"America has never been a racist country"
Deconstructing Nikki Haley's argument
After finishing third in the Iowa Republican caucus (setting her up for a “two person race”), Nikki Haley claimed in an interview that America has never been a racist country. In her latest CNN town hall, she was questioned by Jake Tapper to explain her view given basic history.
Haley’s answer is very informative because it provides such a great example of how conservatives characterize issues of race. First, she goes with a Not All Scotsman argument: she grew up as a daughter of Indian immigrants in small-town South Carolina. From there she went on to become the “first female minority governor” in history, then UN Ambassador, and is now running for president. Clearly, then, America isn’t a racist country or it would have stopped her from those achievements.
Second, after Tapper points out that slaves built the White House, that slavery was written into the constitution (3/5th of a person), and that South Carolina has distinctly offered the defense of slavery as its reason for secession, she doesn’t address these facts. Rather, she pivots to the “all men are created equal” phrase in the Declaration of Independence.1 She argues that over the country’s history, we have moved closer to that ideal. She mentions the expansion of rights to women, but somehow neglects to mention the Reconstruction amendments, the battle against Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, or Obama’s election. The Declaration allows her to affirm a trope while eliding a couple of hundred years of history.
Third, she said that her parents told her that you’d always run into racists but American society is not a racist society. If she believed the latter, she claimed, she couldn’t have accomplished what she has. She said that if you tell young people of color that America is a racist country, then they won’t believe they can achieve anything.
While not as extreme as a DeSantis argument that we’re teaching children to be victims or oppressors, it’s in that general vein. Students know what they see, both in the past and in the present. Ask the Little Rock Nine or Ruby Bridges if they think America is racist as the National Guard escorted them past hordes of angry Whites. Ask the Freedom Riders. Ask those stopped by police in Memphis or students in subpar urban schools. If anything, knowledge of the racist threads within society motivates them to strive to overcome.
Perhaps the best rebuttal to Haley’s Declaration of Independence defense is to simply point at the guy who’s dominating the Republican race. Why does Trump think that calling Nikki by a distorted version of her first name is a good thing to do?2 Why does he suggest that maybe she isn’t eligible to even run for president because her parents were immigrants? Why does he diminish her achievements as UN Ambassador? Because he knows that a segment of the Republican electorate is hesitant to support a woman for president, much less a person of color. He appeals to those sensitivities because he knows how deeply they are ingrained in segments of American society (especially in two of the whitest states in the primaries).
As I mentioned in an earlier newsletter, I’m listening to Timothy Egan’s book on the KKK in Indiana a century ago. It has such striking parallels to today. But the ideology of the Klan was deeply immeshed in midwest politics, with white superiority linked to political, religious, and much of media institutions. These were not some isolated racists holding rallies and induction ceremonies. These were organizations that say that America was for them and certainly not for the blacks, jews, Catholics, or Italians (they wouldn’t have imagined adding people from India!) and were taking control of the levers of power to protect that sentiment.
The figures in Egan’s book weren’t motivated by bromides from the Declaration. They believed that those others were created inferior and had no real role in society. To the extent that they wanted political power to institutionalize that inequality is an important part of American culture. It is still lingering, maybe more hidden that in the past, but it’s there. Watch the crowds respond to Trump complaining about vermin bringing disease and you’ll hear echoes 100 years old.
As a rule, conservatives prefer the Declaration to the Constitution in their talking points even though the latter is our governing document.
When he isn’t confusing her with Nancy Pelosi.
In a post-truth society language losses its meaning. You can say what ever you want and doesn't mean a bean! That is how people can say something and minutes later say the opposite. We are in deep trouble!
I honestly can't figure out if her and Senator Scott's similar language is their beliefs or if it is about their audience. I know many people believe that the country isn't and hasn't been racist but I think in many cases it is about historical ignorance or a distorted understanding of what racism actually entails. But neither of those excuses work for Haley or Scott. They both have experienced personal racism. And they have to understand the structural history of the US in issues like Dred Scott Decision. I am reading Paul Miller's The Religion of American Greatness right now and he does a good job of balancing the ideals of documents like the Declaration of Independence or the reconstruction amendments with the actual history. I think it great to point to the ideals (as MLK and many others have done) but you can't deny the actual history.