From the woman who initially couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge slavery as a cause of the Civil War comes the ultimate in hair-splitting distinctions without a difference: Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley says that America has “never been a racist country” but has “always had racism.”
Her campaign spokesperson then added, “The liberal media always fails to get that distinction.”
The spokesperson apparently didn’t understand that the media is not liberal. It just has always had liberals in it. Conservatives, too, for that matter.
Haley made these comments the day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on the conservative-leaning “Fox & Friends” show with Brian Kilmeade, showing that timing isn’t her strong suit either.
Some constitutional scholars say it’s a defamatory misconception that Blacks were counted as three-fifths of a person from the founding of the nation until the Three-Fifths Compromise. But they fail to acknowledge that the Reconstruction amendments — the 13th, 14th, and 15th, which cover the abolition of slavery, the guarantee of equal protection for all citizens against state actions, and the creation of voting rights for African Americans — wouldn’t have been necessary except for exclusions based on race. These things were so ingrained into the country that it took three constitutional amendments to try to erase them.
Which, by definition, is a tacit acknowledgment that the country was racist. Unless, of course, you’re a contortionist using Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” approach to the country’s past. Alternative facts are falsehoods.
Haley earned deserved credit in 2015 for helping remove the Confederate flag over the South Carolina capitol when she was the state’s governor. Of course, it took nine Black people at a Bible study killed by a White person to spur her to action after years of her saying the flag wasn’t a big deal.
She pressed on in an attempt to soft-peddle her comments.
“I know, I faced racism when I was growing up,” the 51-year-old Indian-American said, “but I can tell you today is a lot better than it was then.”
CNN political commentator Natasha Alford gave an impassioned rebuke of Haley’s comments.
“This is why people don’t trust Nikki Haley,” she said. “They can’t trust that she says exactly what she means and she believes. But they can count on her saying whatever sounds good to the audience she is speaking to. This will not work in a general election.”
The backlash on social media was immediate.
“Nikki Haley saying America has ‘never been a racist country’ is amazing,” Tim Wise posted on X (formerly Twitter). “These right wingers want us to focus on the progress we’ve made on race, but then deny there was anything to progress from.”
“Nikki Haley claiming that America has ‘never been a racist country’ just shows how out of touch conservatives are about this country,” Allison Wiltz posted. “Race-based slavery wasn’t racist? Race-based segregation wasn’t racist? Denying opportunities to Black people because of their race isn’t racist?”
Nina Turner, a Democrat and former state senator from Ohio, slammed Haley on several points: “Slavery? Indigenous genocide? Jim Crow? Black Codes? Mass incarceration? Lynching? And on and on and on. @NikkiHaley you’ve lost your damn mind.”
