Nikki Haley - Incredible Ignorance Or Political Cowardice?

Nikki Haley has been making the news lately with her denial of history. First she answered a question about the cause of the American Civil War without even mentioning slavery (which was the primary cause of the war). Then she goes on Fox News and makes the statement that this country has never been a racist country.

Frankly, I'm stunned! Did she skip all her classes about American history, or is she just incredibly ignorant?

Anyone who knows anything about American history knows that this country was founded as a racist country. For many years after the nation was founded, slavery was legal. And it was even written into the Constitution that Black slaves would only count as 3/5 of a person among the population.

It took a Civil War (and the Emancipation Proclamation) to overturn slavery. The it took a constitutional amendment to give rights to the former slaves. 

Even after that, Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan made sure most Blacks did not really have the right to vote or congregate with Whites in restaurants, hotels, buses, trains, and churches. This continued until the Civil Rights laws of the 1960's -- almost 200 years after the country was founded.

The truth is that the United States was a racist country when founded, and has a sad history of racism since that time. Even the election of a Black president (which some said was proof racism was over) just brought the virulent racists back out from under their rocks, and today they control a large part of the Republican Party.

That is why Haley made that dumb statement. It was an act of political cowardice. I don't believe all Republicans are racists, but a large number of them are. And with Trump backing them, the rest of the party are afraid to buck them. Haley knew if she told the truth, she would immediately lose a significant portion of the Republican vote.

The sad part is that she never had a chance at getting the racist vote anyway. It was always going to Trump (the person who made them openly proud to be racist again). And by denying the country's racism, she has cut herself off from the general public, who knows the nation still has a problem with racism. This is illustrated in the chart below. 

The chart above reflects the results of a new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 14th and 16th of a nationwide sample of 1,660 adults (including 1,472 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 3 points, and for registered voters is 2.8 points.