The compellingly expressed and convincingly presented Opinion of Charles M. Blow critically describes the obtuse and ambiguous statement of Nikki Haley that inexplicably the Confederate flag is somehow an innocuous reminder of our past. Far from it. Ms. Haley's life experience, of Indian-American descent, in America, is far different from the violent acts of domestically animated terrorist experience visited upon Black Americans, Hispanics Americans, and Native Americans. Religious differences notwithstanding, Halley apparently did not, and her parents and other family members, did not suffer similar indignities. So efforts to sugar coat the presence of the Confederate flag as somehow a neutrally premised symbol is grossly misplaced and evidences a glaring absence of recognizing American history and the underlying events concluding with the Civil War. So be it. Perhaps if Halley and her family experienced the ruthlessness and the sadistic means of domestic terrorism that other racial and ethnic minorities suffered, maybe her view of the American experience would be significantly different.
Race matters.
20
“We really kind of fixed all that when we elected the first Indian-American female governor.” Wow. Incredibly myopic or worse, disingenuous. Haley has always struck me as being one of those sly politicians who know which side their bread is buttered. She lost me with her Jerusalem declaration, threatening non-acquiescing UN members “we will remember this.” (I’m neither Jewish nor Palestinian.) The fact that she would be on Glenn Beck’s show speaks volumes to the type of Republican she is—one who peddles in false narratives and swears fealty to the party before everything else, even the interests of the country. She, who insists Trump should not be impeached, talks about Southern pride as if it were some glorious past that wasn’t drenched in brutality by one race’s perverted sense of superiority. Southern shame would be more appropriate.
18
Democrats penned their respectful state proclamations to depart the United States. The southern wing of the Democratic Party revived the use of the Confederate battle flag in the 20th century. Republican governors worked to remove them.
1
I never understood why anyone would see Nikki Haley as "somewhat respected", competent, or having a moral center. I've always found her to be a clueless partisan hack.I assume she only got where she did because the quality of other politicians from South Carolina (looking at you Lindsay) is even lower, and because other people in Trumps entourage are so ill-informed about the world that they think Haley knows something.
9
Another beautifully stated assessment by Mr. Blow. The take away line for me is “Haley used her status as a racial minority to shield her party’s racial animus”. What more needs to be said.
16
The Confederate flag is the banner of Treason and Oppression.
8
Oh Charles, you're so wrong.
This piece is just another manifestion of the rampant, thin skinned, judgemental Cancel Culture. Charles wants to cancel Nikki Haley because of one thing she said, which he interprets in one particular way. But different people see different things in the confederate flag. I believe Nikki when she says that many in the South see it not primarily as a symbol of racist ideals, but primarily as a symbol of a shared, rich culture.
Of course racism is still a massive problem in this country. But I agree with Barak Obama and Dave Chappelle: you're going about fighting it the wrong way. Attempting to 'cancel' people, as this article does, only stokes division. Try reaching out and understanding the other side for a change. I myself would never vote for Nikki Haley because of her weird, blinkered support of Trump. But I will never cancel her, or anyone else. We need to talk and listen to build the bridges needed to correct the problems in this country, not burn bridges and issue cancelation edicts.
7
Sounds like Nikki Haley needs to revisit her high school American History text book. Also, as an Indian American - she’s nothing I’m proud of. She only claims her Indian heritage when it suits her, otherwise she is always capitulating to rich white people’s interests.
10
Nikki Haley is a charlatan, pure and simple. She prefers to view the world through an extremely narrow lens that only accommodates her and her immediate surroundings. If she hasn't experienced racism, well heck, it doesn't exist. Trump spoke well to her, so Trump is a great guy. In the Republican world of creatures with no empathy, this cynical strategy works very well for her. But she has no chance of winning the more complex/nuanced liberals over with her eagerness to gloss over the ills of her party and her feigned simplicity.
2
Charlie Blow playing the initial ‘racist’ card tag attack on a potential Republican candidate. Not unexpected from Blow or any liberal media voice as it is typical liberal fare. It’s used on almost every Republican candidate, some with little explanation and some with stretched logic as in this case. I’m only surprised it’s so soon (in prep for the 2024).
2
Growing up in California in the 50s and 60s we saw that flag occasionally and knew exactly what it meant - traitors to the Union, and the KKK.
9
Maybe the opinions expressed are because people truly believe that flag is a symbol of oppression and racial hatred. Regardless of when the word "racist" was invented, the actions from that time are most certainly racist; we now have a word to describe those actions.
Yes, slavery in one form or another has always existed. The difference in this country is that blacks were enslaved for one and one reason only--their color. They were viewed as less than fully human. And because of this, continued slavery was justified, all the way down to those whose blood contained even "one drop of Negro blood." This generational approach was unique in that time.
Haley may think she's saying that "Southerners have a certain affinity for their ancestors and that time in history." What she's really saying is that white Southerners have that certain affinity. Remember that Southerners, as other Americans, are not all white, and those who are not may not share that same affinity.
I am descended from white Southerners, and under no circumstances will I ever fly the flag of treason.
6
It has become clear to me that NO Republican has much insight into reality these days, so Nikki fits the profile. That she is positioning herself for higher office is blatantly on display. Especially noteworthy is her Indian heritage & non-white status. Many southern bigots would never vote for her.
3
It has to be said. Thank you Charles Blow for saying it.
4
She's just trying to get the trump base for 2024. She's as bad as any trump sycophant.
5
The Confederate States of America (CSA) was a treasonous attempt to undermine & destroy the United States of America in order to preserve slavery. The war that followed the secession of eleven southern states from the USA, the Civil War was to overturn their defiant traitorous withdrawal.
While the South was crushed by the Unionists & slavery was abolished, many white descendants continue to hold onto the myth of the Honor of the South.
Let's be clear. The Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of American Treason.
To make a comparison with another vile symbol & flag, the Confederate Battle Flag is the American equivalent of the Nazi Swastika. It is repugnant. It is a symbol of hatred.
Any attempt to sugar coat it in any way is a stain on all who fought & died against the CSA & its legacy. It continues to "legitimize" white supremacy.
11
Should you not feel the same way about the Christian Cross?
2
As a fellow Indian, I am disgusted.
7
Despite promising beginnings America’s sexist, racist, colonialist, gun-slinging roots are really showing. We can do better! Stay engaged! Stay positive!
1
A little perspective: Imagine Germans demanding to fly the swastika or the SS symbol. Can't imagine one official vote, unlike the Confederates in all their outraged, miserable glory.
12
Well said Mr Blow.
3
Oh, Charles, your headline is so disrespectful, condescending even. How about addressing her as an equal?
1
Flag of treason and slavery
8
William Faulkner wrote that much quoted sentence. "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."
He nailed that one.
28
Actually I never understood what he meant.
1
I listen to the hearings today and wondered what planet was I on. The GOP is under the belief that whne this long nightmare is over someone they can come back to the town square and speak in words grounded in reality. Maybe in the Face book town square where everything is grounded in hate, bigotry and outright lies but in the real world the truth that was told today was Gods truth based on facts not fiction.
Ms. Haley should retire from public life she clearly has no concept of what her role should be in the world. She believes in the confederacy and probably in concentration camps.
Since she wrote her book we know more than we need to know about how pitiful she is as a person. The flip side of Trump.
9
I don't know if it's still in place, but the McGavock Confederate Cemetery outside Franklin, TN had the only Confederate flag flying over something other than a government building in the US. The private cemetery was established two years after the 1864 Battle of Franklin that left some 8,000 unknown Confederate soldiers buried in mass graves. If the flag is still there, I won't begrudge their leaving it there.
4
I have many friends who over the years have been members of organizations like the Sons of the Confederacy and participate in Civil War reenactments. Decades ago, when my band would perform period music for events, the air was of nostalgia, and a true appreciation for people who gave their lives for something they believed in, even though by modern standards we find it hard to come to grips with antiquated 19th century notions of "duty" and "honor" that compelled many men who had never owned slaves --including my ancestors -- to take up arms against the North.
Things have changed. Many individuals I know have altogether quit because of the radicalization of Pro-Southern entities like the Sons, which now openly espouse anti-black, anti-immigration, anti American (yes, when you oppose the constitution, it's still treason) ideals. They are infatuated with a murky concept of the embittered Rebel, and yes, they HAVE stolen the flag as their emblem, as Southern politicians did in the 1950s when they erected the flag over the state capital in Columbia.
The economy of the agrarian South was untenable, since it was based on the ancient and draconian concept of slavery. It is as crazy to justify that as it is for a nation based on immigration to seek to vilify and purge immigrants.
Rewriting history is an international past time, but then all those pesky facts get in the way. For Ms. Haley, the mule has already left the barn.
13
All the opinions here are the same opinion. This is because everyone is afraid to voice any other opinion.
Haley is walking a fine line here. Those of us from South Carolina who descend from Civil and Revolutionary War soldiers are tired of being beaten over the head over this issue.
It’s wrong to applies today’s standards to the behavior of yesterday. The word racist was not even invented until 1925. Therefore it’s not possible for anyone in 1865 to have been that. Slavery was simply part of the system as it was in Greek, Viking, Muslim, and other cultures that came before us.
Not even Abraham Lincoln wanted to abolish slavery when the war started and our founding fathers had slaves.
In the South we’ve grown up with the Moonlight and Magnolia culture and of course we have romanticized it. We’ve told stories of how our ancestors fought in certain battles. We visit the plantations and the lucky among us get to hunt ducks there. Halley is just trying to say that Southerners have a certainty affinity for their ancestors and that time in history. We don’t want to be branded racists and are tired of being bullied about the head every day in the newspapers.
VS Naipaul said that for the Southerner “history is religion.”
6
Well WR..... Perhaps that is the problem. Religion poisons EVERYTHING it touches. The south committed TREASON when it attempted to secede. Continued romanticizing of the era and it’s symbols is wrong.
4
I finally agree with Mr. Blow: "Let’s be clear: The Confederate battle flag we know today is an emblem of oppression, white supremacy and the fight to maintain slavery. That is its heritage."
Mr. Blow does not, however, go far enough. The Confederate Flag is a symbol of treason! A revolt against the Government of the United States, and an effort to tear the Union apart. It deserves a place in the history books as the most dire of warnings. But, just as those who would trample/burn/defile of the American Flag and couch it in the cloak of Free Speech, so too will there be those who use that argument in support of the CBF.
There is nothing worse than having to use something so noble as the First Amendment to defend something so vile... but that is the price of liberty.
13
The Confederacy had a battle flag. The men who fought for the Confederacy rallied around that flag. Some may remember their bravery and sacrifice. But no American can fail to remember that they fought to enslave Black men, Black women and, yes, even Black children.
27
While reluctant assign motives Nikki looks like the ultimate opportunist. Why? She correctly assessed the GOP. Now embracing Trumpism, not going away anytime soon the flock will be looking for a new leader once he is gone. She began her slow descent a few weeks ago. Why go on the Beck show to trot out her newly burnished credentials? Simple answer know your audience.
Hope I am wrong that human nature includes room for contrition and redemption. Chances are better than not rather than an apology the fake news twisted her words.
2
Q: service? to what/to whom? A: RACIAL SLAVERY
Q: sacrifice? for what/for whom? A: RACIAL SLAVERY
Q; heritage? whose? A: RACIAL SLAVERY
the slaves served; the slaves sacrificed; the North served; the North sacrificed (after their own heritage of racial slavery and other forms of servitude)
heritage -- it is OUR heritage, white, African-American, Native-American -- we are bound together by our history and the history of the institution of RACIAL SLAVERY
own it. and that means redress of its vestiges, in all forms.
Nikki Haley, you and those who glorify the antebellum South/Confederacy, need a history lesson.
the South is a beautiful place with beautiful traditions and and people, of all backgrounds, who serve, who sacrifice, who have heritages that don't extol these evils which as the AME Church mass shooting and racial hatred of Dylan Roof proves, are still with us.
Nikki Haley, and all of us -- for it is a continuing education we all need -- take a lesson.
time on the cross.
5
Symbolism is quite a subjective matter. The swastika would never be flown in this country or many others and yet it is proudly displayed in Hindu countries. Even swastikas within aka stars of David !
I wonder if there had been a poll conducted on southern Black folk regarding their sentiments towards the Confederate flag. How would this impact ambiguity?
This opinion piece did not convince me that what Nikki Haley was quoted as saying was exactly brazen I didn't see it. The context was also very limited and yet expounded upon.
Any place that considers itself an evolved country must favor the plights of the oppressed.
@Miles
Wasn't the swastika a religious symbol for Hindus and Buddhist for many many centuries before the Nazis apprpriated it?
2
Nikki Haley said "We don’t have hateful people in South Carolina. There’s always the small minority that’s always going to be there, but people saw it as service and sacrifice and heritage." I would like to know service to whom, sacrifice for what and heritage of what.
5
Moreover, the confederate flag is the flag of those who declared war on the United States. That is known as treason and they are traitors.
15
As a descendant of Southerners, including Confederate veterans and at least one substantial slave holder (I refuse to say "owner" as I deny the right of one human being to "own" another), and a student of history, my university major, I know the origin of the Confederacy, its flags, its monuments. They were traitors, white supremacists, fighting for the right to own other people. Reading the declarations of secession of the Southern states makes that clear.
That the average Confederate soldier wasn't a slaveowner changes that not a whit. They were fighting for their plutocrats, the plantation owners, for whom the only "state right" that mattered was owning slaves. Nor does it matter that many have speculated slavery would have died out over time anyway. We don't know that, and South Carolina never gave us the chance to find out, preferring cannons over economic evolution, if that would have happened.
My parents, hardly perfect, left the South when they came of age because they couldn't stand the racism. My father lost a promotion in the Navy because we entertained the two black officers in the Pacific fleet then and their families at our home. I am long disabled and retired, but were I not, would not visit any former Confederate state with a statue or flag "honoring" that "heritage."
20
Mr. Blow,
It's hard to disagree with you. Your understanding, in my opinion, is true. But let's not jump to the conclusion that your perspective is the only true one.
Many people, having a host of different life experiences and histories, do believe as Ms. Haley suggests. They do not deserve to be vilified.
It is sad that you appear only to recognize social/racial justice reformers and white supremacists.
It pains me to think that some in a position of influence think of life's events and outcomes in such simplistic terms.
2
@J.F.S. Then those virtuous people should educate themselves about the real history of the South and how the Confederate battle flag was revived to honor slaver, segregation and racism.
11
Nikky Haley will not be in the cards for the Republican Party simply because the Republican Party will cease to exist post November 2020. When a party becomes as corrupt as the Republican Party is, they may well face dissolution after the 2020 elections.
The U.S. with its bicameral flavor of democracy is completely out of step with all other democracies over the planet. Canada, the Uk, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Finland, Denmark have multiple parties who spar for consideration and a seat at the table. Hopefully the death of the Republican Party will engender multiple parties that will engender new life to your democracy.
There is something wrong in the Kingdom of the U.S.
As for the Kingdom of Denmark it has a multiparty system. Ten parties are represented in parliament, while an additional four have qualified to contest the next general election.
If the U.S. could list 3 or 4 political parties... it would be a gigantic step in the right direction.
7
Absolutely agree, but our system, the broken one, has to agree to fix itself. Unfortunately, not likely.
1
There are some things that people are not equipped to grasp. For me it was higher math. School came easy to me, until I got to junior year and hit calculus. It became apparent that I couldn't really get it. I bailed on math.
For some people, apparently, here championed by Nikki Haley, empathy is that roadblock.
9
It is enough for me to know that the Confederate battle flag was carried into battle against "Old Glory". That was it's sole purpose. Nothing else matters. It should never, ever be honorably displayed in this country.
16
One more bit of evidence that the South won the Civil War. It just took them a little longer than expected, about a century and a half longer.
2
Being from South Carolina, I gladly admit the complexity of racial matters and have wrestled with the difficulty of reconciling history and hateful reality with the desire for conciliation and healing. Revisionist treatment of our recent and (not so) distant history is not the path to healing.
Some commonly held racist attitudes are informative for this discussion. Southern whites definitely understand that they are engaged in a long-standing cultural battle with the ancestors of enslaved blacks as to how to write the history of the South and want desperately to erase the stain of slavery from their personal and heroic view of their heritage. They see immigrant minorities as standing outside of that debate.
Nikki Haley's statements quoted here were an inappropriate repackaging of the white argument in this cultural debate. She had no business conflating her immigrant heritage and prevailing attitudes toward immigrant minorities (and women!?!) with the symbolism the confederate flag holds for Southern Blacks. Anti-revisionists should be justifiably outraged, and I thank you for your attention to this.
6
@Matt
You probably know that very few Southerners are the descendants of slave owners and in 1776 17% of Americans could read and write.
Waylon and Willie wrote and Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.My weekend started with Louie Gohmert singing Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be professors at prestigious law schools.
The GOP knows what the flag stands for, Halley knows what the flag stands for and Louie Gohmert knows what the flag stands for.
Elections will never solve America's problem what we are watching is a vast chorus singing Mamas don't your babies grow up to be thinkers, mathematicians and philosophers.
3
The confederate flag is meant to honor and revere the Confederacy, whose mission was to destroy the United States in order to preserve slavery.
301
@Steve AS per Abraham Lincoln. About that, did you ever hear the arguments in the Lincoln-Douglas debates?
@Steve It is about "heritage." A heritage of treason in defense of human bondage and white supremacy.
16
The declaration of secession drafted by South Carolina mentioned 'slave' or 'slavery' or 'slaveholding' no less than eighteen times. It stated clearly that "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery" was the primary reason for seceding from the Union.
Modern apologists like Ms. Haley are simply ignoring what the secessionists stated for and about themselves. The confederate flag represents what the secessionists meant it to represent, not a more palatable modern interpretation.
11
If she indeed, intends on running for president, she will need the white nationalist vote that carried Trump to “victory”. They will support her, if she tows the line. She would be one of the “good ones”.
5
The problem with the woke is that they see every judgement as between good and evil, black and white, virtuous or hateful, with no nuances.
So Christopher Columbus is responsible for raping indigenous people and the indigenous people are noble savages. So let's change the national holiday from Columbus Day to Indigenous People Day. No mention is made that warring tribes captured women if their supply of mates was low, threw virgins into volcanos to appease the gods and scalped their enemies.
Under a woke commentary, the virtuous North fought the Civil War to end slavery in the evil South. Ignored is that after the virtuous North freed the slaves they did everything possible for the next hundred years to prevent those freed slaves from migrating to the North. The Yankees imposed minimum wage laws and unionized manufacturing so that white men would be protected from the competition of black men in high paid jobs. Through the 1960's, suburban New Yorkers were burning crosses on lawns if black people bought houses in their neighborhoods. Today, the NY metro area has the most segregated public schools in the country despite the fact that making minor changes in attendance zones would integrate the systems with no incremental transportation cost.
The North won the war and got to write the history. No mention is made of the other factors involved in the Civil War. It is so completely implausible that Northerners would fight for the oppressed as to be unbelievable.
2
That may all be true. Plenty of racists everywhere, not just the south. How is that in any way responsive to the theme of the editorial?
7
I LOATHE the corrupt lawless Trump but I think Nikki is just being a smart politician -- once she's in power I would trust her with the internal moral renewal of the GOP.
1
@Kent A wise woman once said: When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. If Haley doesn't have the morals to say the right thing now, there's no way she will have a strong enough moral compass to stand up under the pressure of that power. It's this kind of thinking ("oh, it's just talk, he'll be better than that when he's in office") that got us Trump.
9
Nikki Haley just keeps proving over and over that she will say and do anything to climb the ladder of the Republican Party, not to mention pandering for the White Supremacy vote.
The Confederate Flag has always stood for segregation. Any primary school student can tell you that.
10
Nikki Haley is positioning herself as the Pence replacement for 2020. It may come down to whether Trump believes that she can regain more suburban women lost in the last three years than Pence's departure will lose him among evangelical voters.
4
When I heard this latest from Nikki Haley, every ounce of respect I'd had for her previously due to her removing the Confederate Flag disappeared. Another one sells their soul.
16
Every confederate flag, and here we are talking about a battle flag, is a symbol of treason, racism, and slavery. Those are just facts, attested to at the time.
9
Nikki Haley: " ... the tradition of that racism and that violence.”
The tradition? Celebrating Thanksgiving is a tradition.
7
@Carl Not in Charlie’s world, Thanksgiving is another example If American repression and overindulgence.
Their activists destroy the sacred Emmet Till Memorial. Ours slink off with the slaveholder flag.
We know which one of those is the laudable vandalism.
4
Personally supporting treasonous Confederate Flag, framing Civil War as "War of Northern Aggression" should mean U.S. forfeiting public service occupations especially: Military enlistment, Public School Teaching, FBI, CIA.
5
A ot of anti-southern comments here! Wowee.
We're ALL still into this Civil War.
2
A teacher in Atlanta realised that the flag of treason is the flag of white supremacists who are concerned with racial purity. He made national news when told his students and that the flag of treason actually means you want to marry your brother or sister. Indeed the ultimate way to keep the race pure is by inbreeding.
However inbreeding is catastrophic. Remember this every time you see the flag of shame.
2
Remember that the true point of this article is Ms. Bass and her brave act of defilement of what is truly an indefensible symbol and a mark of shame on its bearers. Ms. Haley is really just a buffoon-like side-show to that point. Indefensible is the operative word here. No one “owns” the abhorrence to that vile rag. Anyone who still believes in or honors our true and enduring “shared American values” has ample cause to hate it. The point is well-taken that it is especially weaponized as a wink and sometimes a Molotov cocktail in support of racism and hatred—and also true that my Caucasian antipathy pales in comparison to the rightful indignation of a person of color’s feelings on this (no pun intended). But there’s much more than race politics (as if that weren’t enough) to hate and actively reject in both the historical and in current Confederacy-thinking ... So make no mistake, Ms. Bass bravely shimmied up that pole in South Carolina in defense of all American patriots and humanists — consciously or not.
