Nikki Haley’s denials about American racism are infuriating

When I hear the onetime South Carolina governor deny the fact that America has ever been a racist country, I see red.

As the daughter of Indian immigrants, Nikki Haley’s denialism disgraces her lineage. Her parents went through an awful lot living in a small town in South Carolina — according to Haley’s memoir, they couldn’t find a landlord to rent them a home and a babysitter refused to watch her. She also says she was teased “for being brown.”

You would think that Haley would understand better than many what the Confederacy was about, and why the rebel flag needed to come down from South Carolina’s state Capitol — as it finally did in 2015, when Haley was governor.

But on CNN’s town hall Thursday night, when Jake Tapper asked her about a claim she had made that America has never been a racist country, she missed a great opportunity. Instead of backtracking, Haley attempted to double down, pointing to the Declaration of Independence’s pronouncement that “all men are created equal.”

When Tapper noted — rightly — that America was founded on many racial precepts, including slavery, she talked around it. “The intent was to do the right thing,” she said. “Now, did they have to go fix it along the way? Yes, but I don’t think the intent was ever that we were going to be a racist country. The intent was everybody was going to be created equally. And as we went through time, they fixed the things that were not ‘all men are created equal.’”

Haley looked like a fool fumbling what should have been an easy layup.

Does she honestly expect any of us to believe the intent of the founders was to create a country where all people were equal? Many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners. At the time, women and Black people couldn’t vote. And huge portions of the economy were built around the institution of slavery.

If America was designed to be free of racial prejudice, why do Black and brown families continue to have only a small fraction of the wealth of white families?

Instead of trying to obfuscate the existence of racism in America, it would have been amazing for Haley to own up to America’s original sin.

Her word salad answers to Tapper’s questions on race dishonored the experience of every Black and brown American.

Haley can pretend to be color-blind, but those of us who live in the real America know the truth.

One of my great-grandfathers, the late Robert Armstrong, was born into bondage on a plantation in Haley’s home state. I carry his surname, which was the name of a white man who owned him and his relatives. I and millions of other Black people are still identified by the names of the white people who owned our families. Still think America isn’t a racist country?

My family’s ancestors hail from West Africa. But like the vast majority of African Americans whose forbearers were dragged here in the belly of slave ships, I do not know which country they were from. It took a Civil War and the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation for them to be considered free.

Even then, America wouldn’t take her blood-soaked boot off the necks of Black people.

Jim Crow laws — another name for legalized discrimination — were designed to keep African Americans as second-class citizens. The Ku Klux Klan is an outgrowth of that same mentality.

Haley may not want to acknowledge it, but Black Americans have suffered terribly under the yoke of racism. Not being able to vote. Turned away from restaurants and hotels. Riding in the back of buses. Drinking from segregated water fountains. Dealing with racial covenants that kept them out of certain neighborhoods.

Haley acts like this is the distant past, but it’s not.

Haley acts like this is the distant past, but it’s not. I remember my own mother talking about having to use a separate entrance at the movie theaters when she was growing up in Morganton, N.C.

For Haley, racism is an inconvenient truth she would rather glaze over to woo GOP MAGA votes.

That’s why I roll my eyes whenever she refers to herself as a “brown girl.” I mean, why doesn’t she go by her full name when campaigning, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa? The answer is obvious.

Of course, her opponent, former President Donald Trump, is no better — calling her “Nimbra” on Truth Social on Friday. Trump’s otherizing of her mimics how he treated former President Barack Obama, claiming the nation’s first Black president wasn’t born in America.

Haley’s presidential run is likely almost over. According to polls, she doesn’t have much of a chance. Trump is expected to win big in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

If and when Haley disappears from our national stage, I, for one, will be happy.