Nikki Haley's astounding views on race may impact New Hampshire primary

SCREEN CAPTURE / C-SPAN

Nikki Haley hopes to do well in the New Hapshire primary today.

As New Hampshire counts its primary votes today, Presidential candidate Nikki Haley continues to dig a deeper hole for herself on the question of racism in the United States.

Haley is the last remaining rival to Donald Trump winning the GOP nomiination for President. The former UN Ambassador and ex-South Carolina governor is drawing the wrong kind of attention to herself that could hurt her in the upcoming primary. 

During the CNN town hall last week, the former South Carolina governor was asked if she stood by that answer, given the country’s history of legal racism, including slavery. Haley doubled down, saying that America was founded on the idea that all men are created equal.

Even though many of the framers of the Constitution were slave owners and they signed the country's guiding principles that included counting Black slaves as three-fifths of a White person, Haley continued

"The intent was to do the right thing,” she said of the writers of the US Constitution.. “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.”

On a personal level, she said that while she experienced racism growing up in rural South Carolina, her parents told her that those experiences wouldn’t define what she could achieve.

“We had plenty of racism that we had to deal with, but my parents never said we lived in a racist country, and I’m so thankful they didn’t,” Haley said. “Because for every brown and Black child out there, if you tell them they live or were born in a racist country, you’re immediately telling them they don’t have a chance.”

Haley pointed to her own achievements of becoming one of the first female minority governors in the country and later Trump’s US ambassador to the United Nations. She echoed comments she’s made on the campaign trail that too many Americans have a “national self loathing,” even though the US is not “racist” but “blessed.”

“I think it’s important that we tell all kids that, ‘Look, America is not perfect. We have our stains, we know that,’” she said. “But our goal should always be to make today better than yesterday.”

Haley's latest comments comes days after a town hall questioner asked her  about the cause of the Civil War without mentioning once, the word slavery. A day later she had to clarify her answer, "Of course it was about slavery," she said.

MSNBC News host Mehdi Hasan, an Indian American, also criticized Haley's racial blindness. Reminding Haley of her Indian American heritage, Hasan posted on X: 

"What about that time you said you got excluded from a kids' beauty contest for being brown? Or that time you said your dad was profiled at a market because of his turban?" 

After Haley finished a distant third in the Iowa Caucuses behind Donald Trump and FLorida Governor Ron DeSantis, she is hoping for a stronger showing in New Hampshire where she has been closing the gap between her and Trump. When  DeSantis dropped out of the race Sunday, she's halfway there.

Indian American businessman Vivek Ramaswamy finished in the fourth in the Iowa caucuses. His poor showing convinced him to end his campaign and throw his support to Trump.

Haley's apparent gaffs on race might, however, might raise her appeal to White voters. New Hampshire is one of the whitest states in the nation with 87% of its population counted as White in the US Census. Asians account for only 2.6% of the New England state.

No matter how she fnishes in New Hampsire, nationally her position on racism may hurt her nationally. Her assertion runs counter to the experience of the majority of Asian Americans. A recnt poll from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found 15% of Asian American and Pacific Islanders specifically say they believe they have been the victim of a hate crime. About half — 51% — believe racism is an “extremely” or “very serious” problem in the US.

But as Haley fights for relevancy by courting moderate Republicans, she is losing the fight for a portion of the Indian American vote. Of all the Asian ethnic groups and nationalities, Indian Americans have remained overwhelmingly Democratic with 68% of Indian American voters leaning towards the Dems. A candidates' racial origins were less of a deciding factor with Asian American voters than a candidates' positions on issues.

As if a backlash to her comments on racism wasn't bad enough, Trump pulled out the race card against Haley by deliberately referring to her as Nimrada, a supposed play on Haley's full name Nimarata Nikki Randhawa and sounds a lot like "nimrod," On his social media he inaccurately claimed she is ineligible for the presidency because her parents were not US citizens when she was born in 1972.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow me at Threads.net/eduardodiok, @DioknoEd on Twitter or at the blog Views From the Edge.

Sunday Read: Andrew Yang whiffs on the question of racism

SCREEN CAPTURE / ABC

From left, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigeig and Elizabeth Warren tangle on race during the New Hampshire debate.

OPINION:

It may be a bit unfair that we (as in "people of color," specifically Asian Americans) expect so much from Andrew Yang. We put on his shoulders the weight of representing our own experiences and dreams.

You would think that as a POC, Yang would be able to give a more substantial answer to the question of racism in US society. In the New Hampshire debate, racism came up as a topic between Pete Buttigeig and Elizabeth Warren and then Andrew Yang came in at the end of the discussion. I thought to myself, "Oh, here we go, Andrew. Knock it out of the park." Instead, he whiffed. At most, he got a bloop single.

To my mind, racism permeates all aspects of US society. It is at the root of our country's inequality in wages, housing, justice system, education, income, opportunity and social standing. Most of all, racism is the unseen, but deep-dive underlying Marianas Trench that divides Americans from one another.

By and large, throughout his campaign, Yang has steered clear from "identity politics." Whenever the question of race comes up, he seems uncomfortable, and for lack of an answer, he falls back on his major plank on his platform - the universal basic income, or as he calls it, the Freedom Dividend - as the answer to all ills in American society.