114
Remember that the true point of this article is Ms. Bass and her brave act of defilement of what is truly an indefensible symbol and a mark of Shane in its bearers. Ms. Haley is really just a buffoon-like side-show to that point. Indefensible is the operative word here. No one “owns” the abhorrence to that vile rag. Anyone who still believes in or honors our true and enduring “shared American values” has ample cause to hate it. The point is well-taken that it is especially weaponized as a wink and sometimes a Molotov cocktail in support of racism and hatred—and also true that my Caucasian antipathy pales in comparison to the rightful indignation of a person of color’s feelings on this (no pun intended). But there’s much more than race politics (as if that weren’t enough) to hate and actively reject in both the historical and in current Confederacy-thinking ... So make no mistake, Ms. Bass bravely shimmied up that pole in South Carolina in defense of all American patriots and humanists — consciously or not.
14
As a person of south asian ancestry, similarly brown to Nikki Haaley's. I feel disappointment. Disappointment that she does not fully appreciate the great sacrifice African Americans, who are similarly "colored" as we are, in their (continuing) fight for equality. Without this history, both Nikki Haaley and I would be relegated to the "cotton fields" of today.
9
Outside of Texas (with 40 percent Hispanic), Southern states have from 25 to 40 percent black population. I'm pretty sure the Confederate flag is not a source of pride for them. Talk of "Southern pride" never includes African Americans, unless it concerns music or food. Appalling. Nikki Haley can't play both sides.
19
Classic fealty pandering. I was so hoping she would be one who could rise above it (as she once had), and find a way to stay there.
9
The Confederate Battle Flag is racist and supremacist.
It is also the symbol of a rebel nation that was defeated at great cost to Union lives.
Americans of color or otherwise, that support the Union, should not be required to tolerate the flag of a fallen foe on government property.
Why not treat states that still fly the Battle Flag and display confederate monuments like any nation-state whose policies we abhor? Can we sanction them or not offer federal funding until they fully acknowledge they are part of the Union?
12
@ebmem
Not sure what you're saying.
"New Yorkers delivered $24 billion more in tax payments to Washington than the state got back in federal spending, according to a new report. That means for every dollar New York taxpayers sent to the feds, only 90 cents came back in federal assistance in fiscal year 2017, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found.Oct 17, 2018
https://nypost.com › 2018/10/17 › n...
New York spent more in taxes than it got in federal funding
Moreover. In general southern states receive more in federal taxes than they pay.
8
@ebmem
I know they don't teach you math but what do New Yorkers pay as there share of the the taxes that fund the government.
https://nypost.com/2018/10/17/new-york-spent-more-in-taxes-than-it-got-in-federal-funding/
America's cities fund America. Receiving much less than you pay in would be far more informative than 150% of average.
2
@ebmem
You got it backwards. NYC and other more prosperous states have been sending a higher percentage of taxes southward since Reagan. You’re living off our dime.
1
As Haley so starkly shows us: until We The People finally finish the job of Reconstruction, We will never be free. We must reinstate cutting oversight on rebel states, stamp out all Civic hate, and pay reparations. Times up.
10
@Portland Dan
As a first step, how about if the NY metro area integrate their public schools, as the South has?
As a second step, how about if the federal government gets Massachusetts to bring their minority voter turnout up to the level of South Carolina?
Facts matter. The Northern states are, and have always been , far more racist than the Southern states.
1
A couple years ago, I was on vacation in Ms. Haley's home state of South Carolina (Charleston, to be specific). Even then, there were "historic" city tours done via horse-drawn carriages, and you could hear the guides use terms like "the war of Northern aggression". They used those words as their carriages carried tourists past the old slave auction block, and even as they clopped past Mother Emanuel church, where only a year or so earlier Dylan Roof had murdered innocent people in the name of the White Supremacy.
There are many citizens in SC who are deeply invested in perpetuating the myth of the Noble Confederate. They need to build up that myth in order to obscure the uncomfortable truth: that their ancestors built a society predicated upon a permanently enslaved underclass that was enforced upon the basis of race. Nikki Haley is a coward who would rather pander to these people than bring them closer to the truth.
24
@Greg
If the Civil War had not been fought, slavery would have ended in the South within 20 years.
In fact, for a year after the start of the Civil War, slavery was legal in Washington DC. When it was abolished, the federal government paid the slaveowners for the slaves, as was the practice in every western nation that abolished slavery.
The bloodshed of the Civil War would have been avoided had the Northern states made the same offer to the Southern states.
Why didn't they? Because it was all about money and power.
I make this comment as someone who was born and raised in NY and whose ancestors fought on the side of the Union.
The North continues to be far more racist than the South. It is always interesting when someone living in a lily white community passes judgement on people living in integrated communities. When you view society through bigoted eyes, you see what you expect.
1
@Greg
"I was on vacation in Ms. Haley's home state of South Carolina (Charleston, to be specific). Even then, there were 'historic' city tours done via horse-drawn carriages, and you could hear the guides use terms like 'the war of Northern aggression."
Hate to tell ya, but they were selling what travelers were there to buy.
The costumes that those guides wear should have tipped you off to the fact that those tour speeches are part drama performances - it's the kind of touristy stuff that travelers demand of places like Charleston. And as long as people keep coming from the North and elsewhere to fork over their money and ooh-and-ahh over the "Southern charm," the tourism-dependent cities like Charleston will keep putting on the show.
@Greg
Stay in NY yankee & keep all your unwanted advice there with you.
The Confederate flag was and is a symbol of hatred and bigotry, Haley is attempting to enhance her future position as a presidential candidate. There is little honesty and decency left in the republican party. That she happens to be a woman is sad.
15
@Marylee
Why is it that minority voter turnout is higher in South Carolina than in Massachusetts? Could it be that people in Massachusetts talk the talk but don't walk the walk? Why is it that in the self proclaimed education capital of the country, black students have lower achievement than white students?
Another "Republican" who'll do ANYTHING for a vote.I thought she was a smart person, til she hooked up with the Trump Gang, Now she's shown her true colors, and they're the colors of the Confederacy.
13
Empirically, Southerners should all be ashamed of the Confederate flag. What are they so proud of? It's a reminder that they lost; the ultimate participation trophy. I guess those Southerners are still fighting the Civil War...talk about living in the past.
6
I’m an old white Southerner and I totally agree with Mr. Blow. So, your generalizing, a little.
4
@David R
What "Confederate" flag are you referring to David R? The "true" Confederate flag is often mistaken for the "Betsy Ross" version of the Stars & Bars.
Well said Solar Power. You "separated the wheat from the chaff"! Unfortunately, everyone today seems to have their own set of "facts". (actually beliefs), regardless whether they align with the truth or not. I commonly see a confederate flag in the bed of pickups and as window stickers in and around southern Lane Co., and Northern Douglas Co., where, as other commenters have opined, reflect the lack of education and economic opportunity. At 66, I was both civilly educated and historically educated in Vermont, growing up. As the 14th State and the longest republic, we were well-rooted in our history from the French and Indian Wars, through the Revolutionary War, a great great great uncle serving in the Vermont 9th regiment in the Civil War, on the Union side of course.
When I see these flags, I'm initially upset, but then reminded of Sally fields line in Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does".
6
The stretch here to reference Toni Basil's 1982 hit single "Mickey" is embarrassing at best. Will we ever escape Mr. Blow's, and the rest of Generation X's, tired cultural references?
Should Texas's 8th congressional district's representative play a key role in the next few days proceedings in the house I'll anticipate the "A Very Brady Impeachment" headline that's sure to follow.
1
The Confederate flag conjures certain meanings for Mr. Blow, and other meanings for Ms. Haley. It’s not Haley’s place to deny Mr. Blow what he sees, and likewise it’s not Mr. Blow’s place to deny Ms. Haley what she sees.
3
Let's be clear:
Blow's images are based on actual, verfied, documented history.
Haley's images are based on Confederate propaganda.
This line says it all: there's a reason the KKK and SPLC agree on the meaning of the flag. Thos who disagree are either ignorant or rightfully embarrassed to admit as much.
8
@David R
Actually, the battle flag as a symbol of treason and slavery is factually established by reading the southern states' declarations of succession. While the flag may to some represent "noble" qualities, it cannot change the real meaning of the flag and it's original use. The two interpretations are in no way equivalent. To say they are is like saying that one person's murder is another person's population control. Not equivalent in any way.
5
@American
You are the ignorant one. Let's guess how many slave OWNERS actually died fighting under that flag you abhor so much. How many? A few granted, but no where near the thousands of peasant subsistence farmers & merchants who fought & died for their home states.
At least Germany acknowledges the sins of its Nazi history, rightfully banning any public display it. To this day, any mention of ultra nationalism, rightwing or other, is met with reminders of the past.
13
@erkcyclisme
American history suggests that Americans behaved virtuously during WWII and that it was an objective of the war to end the Holocaust. In reality, FDR knew far earlier than entry of the US into the war that Jews, Gypsies, et al were being slaughtered in Germany as well as in Russia. FDR turned away Jewish refugees to America with the knowledge that they would be killed if returned to Europe.
We entered the war only after the Japanese attacked, which was an ally of Germany. We also partnered with the USSR whose behavior toward Jews was indistinguishable from that of the Germans.
Joseph Kennedy, Sr. was a supporter of Hitler while he was Ambassador to the UK. [Appointed by FDR.]
After WWII, America did nothing to limit pogroms in the USSR.
America won, and is not required to admit the absence of perfection in its actions or motives.
1
It’s history. Good of bad. Let’s not sugarcoat and pretend it didn’t happen.
Please! Enough of this nonsense
3
@Mike DeMaio - "Let’s not sugarcoat and pretend it didn’t happen."
In fact that is exactly what those who claim the Confederate flag is just a symbol of "service and sacrifice and heritage" do. Sugarcoat the truth. Just as they do when they erect monuments to Confederate generals and officers as honorable men.
They are sugarcoating the nature of the war as some sort of noble conflict defending against northern aggressors.
10
@Marie
You are the ignorant one. Let's guess how many slave OWNERS actually died fighting under that flag you abhor so much. How many? A few granted, but no where near the thousands of peasant subsistence farmers & merchants who fought & died for their home states.
Mr Blow, why bother? It is clear that Ms Haley is not interested in learning. She is on a self-chosen trajectory requiring her to be an up-is-down Republican hack. Pointing out whom she can learn from is worse than futile: it pushes the false notion that she might not be a committed Republican hack.
10
Haley is waaay too beneath contempt but great "title"/referent!
4
Ambassador Haley is working to stay relevant in GOP politics. That means pandering to its Southern base. It is what it is.
10
I agree but would also point out that the sentiments have expanded well beyond the South. The emblem and its hatred have long and passionately been adopted and embraced by many in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois.
5
So they're still your idea of a Grand Old Party?
Drop that abbreviation immediately and call them by their name, which if you're just tuning in is "Republican."
2
Haley wants to perpetuate the myth that the Confederate flag represents.........what? Love of country? Too much of the South continues to wallow in the fact that the Confederacy was defeated. What if the war ended in a negotiated peace? Would slavery still be legal? Would the South still be an agricultural economy running on cotton & sugar? I have seen & talked to many in the South that have a different vision, & that South is not the "Old South".
2
Nikki Haley is setting herself up for a presidential run in 2024 and understands very well that she will need the support of the red-hat-wearing base if she is to achieve her ambitions.
So she's trying to appear "reasonable" to independents and moderates, while at the same time sending dog-whistles to the base to signal that she's on board with their particular brand of grievance-based politics, and to make them feel okay about their deeply ingrained racial and even gender biases.
She's going to spend the next 5 years trying to have it both ways which besides being exhausting, is virtually impossible.
10
Her comments were an electoral pander and little more.
18
Her life is electoral pander. Pathetic.
Shame of Indian-Americans.
Probably including Girish Kotwal’s!
9
Prior to 1954, Nikki Haley would have been viewed as a person of color in the south, to be segregated from whites, relegated to the back of the bus, prevented from staying in "white" only hotels, and kept out of "white" only restaurants and diners. She should keep this history in mind, as she wraps herself around the "heritage" of the South and the Confederate flag.
31
Imagine cities in Germany flying Nazi flags. That is the Confederate flag. White people (of which I am one) picture that heinous flag each time you see a Confederate flag and you will finally get what it stands for. Yes, the Southern states were trying to “protect their way of life” which meant owning other people. That flag represents blood and death. The sooner you can accept and own that, the sooner our nation can begin to heal.
34
She is not fit for public office.
31
She not for for anything of use or value.
What a sorry human being.
7
Unfortunately, when she runs for President she will win in a landslide
@Lisa Mason
Are you on something that is banned for regular folk?
1
The confederate flag is the symbol of the CSA, a sub-culture based entirely on slavery and whose leaders launched an armed insurrection against the US government, actions which are clearly traitorous and treasonous. R.E. Lee is very fortunate he didn't end up at the end of a rope. There is nothing warm and fuzzy about the CSA or it's hateful banner.
22
Folks try to assert that the Confederacy was founded for reasons other than what you (correctly) state. But read Texas’s Declaration of Causes from February 2, 1861, or Vice-President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens’ March 21, 1861 Cornerstone Speech, and you’ll see that the Confederacy was intended to protect slavery and white domination, and nothing else.
2
@Scott
You are the ignorant one. Let's guess how many slave OWNERS actually died fighting under that flag you abhor so much. How many? A few granted, but no where near the thousands of peasant subsistence farmers & merchants who fought & died for their home states.
Identity politics has only something to do with skin color, income, or ethnicity.
It's more about "symbology" and if a minority insurgency begins failing to recruit at least a few race, class, and ethnic traitors it's going to have to start resorting to even more seditious methods.
Like marching under the Stars and Bars.
1
Please let's refrain from referring to female politicians by their first name, we don't do that to male politicians.
8
@xyz Good point, but I think we do, sometimes, and Haley is referred to as Haley throughout the article itself. But still, it's a good point.
1
Yes we do. See Jeb, Joe, Mitch, Ted, Cory.
2
Haley looks to be cynically making whatever bogus moves she needs to make in order to give “the Base” (could it be more aptly named?) someone to turn to when the old man retires or is imprisoned.
The Red-Tie Special appears to have given Nikki all the inspiration she needs to sell out her soul for power, celebrity and profit. In a word: revolting.
17
Once, many years ago, i was strolling a street in Heidelberg, Germany, in an area of student apartments. Out of one 2nd story window hung a huge Confederate 'Stars and Bars' flag. I have no idea what it implied in that setting, or why it was hung and why so big not to be overlooked. Strangely, that memory is the only one i have retained of Heidelberg.
5
That is curious since the CSA Battle flag is generally paraded in the USA as “the Confederate flag.” The Stars and Bars (the CSA national flag) is generally more obscure.
1
The South won't rise again. Unfortunately, there is a belief that the "War of Northern Aggression" can still be won. I lived in central VA in the mid 80's. I was the Yankee from the north (Caucasian fwiw.) That is how I was referred to when introduced as "our Yankee friend from the North." I felt like I had fallen back into the 1930's. They lived in the past. It was Jim Crow thru and thru. I won't elaborate. It was surprising and disheartening. Now, thirty-five years later, I see little change. Especially when Nikki drawls out her warm fuzzy memories of days long gone. She should have grown up black in Lynchburg VA. Maybe her idea of sacrifice would be different. Attractive white women espousing the virtues of Southern heritage, are as wrong as wrinkled old white men slinging slurs. Same message, regardless of the delivery.
12
Lynchburg is the most outwardly place I have ever been in the world.
2
With all due respect, Nikki Haley had precisely the same qualifications for the United Nations US ambassador post as Claire Underwood: naked ambition. She seems to be competing with her Palmetto state colleague Lindsey Graham in a contest of who can carry the most water for Trump.
22
For about a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, nobody flew the flag of treason and rebellion. The idea of showing support for the traitorous Confederacy would have seemed as ludicrous as it was self-defeating.
Following the Brown v. Board decision, Southern states began to fly the rebel flag as a gesture of defiance: our racism means more to us than your laws. And so it remains in too much of the South today, and that neo-Confederacy known as the modern Republican Party.
17
@Fred DiChavis wrote: "For about a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, nobody flew the flag of treason and rebellion."
That is simply not true.
"Following the Brown v. Board decision, Southern states began to fly the rebel flag as a gesture of defiance: our racism means more to us than your laws."
That's pretty rich, coming from New York City where, sixty years after the Civil Rights movement, the schools are still the most segregated in the country.
1
@NorthernVirginia
What aboutism not changing accurate history depicting wreched Southern Confederate racists pining over an imagined past glory obtainable only through hateful obscene actions (slavery, lynching as an social fact/ mores/folkways).
4
@NorthernVirginia: Well, not "nobody". But the Confederate flag definitely saw a resurgence in the 60's, signifying resistance to the victories of the Civil Rights movement of those years.
It's true that the North can't brag much about the progress of integration. And in fact, the Confederate flag is seen here and there in the North, also, with the same significance it has in the South. The histories are different, but racism persists.
5
"...people saw it [Confederate flag] as service and sacrifice..."
That's a truthful statement. Some people saw it that way. They shouldn't have, but they did. Don't criticize Haley for pointing out that unpleasant truth. She didn't see it that way.
Stop and think what others' words actually mean before you write an op-ed reflexively accusing them of racism (or anything else). Accusing everyone (but your friends) of racism all the time only discounts the value of what you say.
4
Yes but they were wrong. Like any boomer who waved an NVA battle flag on campus during Vietnam as some misguided homage to freedom fighting would defend its use today as having been a tribute to good old principles of freedom living peoples.
6
@Jonathan Katz, stop it. Writings from the time put the lie to claims that there was no race issue.
"William T. Thompson wrote in an 1863 editorial about the “Stainless Banner,” the second national flag of the Confederacy, “Our idea is simply to combine the present battle flag with a pure white standard sheet.” He continued, “As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematic of our cause.”
To say otherwise is revisionism.
11
@deb
Sorry, but Mr. Thompson was a newspaper editor, nothing more. Let us know if there is an editorial in the New York Times that can be fairly described as representing the views of our government or our citizenry.
See:
Viral image about the Confederate flag confuses history
Coski said Thompson’s editorials are well-known and regularly quoted. But, he said: "most historians consider his a somewhat lone voice and don’t regard his comments as in any way official or representative of the Confederate government."
https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2019/apr/11/viral-image/viral-image-about-confederate-flag/
"The Confederate battle flag we know today is an emblem of oppression, white supremacy and the fight to maintain slavery. That is its heritage."
You left out its symbolism as an act of treason against the United States of America.
11
Nikki Haley will say or do whatever is necessary to be elected and seize power. Her current party has embraced overtly racist policy, so she will enthusiastically embrace what the party endorses----more than ironic for a woman of her background, but expected from any person whose only goal in life is to seek and achieve power, regardless of truth, justice, or the rule of law.
10
We remember with honor those who ran for office but lost. We have no obligation to remember with honor those who would take up arms against against us.
"I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered" Robert E Lee in letter declining an invitation to attend a the planning of a memorial honoring those who fought against the Union at Gettysburg.
If Lee should be honored for anything, it should be for his efforts after the war not during it. Such honors would depict him as a not as general over troops but someone dedicated to reconciliation.
"As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated, my conviction is, that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the attempt ... would have the effect of ... continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under which the Southern people labour." Robert E Lee to former Confederate Gen. Thomas L. Rosser about raising statues to him and other Confederate Generals.
Why don't those who claim to honor Lee listen to him?
5
@Marie: Right. I think realistically, the best monument to Lee would be a monument to his surrender at Appomattox. He finally realized it was time to stop the pointless bloodshed, and did the honorable thing. He could have done it after Gettysburg, or after Antietam, but at least he finally did it. Too bad he didn't do more to support a just reconstruction of the South, but, he was what he was.
2
Saying it doesn't make it so. But...
A mule has four legs: five if you include the tail.
1
Power corrupts. Nikki Haley had forgotten the basic underpinnings of Christianity, Judaism, Muslim teaching, Hindu, Sheikh and Shinto traditions of truthfulness, honesty and integrity.
May your career follow the level of ethics under which you operate.
5
Nikki Haley is a wide-eyed opportunist like many minorities who tacitly support bigots or remain silent to bigotry because they believe it will open political, social and economic doors for them.
Many never did or said anything to protest civil rights injustices in past decades. But they were the first inside when the doors of injustice were opened.
Haley's judgment is badly flawed but her ability to pounce on any political opportunity is clear.
When leaving the Trump administration, she underscored this by saying that Jared Kushner was "a hidden genius."
Haley is thinking about elections in the future not about her moral responsibility to point to the obvious: The confederate flag was used as a symbol for white supremacy by those who believed that they had a right to enslave human beings and treat them like animals
As a result, more than 600,000 people were killed.
As the saying goes: "There is something wrong with your character if opportunity controls your loyalty."
12
It's funny how many southerners say the Stars and Bars means a lot and then insist, like Nikki Haley, that it means nothing much at all any more.
What the Confederate flag means to me is that many people still can't accept who surrendered to whom at Appomattox.
10
The “It’s heritage, not hate” argument is beyond repugnant. We all have work to do. Northerners own a piece of slavery’s legacy as well. We’re not absolved by the war. We don’t count “benevolent” masters as part of a revered heritage. To say that her being elected governor “kind of fixed that” is like saying we’re post-racial. It’s complete nonsense.
Like others, Haley has become untethered and floats with Trump in the swamp of his own making.
15
"People saw it [the Conderate flag] as service and sacrifice and heritage." I would ask Governor Haley: whose blood service, whose blood sacrifice, and whose bloody heritage? Dylan Roof didn't hijack anything, he took up what he believed was his rightful inheritance.
9
It is good that Ms. Haley showed her true colors before there is any attempt for the office of POTUS. I did not know she was a liar until she came out to promote her book. She sure came out. Spare us from having her back in government.
10
Nikki Haley is just as amoral as Trump. She is a politician who only cares about herself. She is also clueless about history related to the Civil War. It seems that she only seeks to appeal to Trump’s base and the lowest common denominator of the GOP. She continues to make a fool of herself on this book tour and has been careful to exclude any place where she might be scrutinized. Going on Glenn Beck’s show says it all.
