Nikki Haley’s pandering on race isn’t working | Opinion
Nikki Haley’s an identity politics opportunist, the kind of person more likely to hurt than help those who have faced the challenges she has.
She is less of a threat to our democracy than Donald Trump. She doesn’t have a cult-like following that would violently attack the Capitol. But her race-based opportunism runs so deep that her elevation to the White House would bring with it significant dangers during a time in which conservatives are planting the roots for a Lost Cause 2.0.
She has used her status as the first woman of color to become South Carolina governor to advance only herself. When called on it, she doubles down, as she did again Jan. 16 when she proclaimed the U.S. has never been a racist country. Two days later during a CNN town hall, moderator Jake Tapper asked her to explain. This is how she responded:
“I was a brown girl that grew up in a small-rural town. We had plenty of racism that we had to deal with. But my parents never said we lived in a racist country… Because for every brown and Black child out there, if you tell them they live or (were) born in a racist country, you’re immediately telling them they don’t have a chance.”
Her answer is the product of indoctrination, not the phony kind Republicans have conjured to halt progress. I know it’s indoctrination because for a while, I, too, was overcome by it. Haley and I grew up at the same time in poor, rural areas of South Carolina high on segregation, where white people paid little respect to their Black and brown counterparts. It didn’t matter how hard we worked, or how well we did in school. It mattered not if we pledged allegiance to this country and portraits of a white Jesus. We were Black or brown, and that made us less than. It’s why my father had to stoically absorb insults from little white boys and little white girls who would hurl the n-word his way.
It’s similar to the stories Haley has told about her father, who had to be steadfast in the face of racists treating him harshly even as he used his hard-earned money to help prop up their businesses. We were conditioned to believe racism wasn’t all bad, that Confederates such as Robert E. Lee were heroes, not traitors, and public monuments erected in their honor were about recognizing their cause was a righteous one, not that they believed Black people should forever be enslaved.
Despite her accomplishments, Haley is stuck in that mindset, one that blinds you to Confederate flags fluttering in the wind and the word “plantation” included in the names of high-dollar communities to evoke the elegance of “Gone with the Wind” rather than the horrors that the Black enslaved endured.
The United States has been racist for the bulk of its existence, including its embrace of race-based chattel slavery, a century of public lynchings, and our continued refusal to reform a system that is “justice” in name only. To say that is not telling Black and brown kids “they don’t have a chance.” It’s simply telling the truth.
Acknowledging that hasn’t convinced me I couldn’t overcome. I’ve told my kids the truth because I want them to be clear-eyed about challenges that await. Haley would rather I lie to them. I won’t. I know we aren’t on the wrong side of numerous racial disparities because we are less than, but because this country for far too long treated us as though we were.
I refuse to let an indoctrinated mind like Haley’s let any of us forget.
And to think, her racist pandering didn’t even work. Just hours after Haley doubled down on her claim that the country has never been racist, former presidential candidate Tim Scott chose to embrace Trump’s open bigotry, endorsing him over a fellow South Carolinian who has overcome struggles similar to Scott’s.
Life comes at you fast.
This story was originally published January 20, 2024 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Nikki Haley’s pandering on race isn’t working | Opinion."