Haley stumbles again on racism in America
Before he opened fire during Bible study at a historical Black church in Charleston, S.C., on the night of June 17, 2015, self-proclaimed white supremacist Dylann Roof, said, “You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”
He then shot and murdered nine members, including the pastor, of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal congregation.
In advance of the murders, Roof posted an online manifesto that left no doubt of his motives.
“I have no choice,” Roof wrote. “I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country.”
He added, “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well, someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”
The massacre at “Mother Emanuel” was so shocking that South Carolina’s then governor became the first southern governor to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol.
Last week, that former governor, Nikki Haley, now a Republican candidate for president, said the mass murder of nine Black people at a Black church by a white supremacist was not about racism.
Appearing on the hip-hop morning show “The Breakfast Club,” Haley, speaking about the national media’s coverage of the church shooting, said, “They wanted to make it about guns, they wanted to make it about racism, they wanted to make it about the death penalty.”
That was a bizarre comment because the case was about a white supremacist who was given the death penalty after being convicted of using guns to murder Black people.
When the co-host, Charlamagne tha God, told her that the shooting was about racism, Haley rejected that.
“But the point was I strong-armed them and said there will be a time we talk about all that,” she said. “But right now, we have nine souls we need to put to rest. I didn’t have that luxury. Because two days later the killer came out draped in the Confederate flag.”
Haley would later acknowledge that the murders were “motivated” by racism.
In denying that the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal massacre wasn’t about racism, Haley became the first presidential candidate in American history to refute a perpetrator who unapologetically said that racism is why he committed those murders.
This is the latest and most glaring example of how maladroit Haley is in talking about race. In December, she couldn’t admit that the primary cause of the Civil War was slavery. After being roundly criticized for her answer, she later walked it back by saying, “of course the Civil War was about slavery.”
In January, Haley said that the United States “has never been a racist country.”
What’s disappointing about Haley’s comments on race is that there is little reason to think they reflect her actual beliefs. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she’s spoken about experiencing prejudice.
Former President Donald Trump, the prohibitive favorite for the nomination Haley’s seeking, regularly mocks her birth name “Nimarata.”
In a 2019 guest commentary for the Washington Post, she wrote of the Confederate flag, “Everyone knows the flag has always been a symbol of slavery, discrimination and hate for many people.”
Haley is a politician of substance who is superior to Trump in so many ways. That she feels she must dumb down and pander to her party’s base doesn’t speak well of the base or her political courage.
Yes, talking honestly about racism, and the complexities and nuances about race, can be difficult.
What isn’t difficult is agreeing with a white supremacist murderer that his decision to murder nine Black people in church was racist.
Even after mass shooting at S.C. church, former governor fails to accept reality