7
The South will always denied that the Civil War was about slavery. They always claim it was about "States Rights" but when asked what those rights were they say nothing because the only "States Right" they are talking about is Slavery. Remember that the Southern Democrats joined the Republican Party and the liberal Republicans became Democrats when the Civil Rights Act became the law.
5
@Jeff The North will always deny that secession was indeed envisioned by the Constitution, because the reality that secession could not be unilateral was not confirmed in law until 1869... by the US Supreme Court.
Was slavery the issue that prompted a rebellion over secession? Of course. No one denies it.
Does it matter? Either you are loyal to the American construct or you are not. There are people in 2019 who talk about Texas seceding from the US wearing the 2nd Amendment as a crown of thorns. They are no less traitorous in claiming a hegemony over American shared culture and values as were the elitist monsters of the Confederacy or the racist segregationists of Jim Crow who themselves sought separation from both the nation and our enshrined values through legalistic wrangling.
2
Last year, a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald was removed from the steps of the city hall of Victoria, British Columbia. This means nothing to American readers, but to Canadians it marked the rethinking of our shared history. Macdonald was Canada's most renowned political figure, the founding father of the country and it's first prime minister who made possible the united country that Canada is today. He was Canada's George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton all rolled into one.
He also sponsored policies that caused widespread famine among indigenous populations -- government-directed genocide -- and introduced the Indian Residential Schools system, which took First Nations children from their parents to "civilize" them, but which, instead, exposed generation after generation to psychological, physical and sexual abuse. The damage done still reverberates today.
The statue's removal met widespread scorn across the country. It also made Canadians acknowledge the violent and racist policies on which their country was founded.
The take-away: Macdonald was knocked off his pedestal but not expunged from our history. He was brought down to a level where we could look him, and ourselves, in the eye.
8
Her defense of the confederacy is about her position in society and what she hopes to achieve in the future. Having said it she can eventually walk it back some. But the whistle has been blown. The "right" people will know who she is from now on.
You can refuse to post my points about Ms Haley's heritage but the facts remain.
The use of propaganda, manipulation of grammar and conscious dissociation of reality when one speaks to a point is not hereditary, but it is cultural. In fact three thousand years of caste system culture in the land her parents come from. There are right now as I type more people enslaved from birth in India than there are citizens in the US. And of course the entire government and all the upper castes will deny this by similar use of propaganda, denial, deflection, excuse making and accusations of misconception or claims of victim hood.
Not that Indians have a lock on such behavior, only a long history of it.
6
Haley is setting herself up for 2024 and we need to stop kidding ourselves about this.She knows with Trump's base her removal of the flags is a sore spot. So now she is trying to clean up her removal of the flag.How can she get Trump's racist base without giving a wink and a nod. She is just following her fellow South Carolinian Senator Graham in their quest to be loved by Trump.I think Republicans will never want another leader like Trump.
4
In the following, very revealing quote, Haley sounds like she considered herself to be the solution to the problem, rather than the problem itself.
“We really kind of fixed all that when we elected the first Indian-American female governor.”
Many people, including me, thought that Barack Obama's election was a sign that the U.S. was beginning to deal responsibly with its racist past, but the Trump's election and behavior in office forcefully demonstrates how wrong we were.
8
@Jim Remington
In many ways Trumps election was a repudiation of those in America that want a more racially inclusive society.
At it's core racism is about power. Nothing has infuriated racists more than seeing an African-American man being President of the United States and handling the job capably. I imagine has summoned feelings of anger in people who didn't really think they were racists yet felt a sense of discomfort with Barack Obama's presidency.
"Make America Great Again" is really a dog-whistle for restoring a racists status quo in America.
2
Nikki Haley is a political opportunist waiting in the Republican wings. She is not the Republican poster child for civil rights but an apologist for the Trump administration's policies in regard to voter suppression, anti-immigration, LGBTQ discrimination, and pro Russian stance.
2
I beg to differ with former Governor Haley. There is a lot of hate and anger in South Carolina and the Confederate battle flag has everything to do with it. The repetition of obvious misleading statements and the excusing of racism and misogyny is pervasive in the state. Haley sold her soul when she embraced DJT and her continual mouthing of Republican talking points. She endorses the pervasive corruption of the Trump administration and does not speak with an independent mind. She is a master sycophant and rivals Lindsey Graham in her ability to suspend credulity in favor of the falseness of DJT.
7
Flags should be almost meaningless, in the US we attach a lot more importance to them than most other countries. They are primarily symbols of nationalism which we would be better off without. The Virginia battle flag achieved prominence in the Jim Crow era and now as much as anything Southern heritage and to many people white supremacy. I think we are making a mistake to really pay any attention to it.
1
The Pledge, if you really think about, is an act of idolatry. Let's just pledge our allegiance directly to the United States of America.
1
@Lorem Ipsum Yeah, what is it about a country or flag that deserves your pledge or loyalty. The US has done some good things and a whole lot of bad things. I am to pledge my loyalty to overthrows of democratically elected governments, assassinations, war massacres?
1
Pfft. You are STILL responding to the propaganda and lies of Republicans? When will you learn?
Any Liberal with a voice needs to call out ALL Republicans. They are all about propaganda and brainwash, nothing more. This is why they seldom speak truths...just truthiness.
2
" ...this racist emblem of a flag as “Southern pride ..."
An emblem is what you read into it. Whenever I see some high-lift pickup with mudder tires, lots of chrome and lights, flying the battle flag in its bed, I think, "Another loser ..."
10
I find it increasingly depressing that columns like this have to be written. I naively assumed that progress has been made. The eruption of OVERT racism, antisemitism, white supremacy, and misogyny after the election of Barack Obama, and the escalation with the election of the orange man in the white house now is further evidence of how far we have to go.
4
My now-Trumpista brother-in-law, who voted for McGovern back in the day and before Trump entered, let alone became THE picture, once commented that those who drove around in their pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals on the bumpers or in the windows, and especially those who flew the flag from broom handles stuck in the truck bed's stake pockets, were idiots. Don't know how he feels about it now. Haven't asked. Trump changed everything.
5
It is the flag of the worst traitors in American history, who waged the worst war on our own soil, who sought to demolish our union, at any cost, killing brothers and cousins, in the name of protecting their right to own human beings as slaves in the furtherance of their own comfort and prosperity.
Nikki Haley just erased her one chance at ever being a consensus candidate for the presidency.
8
The "stainless banner" of white supremacy is all about "service, sacrifice, and heritage". Ha!
The basic Republican strategy has long been a simple one; when they want to defend the indefensible, they never call it by it's name. Like a stage magician, they use misdirection, concealment and mislabeling.
Well-mannered "principled conservatives" opposed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act because they violated states rights. They weren't working to deprive black Americans of the right to vote and promote white supremacy. Perish the thought. They were proud Americans defending the constitution. No hoods and robes for them.
Conservatives / Republicans use a similar strategy when they promote so-called "right-to-work" laws to undermine workers' right to organize.
Promoting "pro-life" candidates gives them a way to promote a regressive agenda on race, worker's rights, taxation and the social safety net by drawing support from people who otherwise have every reason to oppose them.
Are the 1% taking all the wealth? Call them "job creators".
Do institutions block employee access to birth control? Religious freedom!
Unfortunately for Republicans, having an obviously racist, sexist, homophobic, self-dealing, religious bigot for a leader is shredding their camouflage.
Nikky Haley is trying to go back to the successful strategies of the past and it isn't working. White supremacy is white supremacy is white supremacy.
3
A modest proposal - if you want to fly a Confederate flag, you can only fly 3/5 of it.
6
Yes, the part that looks like a flag of surrender.
She’s so wrong. It’s disgusting. She truly does not get it. What’s Horrifying is that she is alone. Pure racism that she hopes gets her a job with a possible 2nd Trump White House. God help us.
4
Haley was an annoying scold at the U.N. She then demeaned herself by slinking back into the trump camp - there was some hope among the thinking GOP that she might be an alternative to the ghastly trump.
Hopefully she just goes away.
5
She’s a credible replacement for trump in 2020 if he resigns for health or legal reasons. To win, she must be true to the beliefs of dotard nation; racism, fear, anti-intellectualism, pseudochristisnity.
6
Nikki Haley drank the Trump delusional kool-laid. She ruined her career. Maybe Nikki can resurrect her career by meeting with moderate, men & woman, across the political spectrum and open her closed mind. Then she might have a chance. Otherwise she is a perfect fit for a slimy lobbyist position peddling nonsense.
3
Ms Haley is the poster child for craven opportunism. She left the Trump Administration believing that the tide would turn against him within the Republican base and she would benefit. The tide has not turned and shows no sign of turning, so she is back in the Trumpian fold doubling down!
She changed her religion to fit her electoral ambitions!
She has no core whatsoever.
She is a disgrace.
6
Nikki Haley is ridiculous. She always has been. The only reason she got any traction was the media desperately grasping for someone, anyone on the Right who didn't seem completely out of their mind. They gave her more credit than she ever deserved. And she's not too bright, either.
Anyone paying attention would know that.
7
Not that I (a white person) am deluded enough to think that life for any black person anywhere in the US is a picnic, but I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like for black persons in the South to have to see, perhaps daily on their commute, monuments glorifying the South's participation in a war to keep their ancestors enslaved.
How do white people not *get* how lousy this is? Why is the US not following the example of Germany with regard to Nazi symbolism and Holocaust denial? Why have we not yet had widespread discussions about reparations?
I mean, I know the answer -- I'm just disgusted, and angry. As comedian/social critic John Oliver would say, "How is this [the Confederate flag] still a *thing*?"
Thank you, Mr. Blow.
7
She is a greedy, self serving opportunist, which is what the entire Republican party has become. She understands exactly the game she is playing and that is what frightens me about her.
7
Hey Nikki!
You've been around all night and that's a little long
You think you've got the right but I think you've got it wrong
Why can't you say goodnight so I can take you home, Nikki.
2
Oh, but it IS a flag of Southern pride. Those who fly it are proud of racism, ignorance of history, and hate.
3
When in 1961 I ran our tiny snack bar at our local beach in southeastern Mass, a nearby family had visitors from SC which included two little boys about 8 and 10 yrs old. They were typical, full of energy, lots of chatter. I will never forget their incredible amount of distaste (certainly hatred could not be a part of these children) for the “stupid Yankees”. They could not say enough bad things about the north. In spite of knowing of the Civil War historically, I had never imagined it was of such hideous importance to anyone in that day or time. The boys capped off their comments by being thankful there was no colored person around. If they had known that one of our local schools was named after a beloved black teacher or that I grew up across the street from a black family having had many a cup if tea in their garden, they never would have spent a dime at my snack bar. As the song so aptly says, “you’ve got to be carefully taught”. Today, sadly, many continue to be taught that hating is your white privilege. Shame on Haley. She slurs her own heritage as well.
3
Nikki Haley for President.
4
So what if the Confederacy was based on treason by southerners embracing and enemy army? Treason and lack of obedience to the Constitution is the hallmark of the current GOP including Haley.
2
"GOP"? As in "Grand Old Party"? Seriously, dude, what's *that* based on?
A flag that flies as the Face of Hate can only be adopted by the Homes of the Haters.
Racism rages North, South, East, & West.
Some great, equitable people live in the South. The Confederate Flage does them no justice.
Even today, Ms. Haley, only the haters fly flags symbolizing hate, and the Confederate Flag is their symbol.
Wake up and salute as did the now-banned Nazis over much of Europe, until hate was stamped out. At least for a bit.
1
Haley has created in my mind the idea that The USA is the place where an immigrant can come and develop the most repugnant racist ideas - supported by descendants of immigrants who liked to have slaves. And totally disregard the constitution. Wow!
Makes you see that race and color do not matter at all when it come to prejudice against democratic freedom.
1
The flag was raised in 1963 as deviant resistance to the changes looming with civil rights in the country. No matter how one narrates the tale in boils down to a state declaring its allegiance to white supremacy.
1
Shrimp and Grits Barbie is just another GOP hack, willing to do or say anything for Votes. Nothing to see here, folks.
Seriously.
4
I see you're still using their branding statement.
What would it take for you to drop it - and call them by their name?
Charles Blow, thank you for bringing our attention again to Bree Newcomb Bass. I knew the story of her ascent of the flagpole in front of the SC Statehouse, but I had somehow missed the photos of her lowering the flag. And I had failed to contemplate how a single act of protest can seize a moment and turn a tide.
Prompted by your column I read through Bass's website and googled photos of her in action. Bass's thinking is honest, clear, and grounded in reality; in each of those aspects, it is far superior to Nikki Haley's. But the photos of her lowering the flag send a chill down my spine. Better than the word "chill" Iet me describe it as a charge of energy, a charge of inspiration! Bass is an American hero and brilliant artist. All of us, including of course Ms. Haley, will do well to aspire to Bass's clarity of thought and courage.
3
The Confederate flag stood and still stands for treason and the idea of owning human beings. Full stop.
4
If that flag is about pride in the South why aren’t black southerners flying it? Huh.
4
Let’s just be honest. The Stars and Bars are the American equivalent of the Swastika. And as much as some admonish me for making such a comparison; many others will applaud it.
5
I have a serious question. The Nazi flag is not allowed in Germany so why is any version of the confederate flag allowed here? It’s a symbol of racist traitors, who wanted to break from the United States and LOST the war we fought. How is it allowed?
2
Blow is doing some revisionism on his own. Under Haley’s deft leadership the flag came down. Good is good, compared to Hollings and Clinton who flew the confederate flag over their capitols. I recall Don Lemon (CNN) asking a SC African American state senator a leading question. To paraphrase: “So, you had to overcome resistance from Haley and the Republicans to get this done, right?” Wrong! “No, we were actually all together on this and got it done.” Oops! So, pick apart as you do, and apply your own distortions. The parishioners elevated everyone in the shooting’s aftermath. And the flag came down under Haley’s leadership.
2
@Alberto Abrizzi "Interviews suggested that Ms. Haley’s rapidly evolving position on the flag was shaped by several factors: the horror of seeing the unsmiling gunman posing with it in photos; her conversations with congregants at the church; intensifying pressure from South Carolina business leaders to remove a controversial vestige of the state’s past; and calls from leaders of her own party, including its leading presidential contenders, urging her to take it down once and for all." nyt 2015. Over Haley's years in office, and during her campaign, she showed no interest in removing the flag when the topic was broached. So, yes, she did have it removed, but please do not engage in your own revisionist history in giving her plaudits for deft leadership. Had it not been for the shootings and the pressure on her by Republican presidential candidates, that flag would still be flying.
2
Where is the discussion of Northern pride and heritage? Never hear it talked about. Funny, that.
Glad to hear that there is no longer racist white “identity” politics in South Carolina.
3
The South lost the Civil War. Losers don’t get to have monuments or flags to commemorate their defeat. They get to live in shame of their defeated history and society - a society built on the evil of slavery. Like the Nazi flag, the Confederate battle flag can be in history books and museums as a symbol of evil and hatred - and as symbols of defeat and shame. The notion that someone has pride in the Confederacy or in the Confederate battle flag is very much like Neo-Nazis having pride in the Nazi regime.
5
We can pull down all the statues and lower all the flags, and we'll still have these:
https://www.military.com/undertheradar/2018/10/03/ten-army-bases-named-after-confederate-officers.html
When will we have a truth and reconciliation process in the American South? Germany can guide us on coming to terms with your past. They see that the only way to heal is truth, reconciliation and rejection of the genocide that you perpetrated. Germany has countless museums and memorials that point out their murderous past--and reject it. Never forget the horrors we are capable of, they say. How about it, South Carolina? How about it, southerners?
For more on this, see http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/07/14/pride-or-prejudice-what-the-south-can-learn-from-germany/
And https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/world/americas/germany-has-lessons-for-the-south.html.
And https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/what-the-u-s-can-learn-from-germany-about-remembering-a-dark-period-of-history.html.
2
Consider how the world would react if a certain region in Germany continued in 2019 to fly the Nazi flag as a symbol of the honor and sacrifice of the Gestapo in resisting the Allied advance. Is there an example of another country that has faced armed insurrection and defeated the traitors to the Union only then to allow the seditionists to continue to promote the flags and banners of their treason as heritage symbols of their honor and sacrifice. The abrupt end to Reconstruction in 1877 and the failure of the Union (under Andrew Johnson after the assassination of Lincoln) to prosecute Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the Confederacy led to the 1896 Plessy vs, Ferguson separate but equal SCOTUS decision which allowed 70 years of Jim Crow laws in the former slave states in the South. The battle flag of the Confederacy is a symbol of oppression and the degradation of black Americans nothing more.
2
I grew up here in the south. It used to confused me when I saw someone display the confederate flag. I'd think we lost that war and are now a part of these United States. There is more to the south than a hateful flag.
It saddens and angers me now when I see someone display that flag as I have no doubt what they are saying and they've no doubt about what they are saying too.
Nikki, you and your confederate flag waving friends are a disgrace.
4
How sad that Nikki Haley, for all her intelligence and political savvy, has only succeeding in making herself the most perfect tool the New (old) South has had in a token person of colour since Colin Powell.
3
It's not that she got it wrong; she simply has no moral core. When it's in her political interests to remove the Confederate flag, she did it. When it's in her political interests to blow a dog whistle to give aid and comfort to white supremacists, she did it.
5
This incredibly hopeless woman changes sides so fast to court whoever she perceives as the victor. In 2016 she clung onto Rubio screaming just how bad Trump was for the country. Now she prostrates herself at the Trump throne throwing her weight behind the white racist Trump base. And this from a woman of colour who desperately wants to forget her roots and join the white supremacy movement.
1
Haley's ethnicity had as much impact on dismantling systemic racism as Clarence Thomas'.
1
Ms Haley was for a time our country’s representative in the UN
Trump put her there.Im stunned by her clearly twisted
Statement about the confederate flag. Some of her past interviews seemed to indicate her education in Southern history was evident ,my mistake.Her racist definition is tribute to trump
his racism and her glaring racist position and ignorance of southern history.Never again let her into our government!
Burn these flags of abomination,and destroy ever statue glorifying the fighters for slavery.
Not so Blow. We are all still "Standing with Nikki". She will succeed President Trump in 2025.
3
Only through gerrymandering and blatant corruption. Why would you vote for someone who is so clearly just an opportunist?
4
We understand. Trump supporters love the Confederate flag. We saw them waving it when they marched armed with AR-15s on a synagogue, rioted and ran down a young woman in Charlottesville in August 2017.
1
Those who celebrate the Confederate Flag celebrate the single greatest betrayal of American ideals in our collective history. The people who first rallied to that flag killed more United States military personnel than the Nazis, and all to preserve the right of the wealthy to own other human beings. There was never the glory of “the Lost Cause”, or “the War of Norther Aggression”. Just a brutal fight to preserve slavery. Fly the Swastika, fly Al-Qaeda’s flag, or the Isis flag -they were less of a threat to the United States , and the Constitution.
1
Nikki Haley's twisted revisionist American history is emblematic of the current Republican party: oppression, even slavery, is justifiable and laudable as long as they are the masters.
I really don’t understand how the confederate flag could possibly symbolize anything other than racism or hate. It belongs in a museum (next to a nazi flag) as a lesson how humans can be cruel to each other.
The south needs to learn to respect the flag of the United States. The 50 stars actually represent something.
2
The Confederate flag represents treasonous individuals who rebelled against our nation in order to continue their self-enrichment by enslaving, torturing, raping and killing fellow human beings. There is not a scintilla of honor associated with it.
2
She may know her future voter and supporter better than Charles.
Nikky Haley is pandering to the racists in her state, and hoping the tRump train will continue to roll. She is an awful person, not the future of the Republican Party. I wouldn't let her in my house, if she were outside freezing to death. By associating herself with racist, criminal donald tRump, she has assured her political future, and it won't be anywhere outside of South Carolina.
2
This simply confirms what I had always believed about Nikki Haley.
A complete phony, hypocrite, and not all that bright.
In other words, she's perfect for the GOP in every way.
4
Yep. I would add a few other adjectives but I don’t think the editor or AI gate keeper will like them.
3
Make no mistake, she has presidential ambitions of her own. This two-faced statement of hers is meant to try and inherit Trump's base. She'll be following in the footsteps of notable Indian-American politicians, like the erstwhile governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. It's a shame the GOP can't learn from what he said a few years ago: “We must stop being the stupid party,” he implored. “It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults.” Trump proved they weren't being stupid enough. Now it seems even truth-talking Bobby has embraced the stupidity. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/02/bobby-stop-being-the-stupid-party-jindal-is-now-pro-stupid.html
2
NiKKKi has raised her own flag.
4
@Technic Ally: High-five!
If Nikki Haley associates the Confederate flag with service, sacrifice and heritage we are only a hop, skip and a jump away from touting the Swastika as a merely a symbol of German Pride and a noose as a mere symbol of law and order....
3
The Confederate flag is a treasonous display of anti American feeling. They fought the government of the USA. Just like the Taliban or Al-Qaida. Am I missing something?
3
The irony is that everyone who fought under the Conference Flag would have called Hailey the n word to her face.
Of course, Hailey knows this but she also knows that the only way you succeed in the GOP is denying that white Southerners did anything wrong to blacks.
Frankly, I wish Lincoln hadn’t of bothered. In hindsight this country would have made so much more progress without the South and its racism, ignorance and religious fanaticism.
7
Apparently, Haley is either a committed liar or one of the most uninformed, under educated and desynthesized politicians to come along.. or both. She is totally eclipsed by Trump, but distasteful, destructive, and untrustworthy all the same.
4
Do you have any opinions not revolving around race- specifically the unending injustice done to black people that we all agree on? Nikki Haley may be a hypocrite on race matters, but it is of far greater import that she is a hypocrite about Trump himself. She largely hid out from the policy chaos in the White House while she was Ambassador to the U.N. Now she is is his apologist, for no better reason than she has higher political ambitions for herself. Her kowtowing to Trump. even as she knows the truth, a common practice among Republicans today, is certainly the bigger issue regarding her.
