By MEG KINNARD and MATT BROWN (Associated Press)
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Four years after South Carolina eliminated the Confederate battle flag from its Statehouse grounds, Nikki Haley provided two separate explanations of the flag’s that means in lower than per week.
Haley, the state’s governor when the flag was pulled in 2015 from its place of honor in Columbia, mentioned in a 2019 interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck that the person who shot and killed eight Black churchgoers in Charleston — murders that had been the impetus for the flag’s decreasing — had “hijacked” an emblem that many individuals took to face for “service and sacrifice and heritage.” Two days later, she wrote within the Washington Post, “Everyone knows the flag has always been a symbol of slavery, discrimination and hate for many people.”
The two messages seize Haley’s generally contradictory messages on race. Throughout her profession, the South Carolina-born daughter of Indian immigrants has usually referred to as out acts of particular person prejudice and the individuals accountable. But Haley, now a Republican presidential candidate, has prevented denouncing society or teams of individuals as racist.
As the GOP major race strikes to South Carolina and its Feb. 24 contest, Haley is making an attempt to chop into former President Donald Trump’s benefit. He has repeatedly attacked adversaries all through his profession with racist language, making an attempt to attraction to as many citizens as attainable with out alienating conservatives who reject the concept that systemic racism exists within the United States.
But Haley’s method has drawn bipartisan criticism at occasions, notably after a December city corridor when Haley refused to say slavery had been a reason for the Civil War. She later walked again these remarks, saying that “of course the Civil War was about slavery.”
Haley was pushed for extra solutions on her emotions about race when she was interviewed Wednesday on “The Breakfast Club,” a nationally syndicated hip hop morning radio present on which presidential candidates and different politicians have mentioned problems with race.
Asked concerning the 2015 capturing at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Haley advised co-host Charlamagne tha God that the nationwide media “came in and wanted to define” the occasion and “wanted to make it about racism.” Haley acknowledged, after being pressed, that the killings had been “motivated” by racism. Dylann Roof, a white man, was convicted and sentenced to loss of life.
The Haley marketing campaign didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Haley and Trump are competing for votes each alongside South Carolina’s quickly rising coast with its booming aerospace and protection industries and within the rural swaths of a state the place the Civil War started greater than 150 years in the past. Some in South Carolina nonetheless venerate the Confederate trigger and play down the truth that Southern political leaders wished to secede to maintain slavery intact, in addition to the lasting legacy of official federal and state discrimination in opposition to Black individuals.
Haley, who was Trump’s U.N. ambassador, has described dealing with prejudice in her upbringing in rural Bamberg.
“My parents never wanted us to think we lived in a racist country,” Haley advised reporters just lately. “I don’t want any brown, Black or other child thinking they live in a racist country. I want them to know they can do and be anything they want to be without anyone getting in the way.”
Hajar Yazdiha, a sociology professor on the University of Southern California, argued that Haley was making a acutely aware selection to higher attraction to conservatives.
“Nikki Haley will strategically deploy her identity in one moment and not the next. So in one moment, she’s drawing out that history,” Yazdiha mentioned. “She’s really claiming her ethnic identity and using it to tell a compelling story about the American dream. And then on the other, she’s minimizing it and erasing it and acting like it has no bearing on who she is.”
At a current Haley rally in North Charleston, Terry Holyfield mentioned she applauded Haley’s push to deliver down the Confederate flag. Holyfield mentioned it was “the right thing to do at that time, and I applaud her for standing by her beliefs.”
About the reason for the Civil War, Holyfield mentioned she stood by her most popular candidate’s reply.
“She answered that question intelligently and correctly,” Holyfield mentioned. “Our government was different than it is now, and our Constitution was different, and she answered that question spot on.”
People of colour in search of excessive workplace have lengthy confronted disproportionate stress to speak about race, particularly earlier than white audiences.
During his personal presidential bid final 12 months, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, a fellow South Carolinian and the one Black Republican within the chamber, usually talked to all-white teams in Iowa about private accountability and the way “we don’t have Black poverty or white poverty. We have poverty.” Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s Hindu, was usually challenged by Christians in Iowa about whether or not they worshipped the identical God. Both Scott and Ramaswamy have dropped from the nomination contest and endorsed Trump.
Haley generally ties her upbringing to politics, mentioning how her mom criticizes individuals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with out permission as a result of she herself immigrated legally. But Haley has additionally needed to deal with assaults from Trump based mostly on her ethnicity.
Trump referred to as Haley “Nimbra” on his social media web site in a current put up. That was an obvious intentional misspelling of a part of her beginning title, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. Haley has used her center title, “Nikki,” since childhood.
Trump additionally has promoted false conspiracy theories about whether or not Haley was eligible to run for president as a result of she is the U.S.-born daughter of immigrants. Her beginning in South Carolina makes her a natural-born citizen, certainly one of three {qualifications} to carry the U.S. presidency. Trump’s promotion of this false declare echoes his “birther” rhetoric about Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president.
When requested by reporters whether or not Trump’s criticisms of her are racist, Haley has as a substitute portrayed him as “desperate to stop our momentum,” utilizing any means essential to assault his opponents.
“That’s what he does when he feels threatened. That’s what he does when he feels insecure,” Haley mentioned throughout a city corridor on CNN when requested about Trump’s false allegation that she was ineligible to be president. “I know that I am a threat. I know that’s why he’s doing that.”
She usually makes use of her personal story for instance that the U.S. is essentially good.
“We live in the best country in the world and we are a work in progress, and we’ve got a long way to go to fix all of our little kinks. But I truly believe our Founding Fathers had the best of intentions when they started, and we fixed it along the way,” Haley mentioned as she struggled to make her level throughout a CNN city corridor final month in New Hampshire, the place host Jake Tapper requested her if, from a historic perspective, she believed that America had “never been a racist country.”
Tapper argued that “America was founded institutionally on many racist precepts, including slavery.” Haley responded with a reference to the road that “all men are created equal,” however then completed her thought by saying that “the intent was everybody was going to be created equally.”
In her memoirs and public appearances, Haley has usually recounted experiencing discrimination throughout her childhood: bullying, feedback about her ethnicity in class, being disqualified from a magnificence pageant for being neither white nor Black. Her father, a professor at a traditionally Black college, was racially profiled at a farmer’s market.
Haley says she handled racism by means of bridge-building.
“This habit of finding the similarities and avoiding the differences became very natural to me over time,” she wrote in her 2012 memoir.
During a 2014 go to to India, Haley spoke with an Indian information channel about her heritage and discrimination. Asked whether or not she felt the necessity to “disown” components of her heritage to work in American politics, Haley mentioned her background was core to her identification.
“I’m very, very proud of being the daughter of Indian parents, and I talk about it because it’s something that’s very special to me,” Haley mentioned. “It is who I am.”
Associated Press writers Holly Ramer in Hollis, New Hampshire, and Noreen Nasir in New York contributed to this report.
Meg Kinnard could be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP and Matt Brown could be reached at http://twitter.com/mrbrownsir.
This story was first revealed on Feb. 1, 2024. It was revealed once more on Feb. 2, 2024, to clarify within the headline that Haley has rejected speak of systemic racism.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”