Nikki Haley kicked off her White House bid last week with a prevailing message that essentially boiled down to: “Racism is over. Just look at me for proof.”
It’s a claim not entirely different from the message Barack Obama put forth in his 2008 presidential bid, which framed his candidacy as an indicator of racial progress. But even Obama had the wherewithal to acknowledge America’s racist history was not entirely behind us.
Haley, on the other hand, has played up her South Asian heritage (her parents emigrated from India before she was born) in order to downplay the reality of racism in America. And her messaging has been predictably muddled.
For example, her campaign announcement video spoke of her upbringing as an Indian American in South Carolina during a time when she says her hometown was racially segregated. She said her mother told her as a child not to see the differences in others, so … racism’s over, I guess? (Of course it’s not.)
Haley might be surprised to discover that segregation — albeit, de facto segregation — largely still exists in South Carolina. That includes her hometown.
Nonetheless, the former South Carolina governor doubled down on the racial apologism during a campaign stop last week, when she criticized President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their acknowledgment that systemic racism exists in America, and that it’s rooted in the nation’s racist history.
“Joe and Kamala even say America’s racist,” Haley claimed at a campaign rally in Charleston, pulling lines from her campaign ad. “Nothing is further from the truth. … Take it from me, the first minority female governor in history: America is not racist.”
But her being the first nonwhite woman elected governor isn’t proof of racism’s futility; it’s arguably proof of its vitality.
Surely, qualified women of color existed in the United States — and South Carolina, specifically — long before Haley was alive. Their inability to become governor…
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