Since when does the losers of a war get to call the shots? The Confederacy lost the war. Why are we even giving them the time of day?
3
The Confederate flag is the symbol of slave owner power to commit treason and assault America and all of its freedoms.
2
The Confederate flag is the symbol of a losing side of traitorous heathen, willing to burn it all for the sake of remaining the scions of hate.
Period.
It's the only flag of losers still flying.
Nimrata Randhawa Haley's gamble is betting on Trump. But everything Trump touches dies.
2
What a repulsive human being she is. Fake, shallow Republican enabler of the disgusting Trump.
4
"Far right-wing political activists in the European Union, many of whom have separatist inclinations, have been known to use the Confederate flag. This is especially true in Germany, where displaying the Nazi flag in public is outlawed."
Nikki, even people from other countries know what that flag stands for.
It's not honor.
2
Her defense of the confederacy is about her position in society and what she hopes to achieve in the future. Having said it she can eventually walk it back some. But the whistle has been blown. The "right" people will know who she is from now on.
The use of propaganda, manipulation of grammar and conscious dissociation of reality when one speaks to a point is not hereditary, but it is cultural. Her composure and ease with saying these things show she has internalized well the culture of unfairness applied with deception her family raised her in.
I cannot help but notice that her use of language to justify this flag very much resembles the use of language to minimize the caste system by upper castes in India.
Government displays of a Confederate flag, the Cross of Christ, the Star of David, or the Star and Crescent are constitutionally impermissible.
Private displays are not regulated by the Constitution, and are deemed to be protected by the 1st Amendment.
1
The woman is clueless. Hopefully, she never holds elective office again anywhere.
1
Q. What's the difference between Nikki Haley and Sunny Leone?
A. Sunny is honest.
3
Add to that her stupid syncophantic support of Trump. Some of us thought that she left the UN Ambassador position to avoid being tarred with Trumpism and to set her on a path toward GOP leadership. Perhaps these two things will keep her in good staid with the GOP, but it undermines her ability to be a national leader.
Haley is just another "dumb southerner" to quote mr. trump. Figuratively speaking, there are way to many of those these days although the morrally and thought challenged reside all over our nation and the impact on the country has been devastating in so many ways. How hard is it to look at the history surrounding this racists emblem and come to a clear eye understanding about what it truly represents. Ms. Haley is not stupid so this represents a calculated position designed to keep those still fighting the civil war on her side as she tries to appear thoughtful and reasonable while preparing to foist this garbage onto the national stage in a presidential run down the road. Do not let her forget this act... She is as unfit as trump to lead this country... Shame on you Nicki.
1
While addressing the Confederate flag is important, Nikki Haley is the issue. Don't let her folksy Indian-American journey fool you. She's has been, and still is, a racist.
4
Thank you. Thank you, Charles.
2
Let’s be honest. We can debate whether the Republican Party supports racist viewpoints but we know all racists support the Republican Party.
3
It would be nice if we could get over the Civil War. In the past whites made use of its symbols to support their ideology, now blacks have appropriated these to further their goals. It's interesting that blacks now own and have the use of Civil War symbols that whites can no longer claim as their own or make use of.
The most anti-American symbol that ever existed. How is it that the same people who support this screamed bloody murder about Colin Kaepernick taking a knee?
3
Many in South Carolina did see the confederate flag as symbolizing heritage, and many others saw it as symbolizing hate.That’s why it was such a difficult issue for so long,” Haley said.
Why does anyone in the media choose to ignore half of what someone says in order to make hay out of it on these pages?
Is the NYT really in a race with CNN to the bottom?
This is just sad.
Where are the editors? Where are the grownups?
3
Nikki Haley is an ambitious politician--period. No substance, no compassion---merely a pleasant looking mouthpiece for a thoroughly corrupt, racist GOP. I am not at all surprised by her clueless comments re: the Confederacy.
3
I am quite baffled as to why Mr. Blow, or anyone with a mild degree of intelligence, would that that simply because Ms. Haley is Indian-American she would be against racism. In India dark skin is not the ideal and indeed darker skinned people are considered low caste. She is hardly dark skinned so why on earth would she care about anyone who is?
4
Wherever you may stand on the political spectrum, you can recognize the validity of this assertion:
For four years, the Confederate States of America (CSA) was a foreign nation; as such, it is inappropriate to have Confederate flags, symbols, or monuments on public land. On private property, it's acceptable because it's a free speech issue.
That's the basic assertion.
Additionally, when you factor in that, for those four years, the CSA was at war against the USA, and that it promoted slavery (the CSA's Constitution FOREVER PROHIBITED THE BANNING OF SLAVERY), it becomes an even simpler matter.
3
Had Ms. Haley lived under this flag, she would have counted as an unempowered two-thirds person. Her "sacrifice and service " would have been unappreciated.
Defending racism to get a few more votes seems to be the price that most conservatives are always willing to pay.
3
Nikki Haley, in order to win the S.C. governorship, had to please a lot of constituencies.
Apparently she didn’t write off the white supremicists.
3
"So, I reached out to Bree Newsome Bass, the young activist who scaled a flagpole in the wake of the shooting and removed the Confederate battle flag by hand. Bass is a true heroine of the flag’s removal."
A few more sentences on Ms. Bass might have been helpful to readers (like me at least).
Mr. Blow, you might have mentioned what Ms. Bass said when she took down the flag: "In the name of Jesus, this flag has to come down. You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today."
As she was led away after being arrested she recited Psalms 23 ("The Lord is my Shepherd" etc.).
Note the markedly religious tenor of her actions and remarks as reflecting, even in activism, the conservative nature of southern black society, about which you have written as being an impediment to black support of more "liberal" and "progressive" candidates.
Does the Confederate flag have religious symbolism?
While some have thought so, apparently not:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/confederate-flag-colors-religious/
3
Thanks for the timeline of the confederate flag's display in South Carolina. Very telling.
I'm a native-born American citizen. I'm a person of color in my 60's. I lived through the Civil Rights movement. I entered law school at a time when few minorities or women were able to do so. And then I practiced law for nearly 40 years.
And I am absolutely sickened by Ms. Haley's remarks. Her callous rewrite of history is a slap in the face to all of us who have fought our way in white America, to make something of ourselves, and to give our families a better future. But make no mistake - Ms. Haley's remarks were not a careless, or ignorant faux pas. They were made quite deliberately. She understands that to have a political future in the Republican Party, she must cater to the 40% of Americans who support Trump. She must fall in line with the Republican Party, which is now nothing more than a full throated white nationalist party - her individual cultural heritage notwithstanding. Ms. Haley knew exactly what she was saying. She knew she had to "absolve" white racists who support Trump (and by extension, herself) by attempting to place the whole ugly history of racism and racial violence on one 21-year old white man, Dylann Roof. Because in doing so, she was granting her voters "absolution", she was giving Trump voters code to continue to lie to themselves that they weren't the racists.
But they are. And she is. And anyone who supports a Republican, in this time in history, is, too. Ms. Haley, we see you for what you really stand for. You bought this racism. You own it.
8
Sorry, Ace, but YOU don’t get to define what a symbol means for everybody. For some people it will represent something different than what it means to you. And you don’t get to tell them they’re wrong. Sure, explain your different point of view. But believe it or not, you cannot. E the self appointed arbiter of all
2
I am sorry, but does Nikki Haley not realise her own ethnic roots when she panders to the worst instincts in the Republican party (as if membership of such a party were not bad enough)? How could a person of colour ever find anything redemptive in the Confederate flag? Will she stoop to just about anything for political gain?
Had Haley not uttered ..."but people saw it as service and sacrifice and heritage"she would have been showing sensitivity rather than racism. Mr. Blow is right.
3
Haley's ambitions are boundless,
as is her amorality
3
I am pretty sure that nobody goes on Glenn Beck's podcast trying to win the approval of the NYT editorial page. I don't agree with the words that came out of Haley's mouth, but I suspect that her political strategy is pretty smart. She needs to prop up her right flank, her populist flank, in order to keep building her national profile - and a denunciation from Charles Blow is about the very best Christmas gift he can give her. If Blow were a better political thinker, he'd call her "a thoughtful conservative that moderate Americans can live with" - because THAT would be a millstone around her neck.
Haley is not interested in right or wrong. She is interested in being president.
She is smart enough to know better and that - that makes her a monster.
4
I'm a native-born American citizen. I'm a person of color in my 60's. I lived through the Civil Rights movement. I entered law school at a time when few minorities or women were able to do so. And then I practiced law for nearly 40 years.
And I am absolutely sickened by Ms. Haley's remarks. Her callous rewrite of history is a slap in the face to all of us who have fought our way in white America, to make something of ourselves, and to give our families a better future.
But make no mistake - Ms. Haley's remarks were not a careless, or ignorant faux pas. They were made quite deliberately. She understands that to have a political future in the Republican Party, she must cater to the 40% of Americans who support Trump. She must fall in line with the Republican Party, which is now nothing more than a full throated white nationalist party - her individual cultural heritage notwithstanding.
Ms. Haley knew exactly what she was saying. She knew she had to "absolve" white racists who support Trump (and by extension, herself) by attempting to place the whole ugly history of racism and racial violence on one 21-year old white man, Dylann Roof. Because in doing so, she was granting her voters "absolution", she was giving Trump voters code to continue to lie to themselves that they weren't the racists.
But they are. And she is. And anyone who supports a Republican, in this time in history, is, too. Ms. Haley, we see you for what you really stand for. You bought this racism. You own it.
6
Nikki Haley said she never heard Trump lie? That statement in itself is a lie.
5
My weekend started with Louie Gohmert being called to the microphone to speak to the flock. Unlike Democrats I listen to Louie Gohmert because I want to know who he is speaking to.
Louie mused "Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be professors at the nation's most prestigious law schools."
I remember a professor from a prestigious law school saying there was no red America and no blue America only the United States of America.
If you are reading the New York Times and your son or daughter is a professor at a prestigious law school you are likely to be a very proud parent.
I am a foreigner who has lived all over North America and if you fly the Stars and Bars in Canada's Northwest Territories, in San Diego California or Mexico City it says certain things about you but pride , and courage don't come easily to mind, hate, ignorance, cowardice and jealousy seem more of what I have seen.
It was 1964 during the GOP convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco that the Klan marched outside with their Goldwater signs and Confederate battle flags. It was after the Civil Rights Act and the flags mean now exactly what they meant then.
Nikki Haley is no dummy she knows her voters and she knows their flag. Why are we playing let's pretend when Louie Gohmert can so well define the American divide. It is time to stop the let's pretend of American politics.
3
If you are desirous of inheriting Trump's debased base after his departure, you talk southern heritage and sacrifice.
It's code for "I'm MAGA."
2
How sad is it that the road to the Republican nomination begins with a defense of the Confederate flag?
3
I live in Pennsylvania and see the confederate flag all over the place in my somewhat rural town. We are in the North. Clearly, the confederate flag is not about Southern pride.
Usually, I see the confederate flag bumper sticker right next to the MAGA one. I guess that New Yorker Donald Trump and his obnoxious tower just scream “Southern Pride.”
4
@Roman THANK YOU. This is what I have been saying forever. As I've mentioned elsewhere, some of the most racist people I've encountered here in the Carolinas (where I've lived most of my life) are people who've moved here from northern states, usually PA, OH and NY. Racism knows no boundaries, and the Confederate flag is not about the South. It's about racism.
If the battle flag of Dixie is accepted, why not the swastika or the hammer and sickle? I'm sure there are some who remain prideful of those symbols and, well, the swastika was around for several centuries before the National Socialist German Workers' Party chose it as their symbol. (Neo-Nazis honoring Socialism. Who'd a thought?) The guarantees of freedom of speech and expression, embedded in the law of the land, makes dealing with these issues difficult, uncomfortable and contentious. That said, we must confront the evil that resides in words, symbols and the deeds they encourage and enable. There are psychopaths so deep in a fetish of their egos they have no regard for the harm and anguish they visit on others. (Sound like some of our "leaders"?) Displaying the stars and bars as part of an event memorializing or re-enacting battles in the "War between the States" is one thing. Flaunting it as a symbol of white superiority, including on the top of a State capitol building or at the front of a torch bearing mob is quite another. We are much diminished if we cannot tell the difference, one form the other. Being proud of one's hatred, bigotry and racism is a bug, not a feature. It is what makes the whole system crash.
1
She's been tone deaf for years. Why is anyone surprised now?
2
Haley knows the heritage of this swatzika analogue. She knows that we know that she knows. She lies about it anyway.
She knows that this will enrage us. That is her goal. The conservative ideology has become: "the enemy of liberals is my friend." She is trying to make enemies here, not friends.
4
Since when do the defeated get to dictate the term to the victors? Yet, this has been going on by the South since the end of the Civil War. They lost. The Confederacy were traitors to the Union and were our first terrorist organization. Would we allow the ISIS flag to fly unchallenged just because they felt their flag represented "service and sacrifice and heritage." The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of the Confederacy's attempt to prevent the U.S. from outlawing slavery. They knew that day was coming with each new state added to the Union and decided to strike preemptively. It's a flag to remind people that whites are in control and blacks better know their place. It has no purpose or function to be flown in public other than to incite ruble threat. It is just as offensive as the Nazi flag. Would we let Nazis fly their flag with the excuse that it represented "service, sacrifice and heritage" as Ms. Haley describes the Confederate flag? That's how offensive
1
Nikki Haley wants to believe she is white, and she wants white people also to believe she is white. She craves acceptance — as a white person. A deeply troubled person in a deeply troubled party.
3
Try telling Nikki Haley when the Indian troops invaded the Sikh Golden Temple to flush out Sikh militant separatists, it was an act of “misinterpreted demeaning of their faith”.
Seriously? Nikki is too young to understand these racial subtleties and she is too prone to brainwashing by the right wing media. People of her original faith must be so ashamed of her insensitivity.
2
Nikki Haley will never be president. The mark of Trump will never wash off.
4
Haley is a southern politician in the best tradition of Lee Atwater who started the whole Southern Strategy of thinly veiled racism in the GOP political playbook.
Haley knows good and well, as do intellectually honest historians, that the Civil War was about preserving the business model in the South that was built on the backs of slave labor, pure and simple.
She is pandering to the same demographic that supports Trumpo and his notion that the white supremacists who invaded Charlottesville had some “good people” amongst them.
Her attempt at historical revisionism is obviously based on naked political opportunism.
This is not surprising coming from a person who while governor of the desperately poor state of SC had the lack of character to refuse to expand Medicaid coverage under the ACA for purely political posturing.
The expansion would have covered hundreds of thousands of poor folks in her state, white and black, many of them children, with free federal money in the billions.
Meanwhile she, her husband and two children could sleep well at night knowing their medical needs were covered by the platinum heath insurance policy she enjoyed as guv.
2
The confederate flag was removed under Haley’s deft leadership. While Clinton and Hollings proudly flew the flag over their capitols, she lowered it for good in SC. But Blow partakes in his own revisionism by denying this. I recall Dom Lemon (CNN) interviewing a SC African American state senator with his leading question: “So, you and the democrats had to overcome resistance from Haley and the democrats?” Response: “No, we all worked on this together to get it done!” Oops! I follow the inspiring lead from the church’s parishioners who emphasized dignity and forgiveness. In Haley’s case, she deserves credir for her leadership in getting it done.
The on-going weirdness of this generation after generation denial of facts... I've lived most of my life in "the South" and a Confederate Battle Flag was always a sure sign you were dealing with a knucklehead of some sort. But, you can't change people, so you work with them and around them - as best you can - hoping to avoid being overly-associated with them. You do what you have to do. I suppose Ms. Haley, to get something for herself, is just doing what she has to do... That said, any intelligent person has to be aware of the likely messed up psychology of anyone who doesn't see monuments to lost and immoral wars, and the associated flags and honorary titles like, "Colonel," as warning signs you're dealing with an unstable, untrustworthy, and easily misled human being. But, you don't kick a sleeping bear. You nod, you smile... And, you don't bring up their ideas about "Sky Gods" that follow THEIR every move before they get to "the next place" either. Weirdness rules. Why is that? People!
Speaking as an Indian American woman, being Indian American doesn’t mean you can’t be racist. I’ve met plenty in my time, and Nikki Hayley is one of the worst. The flag debacle pales in comparison with the thousands is deaths she caused during her spineless tenure as the former American Ambassador the the United Nations- a position for which she had zero qualifications.
3
When slaves were sold to the vast plantations in South Carolina, their families wept. The conditions were beyond brutal. South Carolina triggered the Civil War by attacking Fort Sumter. The serial killer Confederate general who founded the Ku Klux Klan was from South Carolina.That is the legacy of the Confederate battle flag in that state.
When the Union soldiers in Sherman’s march got to South Carolina, they had a simple motto. “South Carolina started it and we’re going to finish it.” And they did.
Nikki Haley started it. Time to finish her political career. The legacy of the Confederate flag is pure evil. Time to finish it.
1
If my heritage included treating another people as animals for profit, causing 100s of years of extreme suffering (ousting from motherland, family separation, inhumane living conditions, cultural devastation, zero autonomy, zero income, regular beatings and rapes), I 1.) would not be proud, 2.) would not want to demoralize the same people by not acknowledging any shame for my ancestors behavior, only pride.
1
I lived in Columbia S.C. when I was in middle school. By far the most racist place I’ve ever lived in. My school was half black and half white and the racism I was exposed to on a daily basis would shock you. The details are literally unprintable. My mother, a social worker, led protests against the Capitol flag downtown, and I was there. This was back in the early 90s. It seems like a no-brainer even back then, but even now, almost 30 years later, we have a woman of Indian heritage defending the so-called “honor” of Confederate heritage. I’ve seen it, and it disgusts me.
4
As someone who has lived in the Deep South for 15 years, I can say this out loud: The confederate flag is a symbol of tyranny, slavery, racism, and treason. Its modern equivalent is the swastika. It is one of those rare things in life utterly unambiguous in its meaning.
6
Nikki Haley knows what she said and its red meat for Trump and the right wing, white nationalist base. Haley said what she said because she is bucking to get something more in Trumps world. Don’t be surprised if Trump replaces Pence with Haley and she becomes the first female VP. Trump could then escape the historical embarrassment of being impeached and resign and allow Haley to be the first female President and she would then pardon Trump. Haley could then run for reelection as a Trumpist: A bonafide bigot and a nationalist. She would get the ugly base to vote for her. Sounds wild but this nightmare could come reality.
2
For insight in the flag debate in South Carolina I recommend the PBS documentary "Confederacy Theory", which can be found on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNZrFyl2DA
From time to time I see photos and video of those super patriots, north and south, displaying the flag of a failed experiment-the confederacy.
In my opinion that is oxymoron, or just moronic, to display that banner which espouses one to the issue of suppression of minorities. And Ms. Haley should be the champion of equality yet she has become another run of the mill Republican that dismisses equality with Trump as the head cheerleader (there are good people on both sides he brayed).
Haley is not some type of savior that will save the GOP from itself. The GOP is too far gone down the toilet that needs 15 flushes-and the racial divide is further dragging the party down into that toilet.
Yes, GOP. Write your version of history. Perhaps our illiterate president will author some of the revised history.
But, the facts can never be changed. The south still practices white supremacy, which is now raising its ugly head nationwide. And Trump, Miller and now Haley are the head cheerleaders.
1
Haley is a two-faced woman totally guided by blind ambition. She has been complicit with the wreckage of our foreign policy establishment and the destruction of our Republic by not calling out Trump for what he is.
I hope she keeps making these mistakes so people start to see that she is just as dangerous as Donald Trump.
2
Glenn Beck- strike one
Defending Trump- strike two
Tone deaf on confederate flag- strike three
5
That woman is scary. She's not white, she's a woman, and she appeals to the Trump minions. She's way beyond the fiasco of ditzy we had with Sarah Palin even though she says dumb things like our current president. Watch out for her. The more she can upset the left, the brighter her star shines on the right. I see her as the Republican to beat in 2024.
1
I’m hardly the first one to say it here but it’s worth saying again. Who expected Nikki Haley not to be a card-carrying Republican? Who expected her not to prostitute any decency she ever had in the name of becoming president? Who thought she wouldn’t prostitute any ideas she ever had and turn them to serve the Republican
Party? Call it opportunism or prostitution, it’s all the same thing: she would sell her soul in a second to be president if she hadn’t already sold it a long time ago..
1
How can a Political Party become so bigoted and hateful? I can understand that Trump, one person, is without conscience, apparently without even a minuscule piece of what might be considered a soul, simply an amoral being, but why is the entire Republican Party following his example?
2
The next time someone claims that the Confederacy wasn't about slavery and white supremacy, refer them to the various states' Articles of Secession.
1
The prejudiced believe more in maintaining their superior social status and income than in Black people's inferiority, whose intelligence and creativity has been made so obvious over the years it cannot be denied. Every trick, every statement, every political action that the prejudiced maintains is glaringly exposed in the light of pertinent knowledge, and only the ignorant in the public fall for it, and unfortunately there are too many of them, and too many who go out of their way to believe it.
What's direly needed is a president who's aware of this, for he has the power to make the change. Now, after more than 150 years we have a man running who is willing to put up a fight in favor of all the people Black, Colored and White and put this to an end -- Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders is fighting for all middle and working-class people, but particularly has pointed out that the average White family owns more that ten times that of Black families, that infant mortality among Black families have a rate double that of Whites, that Blacks are 13% of the population but only 4% are doctors, and only 7% are public school teachers.
Bernie Sanders will fight to put all those and other signs of prejudice, supported too long by our political and social system. to an end ! A vote for him is for all the people!
1
Haley was born Nimrata Haley to parents, both professionals, who immigrated to Canada and then to the US.
She doesn't understand how lucky she was that her parents were professional people and not a poor, immigrant couple who owned a grocery store. In fact, when her father received his PhD degree in 1969, he moved his family to South Carolina, after accepting a position as a professor at Voorhees College, a historically black institution.
