Nikki Haley has called out prejudice but rejected systemic racism throughout her career
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Four years after South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds, Nikki Haley offered two separate explanations for the flag’s meaning in less than a week.
Haley, who was the state’s governor when the flag was pulled from its place of honor in Columbia in 2015, said in a 2019 interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck that the man who shot and killed eight Black churchgoers in Charleston — killings that sparked raising the flag – had ‘hijacked’ a symbol that many people thought stood for ‘service, sacrifice and heritage’. Two days later, she wrote in the Washington Post: “Everyone knows that for many people the flag has always been a symbol of slavery, discrimination and hatred.”
The two messages reflect Haley’s sometimes conflicting messages about race. Throughout her career, the South Carolina-born daughter of Indian immigrants has often criticized individual biases and the people responsible for them. But Haley, now a Republican presidential candidate, has avoided denouncing society or groups of people as racist.
As the Republican Party’s primaries move to South Carolina and the Feb. 24 contest, Haley is looking to capitalize on former President Donald Trump’s lead. He has repeatedly attacked opponents with racist language throughout his career, trying to appeal to as many voters as possible without alienating conservatives who reject the idea that systemic racism exists in the United States.
But Haley’s approach has at times drawn criticism from both sides, especially after a town hall in December when Haley declined to say slavery was a cause of the Civil War. She later walked back those comments, saying that “of course the Civil War was about slavery.”
Haley was urged to get more answers about her feelings about race when she was interviewed Wednesday on “The Breakfast Club,” a nationally syndicated hip-hop morning radio show on which presidential candidates and other politicians have discussed issues of race.
Asked about the shooting at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015, Haley told co-host Charlamagne tha God that the national media “came in and wanted to define the event” and “make it about racism.” Haley, after being pressed, acknowledged that the killings were “motivated” by racism. Dylann Roof, a white man, was convicted and sentenced to death.
The Haley campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Haley and Trump are battling for votes both along South Carolina’s fast-growing coast with its booming aerospace and defense industries and in rural parts of a state where the Civil War began more than 150 years ago. Some in South Carolina still venerate the Confederate cause and downplay the fact that Southern political leaders sought to secede to keep slavery intact, as well as the lasting legacy of official federal and state discrimination against black people.
Haley, Trump’s UN ambassador, has described facing prejudice in her upbringing in rural Bamberg.
“My parents never wanted us to think we lived in a racist country,” Haley recently told reporters. “I don’t want any brown, black or other child to think he or she lives in a racist country. I want them to know that they can do and be anything they want without anyone standing in their way.”
Hajar Yazdiha, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, argued that Haley made a conscious decision to better appeal to conservatives.
“Nikki Haley will use her identity strategically one moment and not the next. So in one moment she draws out that history,” Yazdiha said. “She really claims her ethnic identity and uses it to tell a compelling story about the American dream. And on the other hand, she minimizes it and erases it and acts like it doesn’t affect who she is.
At a recent Haley rally in North Charleston, Terry Holyfield said she applauded Haley’s effort to take down the Confederate flag. Holyfield said this was “the right thing to do at the time, and I applaud her for standing by her beliefs.”
On the cause of the Civil War, Holyfield said she supported her favorite candidate’s answer.
“She answered that question intelligently and correctly,” Holyfield said. “Our government was different than it is now, and our Constitution was different, and she answered that question on the spot.”
People of color seeking high office have long faced disproportionate pressure to talk about race, especially to white audiences.
During his own presidential bid last year, U.S. Senator Tim Scott, a fellow South Carolinian and the only black Republican in the House, often spoke to all-white groups in Iowa about personal responsibility and how “we don’t have black poverty or white poverty. We have poverty.” Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who is Hindu, was often challenged by Christians in Iowa about whether they worshiped the same God. Both Scott and Ramaswamy have withdrawn from the nominating contest and endorsed Trump.
Haley sometimes links her upbringing to politics, mentioning how her mother criticizes people who cross the US-Mexico border without permission because she herself has legally emigrated. But Haley has also faced attacks from Trump based on her ethnicity.
Trump referred to Haley as “Nimbra” in a recent post on his social media site. That was an apparent intentional misspelling of part of her birth name, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. Haley has been using her middle name, ‘Nikki’, since childhood.
Trump has also promoted false conspiracy theories about whether Haley was eligible to run for president because she is the U.S.-born daughter of immigrants. Her birth in South Carolina makes her a natural-born citizen, one of three qualifications to hold the U.S. presidency. Trump’s promotion of this false claim echoes his “birther” rhetoric about Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president.
When asked by reporters if Trump’s criticism of her is racist, Haley instead portrayed him as “desperate to stop our momentum,” using whatever means necessary to attack his opponents.
‘He does that when he feels threatened. That’s what he does when he feels insecure,” Haley said during a CNN town hall when asked about Trump’s false accusation that she was ineligible to be president. “I know I’m a threat. I know that’s why he does that.”
She often uses her own story as an example that the US is fundamentally good.
“We live in the best country in the world and we are a work in progress, and we still have a long way to go to solve all our little problems. But I truly believe that our Founding Fathers had the best intentions when they started, and we solved it along the way,” Haley said as she tried to make her point last month during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire, where host Jake Tapper asked her if, from a historical perspective, she believed that America had “never been a racist country.”
Tapper argued that “America was institutionally based on many racist precepts, including slavery.” Haley responded by referencing the phrase that “all men are created equal,” but then concluded her thought by saying that “all men were meant to do that.” be created equally.”
In her memoirs and public appearances, Haley has often talked about experiencing discrimination growing up: bullying, comments about her ethnicity at school, being disqualified from a beauty pageant for being neither white nor black. Her father, a professor at a historically black college, was racially profiled at a farmers market.
Haley says she has tackled racism by building bridges.
“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 visit to India in 2014, Haley spoke to an Indian news channel about her origins and discrimination. When asked if she felt the need to “deny” parts of her heritage to work in American politics, Haley said her background was core to her identity.
“I’m very proud to be the daughter of Indian parents, and I talk about it because it’s something very special to me,” Haley said. “It’s who I am.”
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Associated Press writers Holly Ramer in Hollis, New Hampshire, and Noreen Nasir in New York contributed to this report.
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP and Matt Brown can be reached at http://twitter.com/mrbrownsir.