That's what he did during the Friday (Feb. 7) debate in New Hampshire.

Mayor Pete Buttigeig was asked about his rocky record with the African American community in South Bend, Indiana. He was asked about the high rate of arrests of black people in his own city.

He claimed that the arrests for marijuana possession were lower than the national average and lower than the state of Indiana.

Fortunately, moderator Linsey Davis didn't let him get away with that answer. In fact, she disputed his figures. There was an increase. Davis said when Buttigieg took office in 2012, the numbers had increased and were still up in 2018, the most recent year the number was recorded.

Buttigeig  did not dispute Davis' figures, but tried to address her allegations:

"Yeah. And one of the strategies that our community adopted was to target when there were cases where there was gun violence and gang violence, which was slaughtering so many in our community, burying teenagers, disproportionately black teenagers, we adopted a strategy that said that drug enforcement would be targeted in cases where there was a connection to the most violent group or gang connected to a murder," he said.

"These things are all connected. But that's the point."

Davis then asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, if Buttigeig's answer was good enough to satisfy any doubters of the mayor's record on race.

Warren's swift "No," prompted applause from the audience.

"We need to rework our criminal justice system from the very front end on what we make illegal all the way through the system and how we help people come back into the community," she said.

“We cannot just say that criminal justice is the only time that we want to talk about race specifically,” Warren said, calling for “race-conscious laws” on issues like housing, education and employment, in order “to make this country a country of opportunity for everyone, no matter the color of their skin.”

But Yang, as the only POC onstage, chimed in, disagreeing with Warren: “We can’t regulate away racism with a patchwork of laws that are race-specific.”

Yang, apparently, believes his signature campaign promise to give every citizen a universal basic income of $1,000 a month, can cure the racial ills facing this country. As if to lend weight to his argument, he cited “the writings of Martin Luther King.”

“We can’t regulate that away through any other means except putting money directly into the hands of African Americans and Latinos, to people of color, to allow businesses to actually flourish and grow in those communities,” Yang said. “The only way that will help is if Black and Latino consumers have buying power.”

Yang’s simplistic solution fails to address the larger point of the brought up by his white rivals: Laws have actively contributed to that lack of “buying power” in the economy. The country has a long history of policies that have institutionalized racism, creating discrimination in housing, education, health care and voting, among other aspects of society.

As such, it needs to be attacked and addressed in all its myriad forms, using any weapons available at our disposal. There is no one cure for this horrible and taxing disease.

You only have to ask any middle-class African American if their hard work and middle-class wage has eliminated racist incidents from his or her life.

Hell, one only has to look at how Trump and his white supremacist supporters in the Senate and elsewhere have attacked President Barack Obama. Even the most powerful man in the world was unable to change racial attitudes towards him and his family -- from questioning his birth certificate, his education and his loyalty to the US not to mention the cruder racist epithets and stereotypes hurled against them.

And as we can see clearly from the current White House, racism can come from the rich as well as from the economically challenged. A $1,000 a month check will not wash clean that ingrained stain.

After the Friday debate, CNN analysts Dana Bash and Erin Burnet again threw Yang softball after softball questions trying to give him an opportunity to give a more substantive answer since only Yang, as the only person of color on stage, could give an answer with any weight. 

Bash asked  Yang if there was anything he'd like to add that he didn't say on stage.

Although he admitted that his Freedom Dividend would not get rid of "structural" racism, easing the economic inequality would at least give American something to build on. "I did feel a bit of responsibility because I knew I was the lone candidate of color on the stage. ... I just don't think you can legislate away racism."

Burnett asked Yang what it felt like to hear white candidates talk about black voters. Yang responded as if he didn't understand the question. He again fell back on his stock stump talking point -- the Freedom Dividend. The closest he came to answering the question was saying that Martin Luther King was pushing for the universal basic income before he was assassinated.

Even though last year he admitted that he was the victim of discrimination while he was growing up in New York state, Yang avoids talking about America's greatest shame as if it is part of a deliberate strategy. 

Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Julian Castro, who have talked eloquently about race during the previous debates and during the course of their campaigns, have all dropped out of the race for the presidency. Maybe Yang has learned something from their missteps andn doesn't want to offend his white supporters, including those right-wingers who have announced their preference for the candidate who doesn't accuse them of being racists.

Tulsi Gabbard and Duval Patrick didn't qualify for the debate stage and barely register in the polls leaving Yang as the most visible candidate of color who can and should speak about racism with any sense of moral authenticity. 

Though Yang has spoken candidly on the campaign trail about facing racism and discrimination as he grew up in upstate New York, he has also faced other criticisms of his handling of race, such as his self-deprecating jokes about Asian Americans, which have sometimes perpetuated stereotypes, including the “model minority” and good-at-math tropes.

Yang has attracted praise from from the white supremacist wing of the GOP  and to his credit, he has disavowed their support. But he also claims to be attracting substantial numbers of whites who regret voting for Trump in 2016. Perhaps Yang doesn't want to offend his white supporters, but in tippy-toeing around the touchy subject in favor of whites, he's turning off POC voters who want to hear him speak from his heart about their truths.