As far as she is concerned, the Indian caste system travels.
Born, poor and black in the South? It must be your own fault.
6
Looks like no Haley for president in 2024 or any year for that matter, no great loss apparently. The Old South lost that war, we evidently need to keep reminding them of that fact in more ways that tearing down their tattered banner.
2
The fact that Nikki Haley would choose to be interviewed for Glenn Beck's podcast disqualifies her as a "common sense conservative" right off the bat.
4
The Confederate flag is a symbol of pride in what? The fight to maintain slavery as an institution? The fight to perpetrate racial injustice?
Oh. I see. The Confederate is a symbol of Southern independence, of the sacrifices made in an attempt to preserve the Southern way of life.
And what way of life would that be? Did the South secede to preserve its future right to build Waffle Houses? No. It seceded to preserve its power to maintain and expand the institution of slavery.
The Confederate flag is a flag of shame and deserves the same respect as the Swastika flag that is often flown beside it.
5
There are three groups of people that defend the Confederate flag: the racists that embrace its horrible symbolism, the politicians that want votes from the racists, and the intellectually lazy who are ignorant of the flag's history and have never suffered the kind of racism embodied in the flag.
10
Why on earth would one expect anything different from anyone who would sit for an interview with Glenn Beck?
4
He writes: "The Indian-American journey in this country is special and important, but that journey has absolutely nothing to do with adjusting or erasing the journey of enslaved Africans and their descendants in this country." Exactly like Barack Obama's journey, no?
@Bob Roberts
Bob, I think your point is that Barack Obama's personal story is that his father was a Kenyan student here and his mother was white, so that he was not descended from slaves.
First, you are missing the systemic racism that exists against all people of color. It would not have mattered if Mr Obama was flown in on a rocket ship from outer space, once he landed he would have been subject to segregation and all of the biases against people of color.
Second, so what does Barack Obama's journey have to do with anything? This is not about how the first black president was not a descendent of slaves, and therefore not as "legitimate" a triumph. It is about how the confederate flag was born out of the desire to uphold slavery, and to this day carries that connotation.
@Bob Roberts: Trump’s (and Melenia’s) efforts to disqualify President Obama on the basis of his birth certificate was, at their core, racist. Never forget.
1
Service, sacrifice and heritage? Seriously? How about 400 years of slavery and 100 years of domestic terrorism? The Confederates were separatist traitors who were willing to fight a war over their perceived right to own other human beings for financial profit. There is nothing about that worth celebrating.
1
I'm white, and am old enough to remember Brown v. Board of Education; the civil rights marches; segregated buses, swimming pools, and water fountains; mobs of angry white people screaming at little black children trying to go to school; and many many murders in those days:
Emmett Till
Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman
4 little girls in a Birmingham church
Martin Luther King Jr.
...and the police murders of blacks that continue today--even of children like Tamir Rice.
To say that the Confederate flag symbolizes white supremacy is putting it almost mildly. It symbolizes slavery and lynching.
6
Nikki Haley is an intelligent individual; she was also born and raised in South Carolina...with the full knowledge of the meaning and symbol of the Confederate Flag. To know feign ignorance by lobbing all of its symbolic atrocities on one mass killer, is disgraceful (to say the least).
5
She is just like a weather vane, changes directions with the winds..... political winds. Talking out of both sides of her mouth just as the master she served by accepting a position in the current administration, thinking it would feather the political nest she has been building.
4
Nikki Haley’s dog whistling, maligning the free press, denying and attacking the truth to divide us, and her Trump sycophancy is the GOP platform.
4
Nikki Haley says "We don't have hateful people in South Carolina". But wait, what about Lindsay Graham? Think about his unhinged, profane defense of Kavanaugh. He was actually snarling.
SC has its share of hateful people just as other states do. I don't understand how Nikki Haley, a first generation southerner, thinks she has the credentials to comment on any of this.
6
The thing is the Confederates won the peace. They won the next 100 years. The USA has never had a real discussion about the years that followed the American Civil War and we need to. I am also fine with the Confederate states forming a new country and leaving the rest of us alone.
1
She is so desperate to run for President in the future that she is now a hypnotized follower of Trumps. She had little experience in foreign policy and just kept lying and escaped out of fear of collusion. Every day she recites “ he does no wrong”, “he will one day reward me”, “I am special he said” and repeats fifty times a day.
4
I think to many white southerners that flag indeed represents pride, pride in their stubborn resistance to accept the defeat of white supremacy.
2
It always strikes me interesting that no matter how fervently some defend the heritage or the legacy of the Confederacy, no one ever volunteers to be the slave in order to recreate it.
4
It is perfectly clear by now the Republican party of Donald Trump has embraced racism or at the very least has been willing to look the other way at it for the sake a pandering to racists. Such racist undertow to the modern Republican party did not begin with Donald Trump - it has its roots in this southern strategy of Goldwater, Nixon, and most tellingly in Reagan - but under Trump he has certainly taken it out of the closet and made it legitimate to be a racist in America and be a Republican.
2
We should not also lose sight of the fact that is also the symbol of the most egregious act of treason in U.S. history, begun with an attack on a federal building, Ft. Sumter. Maybe we should put up a statue of Timothy McVeigh next to Robert E. Lee's and the other traitors.
2
The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of pride?
Pride that more than 600,000 Americans died trying to maintain the national union of states? Pride that young men from the south had their arms, legs and heads blown off in battles at a time when there were no helicopters to take them to emergency treatment? Pride that so much blood flowed at the battle of Antietam that it formed a stream of blood flowing like a small creek? Pride that the southern states entered a war they could not win? Pride that the rich slave owners sent the sons of poor dirt farmers off to die for their cause?
The short answer to all of these questions is that many southerners from that time to this could not face the horror the had been wrought in capturing and transporting millions of humans like cattle chained in the bowels of slow ships, trapping them in their own excrement and urine, before breaking up families as each went to the highest bidder (a sight that even many southern whites said brought tears to their eyes, seeing families wrenched apart).
One reason these myths are so strong is that southerners are, to this day, taught a distorted view of history. In S. Carolina, it is still referred to as "the southern war for independence" and "the war against northern aggression."
4
And SCers are clearly liars when it comes to history!
@Doug Terry I grew up in SC public schools and NOT ONCE did any of my teachers call it anything other than "the Civil War." I occasionally heard (white, racist and/or extremely traditionalist) people refer to it as "the war against northern aggression," but even then, they said it in such a way as to indicate that they knew it wasn't exactly that, but they were too proud to call it anything else.
Haley is a colossal disappointment. At the time she handled to tragic murders at the Emmanuel Church and the controversy over the Confederate flag with skill and class.
But now Haley has shown her own flag colors as another Republican coward supplicating and genuflecting to the conservative extremists in her party.
Couple Haley’s current statement with her recent fawning defense of the indefensible Trump and you have her either vying for the cabinet position of Secretary of State in Trumps 2020 administration if he, god forbid wins another term, or positioning herself for her own presidential run.
Haley is another soulless sellout.
4
Nikki Haley. Rod Rosenstein. Two once-upon-a-time liberal hopes for a change of tone in our national discourse. They’ve placed clear bets on who they think will be the winning horse, and only time will tell if it’s the smart money. Unfortunately, I don’t see any handicappers who have a better sure thing.
4
Nicki Hailey has her sights set for the highest office,so has no qualms about changing her narrative. At the time she became a heroine( of getting the Confederate flag down) she was not a pro Trumper . Naturally then, she was genuine, authentic and truthful. But the future hopeful fails to see that the American people like authentic persons to be their president. Even if that person is a liar, cheat or nasty he/she needs to be true to character(like Trump,who never fakes civility). And why is she embarrassed of ever using her real name Namrata? Scared of touting her Indian heritage? She will do anything to get a footing in the race. There you have it. I am not sure we can trust such a person with the reins of the country.
3
@HP Before Bree Newsome climbed that pole and took down that flag, Nikki Haley had served 6 years in the SC House of Representatives, and one full term as Governor. She's no heroine of anything. Bree Newsome is the heroine.
RE: the confederate flag (or whatever the historically accurate name and purpose of the flag popularly known as the confederate flag is).
Occam's razor applies. If it looks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's not "heritage."
3
We shouldn’t be surprised at a person of color exhibiting racist behavior (and make no mistake—defending the confederate flag is nothing more than racist). Just take a look at the caste system in India, Ms. Haley’s ancestral home.
All that I thought of her—smart, accomplished, well-spoken—was flushed when I saw her toadying up to trump. And denying that he lies, continually, always, and forever.
She is just blindly ambitious. People like her are a dime a dozen.
2
Trumpism is the malady. Trump and Hailey are symptoms.
1
Nikki Haley has sold her soul to the devil..THis statment about the confederate flag is just garbage. She also said, with regards to impeachment, that "the money was released, so there is no issue". She apparently believes attempted murder is not a crime.. I think she has sunk herself for any leadership posts for the rest of her life. And don't forget her support of conversion therapy for gay people.. I just don't know why anybody thinks she is anything other than a shill for right-wing organizations..Her behavior at the UN was equally as apalling.
4
True. But, Nikki burned it all down in front of my eyes when she audaciously said that there was nothing to impeach Trump for b/c Ukraine got the money. As if attempted bribery or attempted any other crime is not in itself a crime. How disgusting that she would defend such an abuse of power. And, now this stain. I thought she was a serious person of principle before that. Now we see she was just good at faking it. I am no longer a Republican. But, as a woman, I prefer to see strong, respectable female leaders of all persuasions. I won't be counting Nikki Haley among them.
4
Haley has always been an opportunist.
She took the flag down because of the fear of boycotts and then pretended she did it for moral reasons.
She needs to go away and stay away.
2
Haley's comments on the Confederate flag are as disgraceful as Ronald Reagan's racist dog-whistle comments at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi in August 1980, where Reagan endorsed states rights within walking distance of the earthen dam where three civil rights workers were murdered and buried in June 1964. And her crass political motives are just as clear as Reagan's.
4
Haley's willful ignorance of the "heritage" of the Confederate Battle Flag is astounding, but unfortunately common now for conservatives inventing their own history and narrative about how they're not that evil. For me, it's also an emblem of a treasonous secession attempt to weaken the union of the country and the original idea of the founding fathers. Yes, Southerners, it matters what your ancestors were fighting for. You should be ashamed, and continue to try and fulfill your duty as an American, and not a confederate. Full disclosure, I was born in Mississippi, and I thank my lucky stars my parents left the state when I was two years old.
2
Why can’t the white people who say they like the Confederate Battle Flag for pride and heritage and not racism also say, “I will forgo displaying this because I realize how terrifying and painful others find it, because I know that, even though I am not a racist, racists use the flag to frighten and intimidate my fellow Americans, and I don’t want to do that?”
3
Haley, who has made no secret of her political ambitions, has jumped not only on the Trump wagon but that of his white nationalist supporters. Post-Trump, that will make her a nonentity.
3
Baffling Nikki, baffling. By Republican standards, she's been the perfect shill for Trump.Nobody is enamored--if there was such a time--by her.
2
It’s very disappointing to see comments here defending 1) a symbol used by traitors 2) a symbol that for the 150 years has been used to terrorize Black folk (and others) as a means to subjugate and take away the most basic American rights.
The former governor equating Dylan Roof as somehow being the only person to ever use this flag as a symbol of hate is laughable.
2
Her public statements at the time Dylan Roof mercilessly killed the black parishioners made it very clear he did it because of racism. Now she has taken a cynical risk that the Republican party is now overtly (as opposed to covertly using race to separate Americans) Trump like that no one even tries to cover racism. I hope and pray she is wrong.
1
A few weeks ago I watched her interviewed when she was asked to comment on things she had said about Trump before he rewarded her with the ambassadorship. She demurred, proving she is amoral sycophant like the rest of the GOP.
2
I was astonished and sickened when I moved to Georgia for four years in the 90's, and saw the state flag flying over my children's elementary school. The confederate battle flag took up about two thirds of the total. I could not believe the children of Georgia were forced to walk under that flag every day.
I moved back North to Pennsylvania and now sometimes see the Rebel flags on cars and trucks. As far as I can tell, the message implied is "I am proud be a racist & you can can't stop me."
3
It is truly staggering that the incredible amounts of targeted energy wasted on this Lost Cause, continues to chunter on into the 21st century. So sad. Nikki Hayley is simply an embarrassment to herself and your nation.
2
How dare anyone maintain a different perception of the meaning a flag than that prescribed by the woke class. Sorry Charles, the Governor offerd an articulate and perfectly reasonable explanation for the love of that flag some have while simultaneously defending her decision to remove it. Get over yourself.
2
@Mkm Saying that that flag only became a toxic symbol after Dylan roof is a "perfectly reasonable explanation"? Sure it is.
Not all southerners think like Nikki Haley. I am a senior citizen now and have ALWAYS considered the Confederate flag (and the general adoration of "Dixie") to be a disgrace. Haley is far behind the times--one reason POTUS hired her.
3
All you need to know about the Confederacy is to Google South Carolina's Declaration of Secession. They were very plain in what their motives were.
Case closed.
2
The Confederate flag represents a failed state that was only in existence for four years before it went down in a total military defeat. In other words, it represents a loser, and if you think it represents you, then you're probably right.
2
"The Confederate battle flag we know today is an emblem of oppression, white supremacy and the fight to maintain slavery. That is its heritage." I would add treason. The Confederacy rebelled against the United States of America, fought against it for four years, and killed hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers.
The Pentagon should rename Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, and all other military bases named for Confederate officers.
2
One thing all must remember that she is one of Trump's enablers. Nikki and the rest lack any decency to speak up what they witnessed of this administration. She is a backstabber and will do anything to climb the ladder of power. At her departure, she said that Jared and Ivenka are the two geniuses in this WH.
1
Thank you Charles for exposing Nicky Haley as a fraud. I believe she is courting the President and angling to be the 2020 Republican Vice Presidential candidate when Trump throws Mike Pence under the bus. Her memoir is nothing short of a love letter to our vainglorious commander-in-chief. And you may call her a person of color, but racially, Indians are Caucasians. She thinks of herself as white and she is more disingenuous and thus more dangerous than Trump.
1
Another excellent piece by Charles Blow. Until we have a reckoning and do a deep dive into our brutal history it is impossible for the United States to move forward.
1
It should be banned just as Germany did with anything related to the Nazis. There is no pride on fighting for keeping others slaved. I am not sure why people are still discussing this, like someday, somehow people will look it differently
2
These days the rebels down south have taken to flying the Stars and Stripes from the backs of their pickup trucks, rather than the Stars and Bars. It seems they have found a new symbol for the triumph of their Lost Cause. Confederate flags are so passe; they finally have been relegated to the past.
Slavery amnesia continues to infect our country. We need to make a concerted effort to educate all high School students about the true reasons for the civil war, the undermining of the reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow and the insane, but effective, narrative that People with dark skin were inferior to people with white skin. It is incredible to believe that this belief continues in this day and age. Education is the answer.
2
Grrrrrr. Reading this made me disrespect Haley even more. For her to say that the state was over racism because it elected her governor? She is acceptable as a brown-skinned woman because she styles herself as a white-skinned woman-- a la Ivanka, Melania, Kelly Anne and the rest of the man-pleasing crowd. They're special! She even talks like a good ol' daddy's girl, too. Haley was elected for a number of reasons, but not one of them was because South Carolina was rid of racism.
2
You are simply right. Period.
I'm not sure. The Confederate Flag has a nasty history. But African-Americans are not the only group that's suffered discrimination, and the game of “I'm a bigger victim than you are” doesn't go very far. Maybe a little bit of forgiveness is called for?
1
@Michael Livingston’s So, flying Nazi flags should be okay because they are "part of some people's heritage" and the Jews should be more forgiving?
Haley’s statement strengthens her position as a Trump reactionary supporter. In light of her remarks on “misunderstanding” the message of the confederacy she steps into the limelight of showing her position on social justice. Perhaps she will now step forward and show her support for the position taken by President Trump is his address to the American Israeli Council last week.
Haley does not need to learn anything. She made a 100% politically calculated statement. She does not deserve the benefit of of the doubt in assuming she lacks knowledge on some front.
The Civil War was a shameful time in our history and slavery was a shameful chapter. Why any American could find it prideful to hang that flag is beyond me.
4
"Let’s be clear: The Confederate battle flag we know today is an emblem of oppression, white supremacy and the fight to maintain slavery. That is its heritage."
And it's exactly why Republicans love it. They don't even hide their bigotry anymore. It's clear that Republicans can do and say anything they want without any consequences or being held accountable. Democrats would do well to just let them hang themselves with their own incompetence and self-dealing.
2
"Service, sacrifice and heritage." These vague words are what apologists for Confederate monuments like to stand behind. Dig deeper and the real meaning emerges. Service to what? Slavery, racial segregation and white supremacy. Sacrifice for what? Slavery, racial segregation. What specific heritage? Slavery racial segregation and white supremacy. Just as Mr. Blow recounts, you don't have to make a very deep scratch in the surface to find the real meaning.
2
R.E the values of Confederate Flag supporters,.
Ms. Haley sees to be ignoring that she would have to sit in the back of the bus, and if admitted use the rear or side door, had she been born earlier. Her parents could have been jailed for miscegenation.
Heck of group she wants to ride with.
1
She may be Indian American but that is no reason to believe she will challenge either racism or misogyny. There is plenty of colorism and racism, not to mention classism, even among Indian Americans.
2
Quite right. Haley is an immigrant who seems to believe that aligning herself with the party of racists will make them accept her. She believes they will magically overlook her skin color and gender. Just as I can’t understand why any person of color would join that party, it’s equally baffling why any woman would want to be part of a party that believes violence against women should be celebrated, not punished. Appears they all believe if they can find someone to hate, they’ll be accepted by the party of hate.
2
I sort of welcome clear symbols and signaling of "division". It tells me something about a person so I can approach them with caution or avoid them. People who claim to be proud of the Confederate flag and its cause are people I may want to avoid if I can. Let all the divisive symbols wave boldly to give me a head's up in this world fraught with cultural warriors. John Poole
2
“Perhaps one of the most perplexing examples of the contradictions of this moment in history is that Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s first governor of color, continues to fly the Confederate flag in front of her state’s Capitol.” Probably because she's under the delusion that because white people in the GOP have "accepted" her, so she's "one of them." Kind of like Will Hurd and Ben Carson. What a shock it would be to them to realize they're being used a symbols of "acceptance" by the GOP? They need to talk to David Brock and see how well that turned out for him when he came out as gay to his GOP buddies.
1
This is a really interesting article from Charles Blow.
I'd like to address it in a way which probably won't appeal not to mention satisfy anyone,--in fact I've chosen to reflect on it in the way of just puzzling through some things which bother me philosophically and in as cold and intellectual a manner as possible.
Here is my problem: Apparently according to modern Western thinking there are political/economic/cultural formations which can develop in any civilization which are entirely wrong from nearly every perspective, and certainly from the moral perspective. Whether you want to speak of antebellum south of U.S.A. or Nazi Germany or any number of like manifestations over history (Vikings, Romans, to continue with examples from the West) you have the modern belief that these are examples of an entire people going wrong, that virtually everything they did is shape of wrong direction.
So my question is what would a society have to look like across the board, in cultural expression, economics,--everything from symbols to institutions to technology to art and science--to be developing correctly, heading in the right direction not to mention moral direction. And can all this be expected of people with a history of entirely wrong direction. It's sort of like taking a person with a history of violence, bad taste in clothes, etc. and asking how to remake such a person on virtually every line. I guess the question is how to effect profound/positive cultural transformations.
1
“In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activism and new federal laws inspired the same resistance to racial progress and once again led to a spike in the use of Confederate imagery."
"In fact, it was in the 1950s, after racial segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, that many Southern states erected Confederate flags atop their state government buildings.”
- Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
The Confederate flag is a formal symbol of hatred, racism, barbarity, treason and the deadliest war in American history.
That Nikki Haley would defend this wretched symbol reveals her stunning ignorance, cluelessness and lack of character.
What a shameful and shameless human being.
7
This is a great historical article which tells the truth about another Donald Trump fraud, Nikki Haley. I had the misfortune for one year of my life to live in SC. It was the year of Dylan Roof and Nikki Haley. To me, they will forever be joined in history, both of them cowards and frauds.
4
Sounds to me like she is totally correct. Could it be that the NYT is already starting to criticize a Republican who could eventually be a candidate for president.
2
service, sacrifice, and heritage.
Would that be the first thing anyone, north or south, would say in describing the symbolism of the confederate flag?
Would it figure at all in a description of this symbol?
Does she believe that? Really?
And it’s because of “this guy” this reputation, this symbol, is tarnished?
Gimme a break!
2
Haley may have crafted an appearance of competence but she never was. She is a shill for the Republican Party. She was and is happy to use the fact that she’s a woman and of Indian parents to serve the ends of the Republican Party. People need to wake up to the fact that neither race (or skin color) nor gender guarantee progressive or even human centered policies.
With Nickie Haley, she told us long ago who she is and we should listen. Any attempt to allow her to create a myth to keep her true self under raps is disingenuous at best. We have seen this myth of competence before with Paul Ryan. The press anointed him as a policy wonk...he wasn’t. They presented him as someone who actually thought about policy and the human condition...he didn’t. He was a mean spirited bully boy. Now it seems it’s going to happen with Haley. Her views about the Confederate Flag aren’t a misstep. They are her!
2
Everyone needs to understand one basic fact here. Haley cannot become president unless she embraces white supremacy. Oh he doesn't have to have dinner with white supremacist leaders or visit Dylan Root in prison. Embracing the Confederate flag should do very nicely. It's her "There are fine people on both sides" moment.
2
For me, one of the most obvious hypocrisies of the GOP is claiming to be "the party of Lincoln" while proudly flying the flag of his traitorous enemies.
1
With this calculation, Hayley stumbles in her ambition to be President.
2
@Raven:
Hmmmm. And why might households in, say, rural Pennsylvania and Ohio be displaying “a flag of a particular Southern army?”
