fire. When conservatives blame all the country’s evils on the “liberal media” and no one makes them explain what they are actually talking about, they’re allowed to continue with their nonsense.
Haley and others like her are wrong in the notion that America can’t simultaneously be racist AND be striving to do better. If we aren’t racist, why are we striving to do better? Hmmmm, Nikki? Saying we have had racism but are not a racist country, at least to me, implies that all of our issues are in the past. Which is just not true. Our past is horrific obviously, but it has impacted nearly every aspect of our society still to this day. This is a view backed by research, but Republicans like Haley cannot admit this because their voters need to believe that they are the real victims of today’s modernized and culturally diverse nation. And that’s the real truth.
I think Haley knows this but politically she cannot admit it. Welcome to the modern GOP.
(featured image: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