2
Years ago articles lauded Nikki Haley as a bright articulate daughter of immigrants who was conservative and open to bipartisanship to make her state and nation work for voters and residents alike. She spewed no hateful rhetoric and no devotion to mysogyny.
Why she finds trump so attractive and why she insists on pleasing him as a parrot of white racist verbal diarrhea is a real conundrum for voters.
If she runs for leader of the free world or Vice President please do not drink her coolaide.
All ego no soul Haley.
1
Why is it that some people still tiptoe around this issue? In addition to everything Mr. Blow raises, another meaning of the Confederate battle flag is treason, pure and simple. Americans took up arms against the government of the United States. Unlike what the current occupant of the White House thinks, that is treason. There is no glory in what the Confederate states did. They went to war with the United States so they could continue to enslave human beings. Lincoln got it wrong. Davis, Lee and the lot should have been tried for treason and executed. Do we erect statues of Erwin Rommel and Isoruku Yamamoto? Do we in the US fly the Rising Sun or the swastika? Perhaps Governor Haley should expound on the marvel of imperialist Japan's modernization or Hitler's building the Autobahn. She is truly despicable.
5
@Brian
The Bundeswehr does have army barracks named after Erwin Rommel—appropriately so, I believe.
I have no problem with the modern Japanese Navy honoring Admiral Yamamoto.
These were military leaders doing their duty, as they saw it.
Likewise, Robert E. Lee and the men who served under him.
Although it is also true that Lee ordered his men to “furl the (battle) flag” after Appomattox.
2
@Demolino "Doing their duty, as they saw it." Just following orders. Lee chose to fight against the country that had trained him, and to which he had sworn an oath. It wasn't his "loyalty" to Virginia that informed that choice, it was his loyalty to his own slave based wealth.
Haley's rewriting history is pure Republican propaganda.
2
Nikki is trump’s “Indian-American Woman.”
3
Haley is now Dog Whistling Dixie.
The flag of the United States is the Stars and Stripes. If you want to keep a Confederate flag on your property, or put a Confederate flag bumper sticker on your car, have at it. These are all over the South, displayed by people who don't appear to have ever read a history book.
It does not belong on government buildings, and it should not be tolerated at Christmas parades (recently, Wake Forest NC canceled its parade, fearing protests on both sides for Confederacy groups that were slated to march), or endorsed at any public event where everyone is supposed to feel welcome.
Confederates were slavery-defending traitors who wanted to secede from the United States.
If you still want this flag recognized by your government, I wish you'd leave this country. It's proof that you neither understand history nor heritage. You are a racist, and you are un-American.
2
I see occasional confederate flags in my town, and just cringe. It conveys oppression of blacks, nothing else.
4
Is it a coincidence that the party that defends the treason of colluding with Russians is now the same one that defends the treason represented by the Confederate flag?
2
Yes, she is wrong. In the eyes of about 50% of Americans. The problem is that she is right in about 50% of Americans. It was made apparent when Obama was elected. Eradicating racism and hate from our society will always be an enormous challenge. As long as the ultra-rich dictate the rules that govern our society this problem will always exist. Even then, a faction will still be present. There is a reason the GOP is filling all of the lower courts and SCOTUS with Federalist Society members. Soon there will be an all out assault on the Constitution. They want to turn back the hands of time to pre-FDR. If successful, who knows how far they will go. Their entire agenda is to suppress the majority. It will become easier if much of the majority is rendered ignorant and biased.
2
we're a long way from the Mason Dixon line here in WI but just up the road is a house that boasts a Trump sign, a large confederate flag and, at the base of the flagpole, the oh too common stereotypical statue of a grinning, simpleton black man, dressed in tattered rags, lazily fishing.
Sigh
2
There is a simple parallel here. Despite the large number of their ancestors who died fighting for Germany in WWII, the people of Germany do not point to flags with swastikas as a source of "German Pride." It was flown by a government that sought to exterminate non-aryans. The confederate flag was flown by government that seceded from the Union so that its citizens could own people of color and use them as slaves. This is stated clearly in the Confederacy's founding documents. Nikki Haley in particular and the south in general cannot change those facts of history. Instead, they should learn from the Germans struggle to avoid the evil perpetrated by their ancestors. And they can start by recognizing what their ancestors meant when they fought for and died for the Confederacy; pure evil.
7
Nimrata Randhawa- born and raised in South Carolina, is quite aware. But she has bigger ambitions in the GOP tent.
3
I have seen Haley as a politician ready to ride with the racists when she thought it helped her politically ever since she joined the Trump administration and mostly kept her head down except at strategic moments of mild criticism. Haley supported Trump’s Islamophobic “travel ban” while distancing herself from his “Muslim ban”. She backed his pullout from the Paris Climate Agreement. After over 10000 lies from him, she called him truthful and suited to the job of president. In other words, she has been doing a sort of moonwalk (very skillfully) to keep herself positioned to run for President in 2024. But she has always been a deeply cynical and amoral politician. Which means she has a pretty good chance of being the GOP nominee in 2024, And she has a good chance of winning the presidency in 2024. So we can’t let the country forget what her record actually is,
1
"Let’s be clear: The Confederate battle flag we know today is an emblem of oppression, white supremacy and the fight to maintain slavery. That is its heritage."
Exactly: The above has been my understanding, my feeling, and my outrage all my life, at this symbol of oppression, hatred, racism, entitlement, and cruelty...since I was a little girl, and learned about slavery. The confederate flag disgusts me.
5
The simple question is why do Americans allow the flag of secessionist rebels who lost to keep flying?
3
I saw her on the news and thought what is she doing. Talk about two-faced, she just received the gold metal.
2
I think she is a political opportunist. I just wonder how people delude themselves into thinking they are doing something good for the country, or perhaps they don’t even care at all.
2
Oh, please. Haley has always known that the confederate flag is a symbol of both white southern pride as well as white supremacy — because the two things are inseparably intertwined. She has had to ignore the racism part in order to participate in SC politics. She was trying to use the Roof murders as an excuse to finally admit the truth about what that flag represents, while sparing the feelings of her constituents who won’t admit they are racists.
3
Excellent Charles! Haley’s Confederate flag denial in S.C. is the same as those who want to keep Confederate statues standing in Va. Their argument is: these symbols are honorable “war symbols/“war memorials” and therefore cannot be removed. (That was a recent court ruling here but is being counter-sued). They believe the symbols are not a commentary on the Confederacy and what it really meant which was preserving the South’s way of life which depended on slavery, but are instead “honorable legacies to our ancestors”. The statues were erected in the 1920s by white men who glorified Civil War generals and exalted the white South and all it stood for. Generations of deniers have never recovered from the loss of the Confederacy and want to force feed its legacy while refusing to admit its racism. Nikki Haley is among those who perpetuate racism and given her own heritage, she should be ashamed. Just shows you the extent to which Republicans will go to uphold their party line. Shame on them.
2
Don't disagree with you, but at the same time, have to disagree with you.
There are three flags:
1) the first is the battle flag of a treasonous bunch ready to defend their vile tradition at all cost.
2) the second are the feelings born out of the pain of the people who were enslaved by that flag.
3) the third is an emblem that a defeated and humbled people used to try and salvage some pride and unity by while rebelling against the people and system that defeated them.
People who want to eliminate the Confederate Battle flag only see reason 1 and reason 2. And if this was all there was to it, the getting rid of that symbol would be easy.
But to a southerner the Confederate flag is actually a post war re-interpretation that to quite a few people represents nothing less than the rejection of outsider ideas of a conquering army.
To a group of people this flag doesn't have anything to do with the slaves of the antebellum south but rather with the carpetbaggers, the loss of self-esteem of the defeated, and quixotically the shame heritage of having once owned slaves in the first place.
In the end though, the Confederate flag is still a racist piece of trash, but seeing as it so tied up in post war face saving, it will be considerably harder to get rid of.
Nikki Haley is so disappointing. She has slid backwards to be just another Republican apparatchik. The Confederate flag is a symbol of white supremacy and treason to our country. The same historical revisionism also led to the naming of a United States Navy nuclear ballistic submarine after Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
2
Nikki Haley has a very special status as an Indian American. Due to her particular individual complexion, when she walks out the front door every morning she can choose to uphold and embrace her Indian heritage or assume the mantle of the average American white woman which is the way the vast majority of the population sees her as she goes about her daily business. There are certain other politically high profile Latinos that enjoy the same dual status. I snicker sometimes when I hear them bloviating on cable news channels about the considerable 'pain' of their minority status. All us darker skinned citizens should be so lucky.
1
Face it, the South has never stopped fighting the Civil War. The criminal, dirty-tricks mind of Richard Nixon was harnessed the century old resentment and racism in his "southern strategy" which has become the unspoken boilerplate of the republican party ever since. Trump is craven enough to actually foment the Civil War 2.0.
4
That terrific and hard hitting oped by Mr. Blow and kudos! I am an Indian American and not a fan of Nikki Halley! After all she is a politician and they do this kind of dilly-dallying that suggests that she is ready to win South with her comments. She does not get my vote!
2
Service, sacrifice and heritage? We already have a flag for that Haley, the Stars and Stripes. The Confederate flag was created to immortalize the heritage of white supremacy. Service and sacrifice to that end is nothing to be proud of.
2
She is an rank opportunist looking to score right wing support. Certainly not someone looking to bring Americans together. Haven't we had enough of this recently?
2
She's positioning for the 2020 Republican nomination, nothing more, nothing less. First she announces that the adults in the white house asked for her to join them in trying to minimize the damage Trump is doing to the country, and she refused because she is so loyal to Trump. Points with Trump's base -- and those people truly are base. Now she comes up with this baloney that a murderous, brainwashed half-wit changed forever the Confederate flag. By the way, the Confederates didn't have a flag. It's the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. But the only thing that's important is Nikki's leg up toward the presidency.
3
That Haley appeared on madman radio is the only evidence necessary to demonstrate she is unfit for public office.
3
As a 68 year old white male, born in Virginia, raised in Alabama, and now living in Louisiana, there has never been any question in my mind about the Confederacy or its symbols. The Stars and Bars is a flag of treason against the United States, an ongoing symbol of brutal white supremacist racial animus, and a rallying point for continued hatred long after the fall of the Confederacy. That we even tolerate public display of this symbol is in itself a statement that, regardless of who won the the Civil War, white supremacist beliefs and practices are still a strong undercurrent in our society. South Africa had Truth and Reconciliation councils. Germany outlawed the Nazi flag. We did nothing similar. Until we truthfully acknowledge what that flag stands and fully address the issue, wanna-be Dylan Roofs will continue to wreak havoc on us, on both small and large scales.
3
Nikki Haley is a politician.
I very much doubt that she identifies as a Person of Color who has any cultural affinity with black Americans whose ancestors were hijacked from Africa and enslaved in the Southern United States.
If Donald Trump doesn’t run in 2020 or is severely weakened politically by Impeachment, Nikki Haley will most likely campaign to become the first woman, Indian-American US President next year. She is a very skilled and powerful politician.
3
I am an Indian-American, a moderate, and I dislike Trump. I don't have experience and sensibility of blacks in America. However, I fail to understand why black leaders, pundits, and activists continue to focus on the past incessantly. In spite of systematic racism and everyday discrimination millions of African-American families are living a normal life and making future for themselves. The so called representatives of African-Americans are the cause of some black resentment and white backlash. Instead of making the race relations better they are making it worse. This article is just one example.
Let me get this straight, she thought South Carolina became post racial after, and because of, her election? Seriously?
One might think she'd never been there.
3
In 1860 South Carolina stated in its declaration of secession that it was leaving the Union owing to “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery ...”
The “service, sacrifice and heritage” Haley admires was in pursuit of the perpetuation of slavery.
2
I still fail to understand how Southern white conservatives can proclaim their patriotism and rally around Trump's MAGA slogan yet worship the flag of an insurrection against the United States.
Rather obviously now that the Confederacy is no more, the flag cannot be flown inany official capacity. If she wants one in her living room or as a quilt, that's a personal choice... but S. Carolina is no longer part of the Confederacy. I still like the state motto-- Dum spiramus, speramus… While we breathe, we hope!!
1
For those of us who were wondering whether Haley would be part of a small minority of Republicans hoping to lead that party on the road back to respectability...........or like her fellow South Carolinian Lindsey Graham a proud member of the Trump Sycophant Society.........well, now we know.
1
I think she gave reasonable insight as to how she handled the impact of Dylan Roof terroristic acts. As with most things Blow comments on, its overwrought with emotion and incorrect
Ms. Bass and her assistant James Ian Tyson are heroes. I am a white Jewish man. Since I understood what the confederate battle flag stood for, (some time during fifth grade), I thought it to be as offensive as the Nazi flag.
1
Ms. Haley has no real perspective of facts or history. The Confederacy only lasted 4 years so it’s not as though you could compare it to 400 years of slavery. Dismissing the racial elements of slavery for a moment, The Confederacy was as much about enslaved labor and instilling fear in others to not fight back. So is mass incarceration, the Second Amendment over guns and even child support. Eighty percent of 5.5 million men caught up in the child support system are BLACK MEN. Yet, black men only comprise 5 percent of the U.S.population.
Ms. Haley is an ill-informed, opportunist political hack who should not be advanced to national office.
Thank you for calling out Nikki Haley on this, Mr. Blow. Dylan Roof was, in fact, all too typical of the people who have pushed the use of the Confederate flag: the Ku Klux Klan lynchers, burners and shooters, and those who engaged in the same sorts of actions without bothering to put on sheets. Nikki Haley is just another present-day Republican politician, the sort who all too often put their foot in their mouth over race and a variety of other topics, and act as if they think it tastes fine.
1
Some people will say and do anything for power. Women too. Women of color too. Can we graduate from kindergarten now?
1
I am very unimpressed by everything Haley does.
Well said Charles. Haley is a national embarrassment plain and simple. Thank you for calling her out.
Haley isn't just wrong, she's crafty. It's her cynical ploy to ascend through the Republican ranks and perhaps to the White House.
2
It’s over. “History is a work in progress.” Move on.
Why do people still idolize a symbol of defeat in ideas and on the battlefield. Sherman putting the torch to Atlanta should be remembered for what it was.
1
Rather arrogant and dismissive to claim that she, as an extremely light skinned, upper class, well educated Indian American, shares and overcomes the experience of the entire African American population.
If that doesn’t negate any support, and galvanize resentment, in the African American community,, and what would?
1
I found Ms. Haley’s statement fairly anodyne. She is trying to walk a fence rail. The cost of angering Mr. Blow is less than the cost of angering her voter base.
As to (white) southern pride and whitewashing history, blame Lincoln. He insisted we put aside the rancor of the war and go back to being (again, white) brothers and sisters “with malice toward none.” In an alternative history, the US might have prosecuted the losers for war crimes and gone down the path of atonement, not forgiveness. Despite the recent rise of the alt-right, this was the path imposed on Germany after WWII and they have officially worked hard to demonstrate their fealty to that path. The Germans are very, very serious about hate speech and Nazi imagery.
Cultural change is hard and slow. As others here have noted, we are moving forward, not backward, I think Ms. Haley takes here opportunities to advance the ball where she sees them (officially taking down the flag at the Statehouse).
So much for imagining the post-Trump Republican Party would climb out of the racist gutter.
1
She tried to sell us out....
1
Slave State Conservatives cemented their switch to becoming Republicans with the 1964 presidential race.
Arizona, and 5 states of the Deep South, voted for Goldwater.
At that point, Conservatives thought that their continued survival as party depended on throwing in their lot with a bunch of Neo-Confederates.
These are the same traitorous people who started the Civil War, assassinated president Lincoln, founded the KKK, supported brutal lynching as a terror element against their fellow Americans, bombed churches against Christians, fought to keep segregation, and now pretend to be loyal Americans as they fight for the 'Lost Cause' under the guise of the Culture War, and now call the Federal Government that beat the Southern Slave States the 'Deep State'.
With every Stars and Bars you see, with every Unite the Right and Alt-Right bumper sticker, you are looking a traitor's flag.
1
Haley only reminded us that she was shamed into taking down that treasonous flag after years of defending it.
Now she’s trying to get back in the bigots’ good graces.
1
Really Charles, how can anyone who chose to serve in the most outrageously corrupt and inherently criminal Administration in our nation’s history have any political future, post-Trump, and certainly deserves not to. Haley, fundamentally, was just another sycophantic enabler who sold her soul for crass ambition. Didn’t she get the office memo: “Everything that Trump touches dies”? His stain upon her cannot be extinguished, nor camouflaged.
1
Nikki Haley is a person ‘of color?’ Missed that memo. I bet a lot of Germans thought they were flying the swastika out of loyalty to the Fatherland.
As a long time South Carolinian and former journalist, I wondered when the national media would recognize Nikki Haley for what she is - a whole cloth creation of the Republican National Committee, who needed a “minority minority” politician and sadly used the Emmanuel AME shooting to craft one. Haley’s rise to national prominence was specifically built by Reince Priebus in the aftermath of the Charleston shootings, knowing that national reporters would be fascinated by a southern Republican woman governor calling for removal of the Confederate flag. Without Priebus’ manipulations, she never would have handled the flag controversy as she did. Her recent interview with Glenn Beck just reiterated what Haley said to the media in the immediate aftermath of the killings. However, that changed after Priebus flew to Columbia and explained that the tragedy could be used to benefit the GOP and vault her to the national stage. So blinded by the Confederate flag spectacle, national reporters couldn’t see Haley for what she is - an ambitious, shallow, mostly ignorant politician, who’s good at following scripts written by others. When off script, Haley exposes what she really thinks and knows. I once asked Dan Balz when the national media would recognize that Haley was a terrible governor and is a complete fraud. He said that would occur when she reached the national stage and dug into her background. I hope now that day has come, particularly with talk of her place in a national election.
3
@Wim Roffel to defend the stars and bars as a matter of courage and sacrifice is to honor treason.
1
The Civil War ended over 160 years ago.
Although it has been argued by historians that the Civil war was over a clash of economies or states rights or to end slavery. Slavery was ultimately the cause of the war. However several people try to defend it saying represents it "southern pride" of the Souths' struggle re "the war for Nothern Aggression".
The flag represents white supremacy, segregation and state rights. States right is a catch all for rationalizing racism, seccession and segregation.
Yes, their first amendment right allows them to display but make no mistake about what it represents and what they are saying.
This is not your run of the mill political correctness issue. This is about trying to rationalize a way of life which was condemned a long time ago.
Comparables?
Look no further then Trump and Obama's birth cerificate or Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois.
Both were legal but both are reprehensible and vile.
To people who say that they are going to hold their noses and vote for Trump again because the economy is still expanding,..I say you have made the Devil smile and shame on you.
5
Does it surprise anyone that Holocaust and Confederacy revisionism are spouted by the same perps?
2
these monuments and the confederate flag are symbols of traitorous, treasonous and above the losers of the civil war. why we celebrate the loser confederacy and frankly those who tried to destroy our nation is quite sickening.
2
Despite her Indian ethnicity, Nikki Haley offers the same old Republican and white-racist southern blather in a prettier package. But don't be fooled by the packaging: good-looking women can hate as virulently as ugly white men (e.g., Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Jeannine Pirro and more).
2
Thanks, Nikki. Perhaps the Germans will now, with your moral leadership, begin to celebrate the beauty, sacrifice and heritage of the Nazi flag.
After all, now that Germany has had Angela Merkel, a staunch and much beloved leader in Germany who has overwhelming high marks and approval from Israel, everything in the past is now "fixed" and should be forgotten.
Even with a Clemson marketing degree, it will be tough to sell that bromide, Governor.
5
It's hate, not heritage. Unless your heritage is in fact, hate.
6
Right up to the present times, I note that many citizens of the once Confederate states, in an attempt to play down the ignoble image of insurrection, insist on referring to the Civil War as, "The War between the States".
To me Mr Blow, it is the same old effort to cloud the true meaning of a hateful period of our history when people like Nikki Haley attempt to equate the display of the Confederate battle flag with "Service and sacrifice", rather than viewing it's public display as a moment for reflexion on the suffering and bloodshed that was necessary to wipe out an evil institution-Slavery.
I wonder if Haley is even aware that during the course of the Civil War her home state, Indiana, in fielding 210,000 soldiers suffered one of the highest rates of casualties of ANY State (Union or Confederate), resulting in 25,000 Indiana dead? And if Nikki Haley ever reflects on their service and sacrifice, and why they would think it necessary?
1
All you need to know about Nikki Haley: She sucked up to Trump.
8
Her family are immigrants she should know better., she is a "woman of color".....yet she drank the toxic Deep Southern Confederacy Koolaid..."War of Northern/Yankee Aggression" what insulating nonsense...like saying there was no Holocaust in WW2.....and we should honor all the Nobel Nazi soldiers wo fought in WW2...what total anti American nonsense from an ambitious GOP politician who will do anything to gain personal power.
4
Ms. Haley, like others who partake of the myth she promotes, should read her state's declaration of its reasons for seceding from the union. It's available online from many sources. And yes, it's about slavery. They said so, over and over again. So die the other seceding states.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
I have both Union and Confederate ancestors, and I respect the memory of both. I also acknowledge that my Confederate ancestors were tragically wrong about slavery. It's a damned lie to pretend that the Confederate secession was not about what its official announcers said it was about.
4
Like so many before her, she aspired to great heights, she struggled against the odds to achieve her goals.
She then became, that which obstructed her during her ascension to power, in order to retain power.
1
What is wrong with these people? (I mean republicans and conservatives - both the political ones, and the voting public). Why the blinders? Aversion to science, truth and facts? Why the hypocrisy and lies? The only way to make sense of it is through the lens of an utterly captured and captivated cult, engineered by years of right wing hate propaganda - TV and radio, and (in the rare case that they read), print. The church can't be held blameless, either.
For those whom are living on this earth only to experience the rapture - please, get on with it and get the hell out of here so those of us who are empathetic, forward focused, science believing, nature loving and diversity open can enjoy the years we've been given on this earth. Please take your misery - and your Trump - elsewhere. Go all be miserable together, just leave us out of it.
9
"Heritage" in the Deep South has become a code word for segregation and white supremacy.
I first heard it used in this context at a small weekend festival near New Orleans by none other than David Duke. My husband had just pointed him out to me. My first reaction was that I do want to breathe the same air as him. It was as we immediately prepared to leave that I overheard him.
10
I want to agree and disagree. I personally see the Confederate flag as a symbol of oppression of African-Americans that cannot be ignored. However, I understand that there may be others who actually see it as a symbol of Southern pride. This probably stems from ignorance of history, but I believe that there are those who don’t fully comprehend the racial implications.
Nikki Haley, however, is not one of those who is ignorant of history. Her statement about Dylan Roof was clearly a continuation of her pandering to the Trump voter base—just as she did last month with another jaw-dropping interview where she praised Trump’s honesty.
How does someone who showed moral clarity and independence as a U.N. Ambassador throw away her honesty and integrity for politics? Ask Lindsey Graham. Ask Ted Cruz. Ask Susan Collins. There is evidently no personal quality as important as political office.
2
@John Vasi: Substantive pride is displayed in conduct. It needs no flag-waving because humility is part of it.
5
@John Vasi The Confederate States of America, along with the symbolic imagery used to represent it, including the 'Stars and Bars', formed itself for one purpose, and one purpose only: protecting the Institution of Slavery. We know this, because the Confederate Declarations of Secession explicitly say that. They literally admitted why they were doing it: slavery.
In Mississippi, they said: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."
In Texas, they said: "[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time."
In South Carolina, Ms. Haley's own state, they recite a litany of whining points about how other states are passing laws to restrict slavery, and that's not fair to Southerners because "State's Rights" should only apply to Southern states.
If those are the ancestral values that Southern people want to take pride in, it tells you that they still hold these values to heart.
Thank you for this piece and for the truth.
3
Ms. Haley was interviewed by Glenn Beck and defended the Confederate battle flag during that interview. I've long held doubts about Haley's character yet I hesitated to convict her of being a scheming, greedy yet oddly clueless political opportunist. My doubts about her moral fiber & her motivations have now been laid to rest. She has clearly proven who & what she is. Please stop hurting the good people of this country, Ms. Haley - please exit the public arena forever before you cause further harm.
6
Its astounding how clueless, allegedly smart, intelligent people of influence, are about what the Confederate Flag, the X and stars, represents to those who knowingly fly it. Not the dopey guys up North, or elsewhere, who dig southern rock and think it looks cool. But the males who knowingly and willfully and often belligerently put up that flag.
That someone as allegedly astute as Haley has not dug deeper into this issue is bumfuzzling. IMO, her reasons for her apparent ignorance, and sympathy for those who fly the flag, is nothing but political maneuvering. Trying to gain, or protect votes from men who would likely not vote for her, because of her ancestry and gender. But play that Confed-flag card, suddenly, "She gets me."
That she and so many other Repubs are seeing their future as still pandering to racists, and the like, indicates that they and their "expert" advisors are not in any way looking to let go of their past, and of course the Trump influence.
Which is something the anti-never-Trumpers, that left the party, who hope and believe that maybe their old party might bounce back post-Trump, truly need to consider. There are no signs that the Republican party will ever return to anything resembling its pre-Trump form.
I wont weep, Ive been longing for it, the more they attach themselves to that deplorable base, the more they alienate the majority of voters.
The anti-never-Trumpers who left the party...they better take a longer look down the old trail.
4
Governor Haley had a chance to set the record straight when she was governor and on the Glenn Beck show but she caved in to political expediency. She would rather kowtow to voters who see themselves as the victims of a misreading of history, than to point out that the South committed unspeakable acts of terror against Black Americans. A south that tried and continues to try to rewrite history about the Civil War. Let's get it straight it was not a war for states rights it was a war to keep human beings enslaved and held as property. The stars and bars has been a symbol of terror, oppression and hate since its inception. The idea that Ms. Haley is trying to spread is a lie, that makes a mockery of all the lives lost to preserve a way of life that was abhorrent and evil.
5
I will never understand how modern day Republicans, who constantly claim to be "the Party of Lincoln" and for whom the US flag is a sacred artifact, somehow find sympathy for the Confederate flag without blushing. Very ironic considering that:
- Lincoln was very much AGAINST the Confederates, as you might recall, and certainly did NOT respect their supposed "states' rights."
- The Confederate flag was the flag of the side that supported slavery (that pesky institution that Lincoln famously ended), no matter how you try to rationalize it. (Also, slavery is terrible and wrong, but let's not let that truism get in the way of Republican logic!)
- The Confederate flag is the flag of an enemy nation.
Of course, I understand and we all understand what Rs are "really" trying to communicate with their Confederate nostalgia. But it has to be possible to challenge them on this at face value. Supporting the Confederate flag would seem to be opposed to everything they claim to be about. Could it be that Republicans are hypocritical windbags?
2
One half of America is now called to confront a highly discomforting notion: the other half is strongly committed to every evil that the confederate flag stood for while gleefully mouthing revisionist, nonsensical notions of its alleged virtues. Any notion, similarly, that the recidivists, revisionists, segregationists represent only a small minority of people - now deserves rubbishing. This is mainstream; it is tied to identity politics, and now we are talking essentially about every single republican.
2
"...The Indian-American journey in this country is special and important, but that journey has absolutely nothing to do with adjusting or erasing the journey of enslaved Africans and their descendants in this country." That compartmentalization appears to be how Colin Kaepernick can tweet about land stolen from Native Americans while taking money from Nike, the official jersey brand of the Washington Redskins' — the ultimate symbol of accepted institutional racism. If there ever was a time to take a knee, it's when that team plays. But like with Nikki Haley and political power, Kaepernick kneels both knees when it comes to money.
It’s because of institutional racism, that Kapernick bent the knee in the first place. He is out of a job because of it. Whet choices did they leave him? Nike may be an evil corporation, but at least the ads they have produced around their support against racism are on the right side of the issue in Kapernicks case. This is a muddled false equivalency to put it mildly.
I am a Canadian of South Asian background. I find Nikki Haley utterly and completely repulsive and, while I take no responsibility for her just because she and I have ancestors who hail from the same continent, I find her willingness to use her so-called "minority" status to shield bigotry in the US to be utterly reprehensible. I say "so-called" because Ms. Haley has certainly done very little to play up her background as a visible minority -something that is easily missed because she blends in so well, including in her use of her former husband's name. Ms. Haley's vicious actions against the Palestinians during her time as UN ambassador is also notable for a woman whose ancestors were colonized showing no sympathy or understanding of the plight of colonized people. From that perspective, her willingness to distort history for the sake of saving the tender feelings of white Southerners is not surprising, if no less horrible.
2
Growing up in Texas, I was repeatedly told that the Confederate flag was a symbol of "heritage." I would ask, "heritage of what?" and would get mumbo-jumbo replies. So I started reading. And I found out: the "heritage" is a heritage of plunder, slavery, lynching, Jim Crow and abuse for those of African descent, and a heritage of ignorance, terrible schools, poor public health, and religious fanaticism for all citizens. So, Haley is right--the flag IS symbol of "heritage"--just not the "heritage" she thinks! But of course, her view is one of those Zombie ideas that, no matter how many times it's refuted by reason, logic, and evidence, just keeps shuffling and staggering on...
3
The Confederate flag represented the states that withdrew from our Union in order to maintain slavery, no matter how you try to spin it, Ms. Haley.
3
At least you, Mr. Blow, use the correct terminology and call it the Confederate battle flag and not the Confederate flag or the Stars and Bars, the latter two refer to a completely different flag.
“As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race;" Says it all. Explains the flag, explains the Confederate South, and its lingering myths among those who hold on to the mantra and cliche; "The South will rise again..."
The over abundance of evidence as to the meaning of that flag, and other symbols of the Confederate South, can not be erased by the cowardice of any sniveling politician who is only seeking to garner votes.
That the Repubs in the glaring light of Trump and his obvious pandering to racists - are not running away from him or them, only tells us that they have no desires to let go of those votes. Haley, as the alleged knighted successor to Trump, is clearly looking to catch those votes.
Personally, I dont see Haley's path to the WH as remotely easy. I don't think she has any more sense of why she should run, or should be President then did Kamala Harris.
That she will now cling to racist symbols, and find reasons to excuse those who desire to exhibit them, points to the reality that the GOP "brain trust" is going full steam ahead with furthering their Racist Brand. Clearly Trump has granted them the permission they have longed for.
The non racist Never Trumpers, etc...better give up on their dream that the party would bounce back post-Trump. The Boot's, Wilson's, Sykes, Kristol's, Will's, etc - who left the Party, should let go of that dream, and simply start a whole new one.
2
Confederate soldiers: seldom in Western history have soldiers fought harder and better in a worse cause.
1
As a kid in the early 70s inside the Beltway bubble, I remember visiting some cousins in "the country" about 30 minutes to the north. One had affixed a Confederate flag to the back of his bike. As we pulled up to the house, my dad, a progressive white man originally from Baltimore and a man of few words, had an instant outburst: "Never do that. It's no different than waving a Nazi flag."
Ms. Haley knows full well this flag's oppressive symbolism. The "service, sacrifice, and heritage" fallacy is just more carefully worded pandering to racists if not outright gaslighting to people who get their history from GWTW, which is simply cringe-worthy reading in 2019.
I'd say it's time for Ms. Haley to take a contemplative turn through the lower floors of the African-American History Museum.
2
No one should be surprised by this. Haley's ambitions override things like conscience, principle, ...
1
I too, like Nikki Haley am an Indian American. Where I diverge from her twisted mindset about the Confederate battle flag, is that said flag represents to people of color like me, nothing more than an illustrative example of a policy meant to denigrate and terrorize my fellow human beings. Haley's efforts to portray her historical revisionism is politically opportunistic and disgusting. Perhaps by the same example, she as an Indian American would also look kindly upon British colonialism in India?!
1
To wave the Confederate flag is to desecrate Old Glory. These two flags were and are antithetical to one another.
2
Literally beyond rational belief! What kind of person cannot understand why we wouldn’t be outraged about symbols and even statues of people that honor a system where someone had the legal right to sell me, my wife, daughter, son, siblings, grand parents, grand kids, loved ones and people who look like me, either as a group or separately. Further, making being literate a capital offense, hunting freedom seekers like animals and even benefiting from cash rewards for returns, even from northern states; rape, assaults and any other violent inhuman acts committed as per property ownership rights.... and on and on? Being a trumpster may partly be an explanation but it’s far from being an excuse.
1
This is what happens when you win a war and then let your vanquished, traitorous opponent glorify their efforts against you and allow them to pretty much do as they please, including revising history.
Many conservative southern politicians like Gov. Haley create fictions around the use of the Confederate battle flag in order to appeal to white voters whose racist DNA is overlooked in favor of their votes and campaign contributions. Since the north never treated the south as a defeated enemy or really imposed meaningful civil rights laws until the 1960s, race-based hate has been the #1 export from South Carolina and the rest of south. That hate has kept this country from moving forward on a variety of issues. Haley fosters racism every time she speaks nostalgically about Dixie. She should stop.
1
@Left, so I'm right. For real. If Andrew Johnson wasn't such an abject pathetic failure (and a white supremacist himself), we would have hanged every one of those traitors from the nearest tree like they deserved. Then, none of their descendants would exist today, and we wouldn't even need to be having this ridiculous conversation.
Nikki Haley lost all claims for credibility or as a possible replacement for Trump with her views on the Confederate flag and even more problematically, her views on Trump's actions in the Ukraine. Just another GOPer without a moral compass wanting national attention.
1
It’s hard to take Ms. Haley seriously when she writes a book saying that it’s dangerous for people in the White House to subvert Trump’s will.
1
Let's remember, Haley is the same woman who recently stated, "I have never known Donald Trump to lie." Need we say anymore.
2
Her quote at the UN when she was upset with a vote "we are taking names", demonstrated to me that she was meant to teach Pre Kindergarden, or at the very least speak at a Trump rally.
Mark my word....After Trump resigns when it becomes apparent that he will be trounced in Nov., Ms. Haley will become the Republican candidate!
1
Indian Americans make lots of concessions to assimilate to American culture. This is especially true of Indian-Americans born in the United States--we prefer to just be called "Americans" by the way. Most are innocuous; meant to make daily life easier. Going by "Randee" instead of "Randeep" for example. But what Nikki Haley is doing is reckless, irresponsible, solipsistic and foolish. Has she forget what that flag, and Robert E. Lee were fighting for--or shall I say against? Romanticizing it is irresponsible. A move of political expediency comes at the expense of so many citizens' dignity. This isn't "fake outrage." If you want to talk about British colonization of India in such cavalier terms--go for it. Don't forget all the rights you have because the Union won that war.
3
“The Confederate battle flag we know today is an emblem of oppression, white supremacy and the fight to maintain slavery. That is its heritage.”
It must be sad to be so narrow-minded and, at the same time, so outraged when the views of others don’t align with your own. Sorry, Charlie, history — and life — isn’t that simple.
Many admire the Confederate battle flag for its martial heritage, as established by its many audacious, tenacious, and selfless military leaders: Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, Joseph Wheeler in Tennessee and Georgia (and later a US general during the Spanish-American War), and, of course, Robert E. Lee throughout the war, to name a few.
1
@NorthernVirginia The Confederate States of America, along with the symbolic imagery used to represent it, including the 'Stars and Bars', formed itself for one purpose, and one purpose only: protecting the Institution of Slavery. We know this, because the Confederate Declarations of Secession explicitly say that. They literally admitted why they were doing it.
In Mississippi, they said: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."
In Texas, they said: "[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time."
In South Carolina, Ms. Haley's own state, they recite a litany of whining points about how other states are passing laws to restrict slavery, and that's not fair to Southerners because "State's Rights" should only apply to Southern states.
Credit where it's due though; Virginia is the only Confederate State to mention the word "slave" in it's Declaration of Secession only once.
@Samuel
Again, many admire the Confederate battle flag for its martial heritage, as established by its many audacious, tenacious, and selfless military leaders: Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, Joseph Wheeler in Tennessee and Georgia (and later a US general during the Spanish-American War), and, of course, Robert E. Lee throughout the war, to name a few.
1
So it turns out Nikki Haley is an apologist for racism just like the rest of the G.O.P.
Haley posed as someone who "got it" about the Confederate flag but her current wallow in nostalgia for the Confederacy based on cynical claims of heritage, culture and tradition are heinous.
I'm in my 60s and grew up in segregated Georgia. I remember all the racists I knew growing up who proclaimed things must never change in Georgia because of the great "heritage" of the Confederacy which fought to "preserve our way of life."
What they loved about their "way of life" was segregation and white supremacy.
Does Nikki Haley realize she's one of the "brown people" these people don't want in their white supremacist vision of America?
Either Nikki Haley doesn't know this or she's a cynical liar.
Either way, this should end her political standing with all decent people for whom defenses of racism - no matter how polite and how encoded - are heinous.
2
The Confederate flag is definitely a source of pride for most white southerners, just look at how they vote. While the North won the military battle in the Civil War, nothing important in the South really changed, surely everyone knows that by now. The Confederate flag is still today a symbol of defiance and is especially cherished by racists, even here in New Jersey. For public officials to insist on flying it, is nothing less than their support for racism. Just look at the voting records.
1
I remember when Governor Haley ordered the removal of the confederate flag from the statehouse in 2015. Looked up her bio and learned she'd been Governor since 2011, and in the state legislature before that.
And not a peep out of her during that time about the divisiveness that flag represented. Only after that tragic event did she move to remove it. Therer is a word describing her actions.
Hypocrite. That is Nikki Haley.
I’m no fan of southern history, but I think people are actually trying to recast the confederate flag into only hate.
True, historically the flag flies for the confederacy and the ugliness it stood for.
But throughout the 70s and 80s with dukes of hazard and southern rock, that flag became a symbol of “southern culture” that had nothing to do its origins.
I don’t remember an Allman’s brothers concert (with members who were black) or lynyrd skynyrd and seeing the flag and thinkng “klan rally”. It was just “south”
So just as it is wrong to think the flag is only southern pride, it is equally wrong to ignore that for some, southern pride is more it than not.
So yes, it is absolutely horrible for black people to still see that flag waving around, especially in the hands where it’s meaning is the original one. And yes it will be going away because of this.
But there is a need to understand and no need to look down on those who see that flag and just think “sweet home Alabama” and nothing more.
2
@Jane The Confederate States of America, along with the symbolic imagery used to represent it, including the 'Stars and Bars', formed itself for one purpose, and one purpose only: protecting the Institution of Slavery. We know this, because the Confederate Declarations of Secession explicitly say that. They literally admitted why they were doing it: slavery.
In Mississippi, they said: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."
In Texas, they said: "[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time."
In South Carolina, Ms. Haley's own state, they recite a litany of whining points about how other states are passing laws to restrict slavery, and that's not fair to Southerners because "State's Rights" should only apply to Southern states.
Wow, sorry to see that there are still so many uninformed people who don't know the factual history about the Confederacy and it's flags and statues. They were and are almost completely a representation of racism. They were created almost entirely to support and defend slavery. So, don't be "shocked" "that everyone must consider it so." Because it is so, no matter how you try to color it.
I had high Hopes for Governor(Ambassador) Haley, but when she was asked recently if she thought the President lies, her quick “No” response just placed her with all the other sycophantic supporters of the President. And hopefully, like the rest of those sycophants, she will fade into political obscurity.
1
And she thinks she’s going to run for the Presidency.....
Great start, I can see the National commercials already,
I don't remember who said it but I agree that Nikki is on her book tour also known as the Trump heir apparent tour.
After the massacre the Governor would have made The Music Man proud in the way she ran to the head of the already in progress parade to remove the flag.
Charles Blow doesn't mention that one of South Carolina's two U.S. Senators, Tim Scott, is African American, and a Republican.
South Carolina, along with Mississippi, is often presented as among the most racist of American states. And yet its people have elected, at present or very recently, two minority people (and one of them a woman) to the highest offices in the state.
How many states in the north, if any, can make the same claim?
What are Senator Scott's views on the Confederate flag issue at the South Carolina statehouse?
If Nikki Haley represents the GOP's version of anti-racism; they have a true problem moving forward. The flag, and what is stands for, is an abomination. It is a reminder of just how horrific the south's culture was in the mid-19th century. It is a reminder of where this country can never go again in its future.
My friends in the South insisted flying the Confederate flag is about their Heritage (always capitalized, I must note). I lost them on Facebook when I asked why they were so proud of a heritage that included slavery, sedition against their country that led to Civil War in the 1860s, Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised significant numbers of American citizens until the Civil Rights acts were passed in the 1960s, and blatant Gerrymandering of voting districts to renew the Jim Crow laws in a different way.
3
In his condemnations, Charles Blow does forget that many men and women of South Carolina died in the Civil War. The right and wrong of slavery were sadly not obvious, in a culture where slavery had been practiced for centuries, even by George Washington. Many Confederate soldiers died honorably and deserve to be remembered.
More to the point, I don't know what is the "revisionist" history here. Haley made no change to the historical record, she merely recognized the fact that for many South Carolinians, the flag was about pride in their state and their sacrifices during the Civil War. That does not make her a "white supremacist" (an overused racist trope) nor a modern day supporter of slavery.
5
So should present day Germany display swastikas to remember those who died in WWII?
2
The southerners who took up arms against the United States of America were traitors. Nothing to be proud of there.
2
@Unconventional Liberal I am from the deep South. My ancestors owned slaves and fought on the side of the Confederacy. My ancestors did not fight honorably. They fought in a war that they should not have been fighting, and they were not deceived about the cause. That doesn't reflect badly on me, except if I chose to lie about their motivations, which I don't. My fellow white Southerners need to grow up. There's no pride in the Confederacy.
1
Let's be very honest exactly why Nikki Haley made the absurd comments she did. Obtaining power is her all encompassing goal and she knows that in order to appeal to the base that Trump has directed all his venom towards minorities to that she has to do the same thing to win their support.
I found her comments sickening but realized she is either campaigning to replace Pence on the ticket or else positioning herself for 2024.
The main reason that Republicans lost the 2018 midterms is because Republican women from the suburbs deserted the Party. Can Pence shore up their support? Not in this or any other lifetime, but the so called "moderate" Nikki Haley can.
Look for her to replace Pence.
What will this mean for the 2020 campaign? It will require the Democrats to have a very strong candidate for Vice President who can go toe to toe with Haley. There are few people that can effectively do that. The best person might just be Kamala Harris.
Yes, I know that people assume a ticket of Biden/Harris will lose but I also know two things:
First, Sanders or Warren cannot win. Americans will not elect a far left candidate despite what the fervent supporters of Sanders and Warren believe.
Second, Hillary Clinton would have been our President if African Americans did not stay home in great numbers.
You want someone who can go to to toe with Trump? Like it or not, it's Biden, and Kamala Harris is not afraid of Haley or Pence. Bernie, Liz, or Buttigieg cannot win.
Firstly, it's not the "Confederate Flag".
The flag of the Confederate States of America was quite different.
It's the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee.
Every individual Southern Army had a different battle flag or even different ones for different divisions.
This one is a modified St. Andrew's Cross.
That it has been misused and misidentified mainly in the last one hundred years or so is a disgrace in and of itself.
And please, spare me the arguments about how offensive it is. It's a part of American history and just a flag of a particular Southern Army.
Thousands of men died, on both sides, under various flags. Should those who died on the Southern side not be mourned or allowed to be remembered, however someone chooses to do so.
It is very similar to the incessant calls for the removal of statues in the South for their connection to the Civil War. Please.
People have the right to hide from history if they wish. But I don't want history hidden from me.
As an aside, many streets in parts of upstate New York are named after Confederate Generals. No one is clamoring for their removal. In fact, on several occasions municipalities have said that they are a part of history and that's that.
12
@Raven No one is being prevented from remembering or mourning Southern dead. The issue is removing a flag which is offensive to many, many U.S. citizens, from government offices. This is not "hiding from history".
23
@Raven no. It is a symbol of slavery and secession, of men who fired upon and killed soldiers defending the stars and stripes and the United States of America. It is symbolic of genocide and the reduction of human beings to chattel status. It is a disgusting, vile, hateful reminder of this Country's sordid past. Period.
2
@Raven it's a racist flag and needs to be taken down, period. Same reason people don't fly KKK flags and mass murderers don't have a voice, there are reasons for it.
Needs to be taken down. A lot of things are offensive, we don't teach pornography or horror movies in schools. Why? They're wrong and offensive. A flag that represents lynching first -- that's it's main theme -- is offensive.
3
I'm so very glad Nikki wrote her book so we could all learn who she really is behind the pretty face and outwardly soft manner... Just another Trumpite On the national scene, the revelation will help to galvanize opposition against her by people who might otherwise have been fooled. I listened to her speak at the United Nations and was worried that she would take hold. It is clear she has national ambition. I sincerely hope that her book will serve as a warning.
4
What's more offensive is a black man in the south Senator Tim Scott agreed with her. Both would be nowhere without the blood and oppression of black people and all those who fought against the Confederate flag. If any black person vote for her for any elected office and/or Tim Scott too, shame on them.
1
What she said was not that outrageous. A bit insensitive to the modern times, yes, but not racist. The revisionist history is being performed by you - that is viewing everything in America’s past as a racist history and believing that the nation was founded on racism vs. being founded on constitution and the principals of the revolution.
Half of your editorial articles are just lobbing racist claims upon your opponents and it’s pretty boring. It’s like watching the same comedy act over and over. At some point you start to yawn and eventually walk out.
2
@Kev dog "Directly or indirectly, the economies of all 13 British colonies in North America depended on slavery. By the 1620s, the labor-intensive cultivation of tobacco for European markets was established in Virginia, with white indentured servants performing most of the heavy labor. Before 1660 only a fraction of Virginia planters held slaves. By 1675 slavery was well established, and by 1700 slaves had almost entirely replaced indentured servants. With plentiful land and slave labor available to grow a lucrative crop, southern planters prospered, and family-based tobacco plantations became the economic and social norm."
"The Constitution of 1787 failed to abolish slavery, an existing institution at the time it was enacted."
"Seven slaveholding states were admitted into the union."
And, "The Confederate Constitution of 1861 specifically forbids the Confederate Congress from passing any “law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves.”"
I believe you are wrong, sir.
https://www.monticello.org/slavery-at-monticello/jsam-main-nav
This is the problem with the "rainbow coalition" thinking. The unique experience of black America gets mixed up, and watered down, with the so-called "struggles" of groups like Indian-Americans, who, often, out earn white Americans.
The special circumstances of slavery, and their lingering ramifications, can't really be applied to any other group. If someone from Latin America sneaks across the border and then is penalized for "racist reasons," is that really in any way analogous to the plight of African Americans who were forcibly brought here, and then systemically discriminated against for centuries?
Nikki Haley is going to play her "woman of color" race card while at the same time proving herself a Trumpian Republican. It'll probably work as the PC crowd will generally be afraid to take her on. Good for Charles Blow for not being afraid to.
4
The coward who committed this unspeakable act was a young, impressionable and very likely brainwashed individual. While this does not excuse his actions, it does provide a certain context.
None of those descriptors apply to Ms. Haley however. She is simply an insensitive and opportunistic political grifter and her words were an attempt to ameliorate the pernicious and murderous history of which that flag is truly emblematic of.
4
She proves it is possible to fail a job interview before applying.
4
In the 1860s, the South had not yet progressed to a modern mindset. Even more than a century and a half later, it is painfully obvious that the South has made few steps away from its abject backwardness.
Anyone who does not acknowledge that today, this flag stands for murder, lynching, rape and treason cannot be regarded as possessing good judgement.
1
My God. How much longer must this country deny the truth. Racism is alive and well. Roof didn't change the conversation. He embodied the ugly and pathetic. Racism is a loser's way of feeling like a winner. We must stand up and recognize that the capitol of this country was physically created by labor of enslaved blacks. We must accept the grotesque cruelty that was enacted on them by WHITES. We must look at the Confederate flag as a relic of how the South built their wealth and how their joy of feeling superior because of the skin they were born with has caused centuries of hate. Haley is an ambitious woman who has revealed her racism when she embraced trump and no new story of justification for that flag is sufficient no matter what her heritage is.
2
Mr. Blow is incomplete in one respect. The Confederate flag is not merely a symbol of white supremacy. It is a symbol of treason as well.
7
@JJM And it embodies hatred
1
The people in the slave states who fly the rebel flag have poor memories of their history, that period of time when they flew thousands of white flags of surrender to the US military when they lost the War of Secession, when they cried uncle and submitted to US laws. Then after our government treated them with too much mercy, they defied US and turned their surrender flags into hoods and robes and started flying the rebel flag again, muttering, whispering how they're going to rise again, and they're still at it after so long. What ingrates!
2
Nikki had me sort of fooled too, Mr. Blow, but as you said so well, that all ended with the podcast -- one that I actually never heard (Glen Beck is another topic for another day ). Word of Nikki's sweetly nasty description of the symbolism of the Confederate flag spread like wildfire.
What she did is a reminder that racism is about more than the horror stories or the uncomfortable stories, and it's about more than the systemic inequalities and injustices that are race related. It's also about the manipulations and lies that support it. It's like a terrifying plague that erupts periodically into the open...andit is never completely gone.
1
In fact, Nikki Haley is just another shameless Republican politician.
It is clear to me that this party has left the truth behind in most of their pronouncements and in particular, when it comes to their Oath of Office.
2
People should avoid letting legacy symbols of idealism affect their emotions and mental wellbeing. It’s an indication of weakness and mental defect.
Thank you for pointing out Nikki Haley's disgusting revisionist history. She should be ashamed of her propaganda.
3
Nikki Halley is a pod person. Unfortunately she fell asleep and the Republicans snatched her soul.
3
Nikki Haley is a dangerous self-serving opportunist, like her friend from that State too big to be a lunatic asylum and too small to be a State:Lindsey Graham. As a Sikh, I bear no ill will to a choice of religion. It isn't that she was born a Sikh and chose to become a Baptist that irks me, it's the fact that she puts it right there on her page as a way to curry favor in her nutty State. Religion should have no place in politics, isn't that what our Constitution states?
5
As will-vote-Obama-forever Indian American democrat, I dont like Nikki Haley, she is an opportunist defender of the indefensible Trump
but , possibly, the point being made is that Southern whites have a right to a symbol that in fact honors yes, the 'heritage, sacrifice' and thousands,perhaps millions of non-slave owner Southerners have made in fighting for their native land, the cause that their leaders mistakenly chose.
if we keep taking down the symbols of all the losing sides in all history's wars, then there will be nothing left.
it was 170 years ago, the South got trashed by Sherman, the flag was taken down. Can you please move on?
Most Americans who choose to display the Confederate battle flag as a symbol today are thinking of "service sacrifice and heritage" precisely as much as those Americans who display the Nazi swastika are celebrating the Sanskrit origins of the word.
Which is to say, not at all.
4
Haley is absolutely wrong. The Confederate flag and its St. Andrew’s cross is just as indefensible as the Nazi Germany flag and its swastika (which, by the way, is also a cross).
2
Y'all are hypocrites. It's the same with the Red, White, and Blue.
It's defiled by Wounded Knee, My Lai, the massacre of as many as one million Filipinos in the imperialist annexation of the Philippines. What about the lynchings of Hispanic people in Texas, and the expropriation of their ranches?
The butcher Custer carried the Red, White, and Blue.
Let's get serious. Yes, the American Flag is a flag of genocide and slavery.
But under it immigrants kissed the pavement of New York. It led the march of rebellious workers in the 1930s. It flies over the dead at Gettysburg, Oahu, San Francisco. It stormed the Nazi beaches on 6 June 1944.
It waves over generations of soldiers and citizens at the Vietnam Memorial and Marine Corps Memorial.
Civil War does not divide nations cleanly.
The South was more than slavery and white privilege. The North was not just noble, fighting the South for liberation, but also as the imperialist culmination of the North's economic struggle to dominate the South.
The North was right: Liberation trumps its evils. The South was wrong on the big one.
Southern soldiers resemble ours in Vietnam. Laudably brave yet filled with illusions. Our grunts at My Lai were victims of LBJ, Westmoreland, etc.
Rebel grunts at Manassas were victims of Jeff Davis.
Their descendants want to honor them. That's good, just as you should honor your own tainted dead, culture, and flag.
Heritage, not hate. Good slogan for you, too.
1
First she says "We don't have hateful people in South Carolina." But then she says there's always a small minority... So which is it Nikki? Doublespeak at its finest and no one challenged her on it.
1
I taught for awhile in Goldsboro, a small Bible Belt city in Eastern North Carolina. Back then, Goldsboro High School was working class, half black and half white. The principal was black. The school board was majority white.
Race relations ran the gamut, from mixed race couples to rednecks and ‘hood bad guys. In that environment nobody sweat the small stuff. And that included Confederate flag decals and black power slogans on class notebooks. Getting through the day was more important than symbols and sloganeering. There was peaceful coexistence until something too big to ignore came along.
The white parents were frustrated because the slight black majority often led to all black class officer slates. The school board responded by imposing elections rules that boosted white candidates. They had to twist the arm of the principal, who told me he was ashamed of having caved. Shortly after he announced the new rules, the black kids went out strike, led by their class officers.
It may have been the Bible Belt, but Goldsboro was light years ahead of the pack when it came to race relations. Symbols paled in importance to the real stuff that matters. Flags are pieces of cloth. Power is everything.
Until we learn what the GHS kids knew years ago, we’ll be fighting over cloth. Time wasted. Choose your battles. When the races occupy the same space, common sense reigns and common sense is what it takes.
The thing is, folks like Nikki Haley understand that their life in the US is transactional and mostly based on racial dog whistles like pretending the stars and bars was not treasonous at all. What is forgiving in these instances today is that communicating these moral contradictions and human awfulness, is that they, the people who hold such views, can no longer hide when spoken or expressed in "good" company. The exposure is akin to washing these soiled souls with the disinfectant Lysol. As to her presidential aspiration, she can forget about it. She may have bamboozled the folks of South Carolina and other fellow travellers with this nonsense, but nationally, will be a different take. She will never be president of the USA. YOU HEARD it here first!
Charles, we owe you very much for your clear insights, e.g.;
"Haley used her status as a racial minority to shield her party’s racial animus".
This sentence is sharp as an arrow and as clear as fresh water.
2
This woman is an empty business suit. She stated that Trump never lies. Of course, she added “in every instance where I dealt with him.”
She is an opportunist in every single thing she does and says. This is NOT the woman who should be the first female President. Pandering is all she knows to do. “We don’t have hateful people in South Carolina.” Oh, come on. I know firsthand that there are terrific people in South Carolina. My parents used to live there. AND, there are a great many people who would fight in The Civil War today, if they could. Or, “The War of Northern Aggression” as they like to call it.
Give us a break, Nikki. You’ve really embarrassed yourself this time.
2
At one point, I used to respect her and feel hope...no longer, particularly after her book release and comments "kissing" Trump politically.
She is done, done, done, as far as I'm concerned and I will invest my efforts and money to help her never be a "somebody" politically ever again.
2
The Confederate flag represents a proposed separate republic that endorsed slavery, the Civil War was fought for states' rights, one of those rights was to keep slaves.
Southern Pride excuse is a total joke. To a small minority perhaps it represents the south and not slavery and racism, but at the very least it's a middle finger to the North.
1
Haley lost all semblance of legitimacy when she started kissing trump's backside out of the clear blue sky. The flag thing is just confirmation that she has joined the crazy republican club with Graham, Nunes, Jordan, et al. Republicans who used to be considered intelligent congressional leaders but who are considered partisan clowns now.
Thanks....I’ve now got that infuriating Toni Basil song ‘Hey Mickey’ shuck in my head!
1
She is an opportunist. She will do and say whatever it takes to gain power.
All of this is the legacy of the cowardice displayed by the US government generally and Congress specifically during Reconstruction. They didn't finish the job, they allowed the powerful in the South to remain powerful, so all of this rolls downhill to us. But it's so haaaard, they wail! It's hard to upend a rotten, feudal society because the people at the top of it are one degree of separation from yourself. It's hard to crush the Klan by virtually destroying the towns they arise in, sending in federal troops to imprison and interrogate on as necessary until the truth is uncovered and the guilty punished. For the same reason.
The Confederacy were traitors, their leadership should have been tried, convicted and hanged en masse. Their foot soldiers should have been dispossessed as the criminals they were, forcibly resettled throughout the rest of the country or stripped of citizenship and had their civil rights forfeit. This would have a) removed them and their "cause" from our midst and b) eliminated the possibility of further rebellions such as this (including Trump's "Second Amendment People" who feel emboldened to threaten another armed insurrection and murder of politicians or citizens they don't like).
Of course, as satisfying as this would be, we would be living today in a very different country and possibly a different world. I guess we'll never know what that world would have been.
2
@George Excellently stated.
@Samuel Thank you Samuel, but please consider my larger message. The gap between what people "should" do and what they really do can be vast. If they HAD behaved in the former way, the county would now be unrecognizable, for either better or worse. On the one hand, armed insurrection would be clearly punishable by death and family dispossession, so we would not be seeing half-wits plotting to blow things up. BUT standard we now have that citizens are not subject to military rule and reprisal would be gone with such a precedent, and we could well be living under a military junta right now. This is personal for me because if the Southern white elite had been wiped out back then, I would not exist. So choose wisely.
Are we surprised at Nikki Haley? After all, before this hateful Confederate flag comment, she supported the 2020 reelection of Donald Trump.
“As a people, we are fighting to maintain the ‘heaven-ordained’ supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematic of our cause.”
Interesting quote but one based on written fact and an appropriated defense.
As a high school senior in the 1960’s, for English we were tasked a term research paper assignment. Mine was entitled “The Myth of Black Inferiority”. Part of the quote above formed a critical element in disseminating this myth.
The Biblical passage from Genesis 4. 15, “....And The Lord set a mark on Cain....” That mark was commonly interpreted during the U.S. slave era as one’s skin color by slave advocates as a proof of Black inferiority. Whereby God granted permission to Whites that because Blacks are cursed fugitives. Blacks thereby could be used freely but not indiscriminately killed.
Many White racists today still persist in such thinking but have added hoax science and historical revisionism to bolster their racial attitudes. Oddly at our ends. everyone is eerily quiet though!
2
The Confederate battle flag we know today is an emblem of oppression, white supremacy and the fight to maintain slavery. That is its heritage. I will add: It is like flying the Swastika in Germany and all the countries that have been occupied by the Nazis. No more, no less.
Haley is a puppet of her own ambition, a political chameleon.
Thank you for exposing her awful dissembling. She is appalling.
Things have sunk so low that people were actually surprised and impressed that a Republican Tea Party borderline fanatic would be upset that nine black worshipers were murdered in a church.
Who in the world did people think Nikki Haley was? One gesture of decency seems to have thrown her off kilter. More it seems to have thrown her political calculations off kilter. She needs to reassure her supporters she is the same horrible ideologue (person) she has always been. Why anyone would doubt it is shocking to me.
1
The swastika or hooked cross motif that was used by Hitler and the Nazis was present thousands of years earlier and meant something like “good luck” in Sanskrit.
Regardless of that history, and any defense of it by scholars, the monstrous crimes against humanity committed under it by the Nazis, render it contemptible in civilized society.
Similarly, any positive reflections on the Confederate Flag by its supporters must be challenged with the comparison: Those who fought under the “Stars and Bars” were defending slavery and other monstrous crimes against African Americans.
3
One only has to live in S.C. to know Haley is an opportunist of the worst sort.
2
People hoped Haley would be the post Trump face of the Republican Party. She’s a woman, she’s Indian-American. Then for some reason, she opted in with the current Republican Party. I don’t know who is advising her, but associating with Trump and having national aspirations is not a winning combination. She went from being the one Republican Democrats feared to being a cult member.
There is no reason for her to be doing these interviews unless she is being prepped for some political office. Which one would that be? Considering the timing, I would say that Mother wants Mike to take her home because she does not like The donald and trump needs every single vote he can 'grab'. So it would be a given that she would be his 2020 VP running mate.
1
So the confederate flag is a symbol of southern heritage, before the civil war. What was that heritage? And why do they use a flag that did not exist before the war? And what "pride" are they talking about? Thank you Charles Blow for a very perceptive column.
2
Would people like Haley defending the battle flag of the Confederacy in its armed insurrection against the United States also defend the freedom to prominently display the swastika, the battle flag of the German Reich? Both flags are odious symbols of vile people.
7
The "heritage" symbolized by the Confederate flag is one of shame and it should never, ever be forgotten that slavery was at the heart of the South's secession from the Union, and that those who fought for that flag were committing treason against the United States. There is no glory in that flag, only dishonor.
I am from Alabama and I am so very ashamed of my state's history. I am also reluctant to share where I am from on social media because I am instantly, and understandably stereotyped. How to explain I came from a progressive family of Democrats (not Dixiecrats) whose ideas of justice were atypical to say the least. No matter, I am just so thankful for the open discussions my Mother had about how wrong it was to suppress voting, how wrong it was that Blacks were not even allowed to stay in a motel or hotel, or eat in a restaurant or drink from a water fountain, and about the horror of lynchings. The very last time my Mother voted it was for Doug Jones in the special election. She was very ill, and was going to a facility for respite care. She had refused to go unless we stopped on our way for her to vote, so we did. We stopped and wheeled her in in her wheelchair so she could cast her vote for Doug Jones. She helped turn Madison County and Huntsville blue. I was so proud of her.
We who are from and live in the South are not all racists. Many of us are very ashamed of our heritage symbolized by a flag that isn't ours. Nikki Haley sold her soul for votes.
9
“We don’t have hateful people in South Carolina”.
What a stupid and clueless statement. South Carolina and most Southern states are built on hate and run by hateful people. Republicans, who do their best to knock people down and disenfranchise them. Look at at the other clueless and mean representation of South Carolina, Lindsay Graham. It’s hard to imagine
a more close minded, sycophantic oaf
than him. Unless his name is Donald Trump.
South Carolina-too small to be a Republic, too big to be an asylum.
6
Haley's "southern Heritage" argument *might* make sense if she had some ancestors who had fought for the Confederacy, but she doesn't. Haley is a first-generation American, the child of Punjabi immigrants from India. As far as I know, no Punjabis fought for the Confederacy.
6
I side in this with Nikki. Achieving facts on the ground is more important than achieving symbolic victories. Often the focus on symbolic victories - and the resistance it evokes - hampers the achievement of real results.
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@Wim Roffel
...except when your “symbolism” is rooted in my actual oppression.
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@Wim Roffel. Your analysis is faulty. Haley does ignore the “facts on the ground” that the Confederate flag is a proxy for racism and white nationalism. Dylan Roof didn’t “hijack” that flag as she said; he wrapped himself in it as it symbolized the hatred he felt for his fellow Americans who are black. Second, symbolism is a powerful tool and should never be ignored. The Confederate flag is every bit as disturbing as the swastika.
570
@Wim Roffel Fact is the Confederacy was established to perpetuate slavery.
110
Haley did the right thing to order the disgusting Confed flag off the state capitol. Her statement as to why she did it is pandering to her white supremacist electorate without which she couldn’t have been elected. If you are not in office you can’t do anything, and not the right thing. So give her at least the credit she’s due. Trump has brought the white supremacists into the wide open and his firm base is centered in the Confed states. It’s depressing and surprising that the descendants of the Confeds and Jim Crows are still holding to their long ago imbibed bigoted views.
3
Deat Charles Blow, "Be clear, Haley: The Indian-American journey in this country is special and important, but that journey has absolutely nothing to do with adjusting or erasing the journey of enslaved Africans and their descendants in this country."
I am a fellow Indian American and I can write this with a clear conscience, Nikki Haley is our version of Uncle Tom (I apologize if I am wrong.) She is not fit to run for Presidency in the future. I was shocked when she became Governor of S. Carolina but she has to be stopped.
I have regular fights with my fellow immigrants who support Trump, I managed to convert one after he was asked to go back to his country. And he had been here only for 45 years.
9
Sometimes ones heritage is hate. The flag is one of those times
12
"Bass makes a piercing point: The N.A.A.C.P. and the Ku Klux Klan “are in agreement about what the Confederate flag is.” There is no true ambiguity." The idea of the Lost Cause and the noble chivalrous South was one of the greatest propaganda coups of all time. I haven't read anything, which establishes that there was any other state right for which the South was fighting for, that was not based upon slavery in some form or another. To state otherwise is to make oneself into a witting or unwitting propagandist or the Confederate myth.
9
Haley doesn't care because HER people weren't the ones who were enslaved, raped and murdered under the Grand Old Flag.
What she doesn't realize is that the people who worship THAT flag wouldn't hesitate to string her Brown-daughter-of-Indians (from INDIA)-self up in a heartbeat.
13
To say she doesn’t care because she wasn’t there to be victimized is dopey, and negates anything positive and hopeful in humanity.
Come on people, we all know what flag REALLY symbolizes the Confederacy; the white flag of surrender. Maybe they should fly that in front of their state houses.
2
They're clinging to a past that no longer exists and is pathetic in the eyes of most Americans.
They're clinging to an identity that holds no particular advantage in our globalized economy.
At this juncture they are pawns for a manipulative man and his ilk, who'd sell them to the highest bidder or maybe just a cheeseburger.
They better wake up! There's no future in hate.
7
The confederate flag symbolizes rebellion, for the south and treason, for the north. Nothing much has changed.
1
Apparently, many Americans are so besotted with the country’s history, they are unable to perceive the Confederate flag as the symbol of oppression and racial supremacy for which it was originally raised to convey from afar. To me, this is as incontestable as Haley’s obvious populist strategy.
How long before it’s okay to repurpose the swastika with the convenient argument that it too has historic value and was originally used by many cultures in India and elsewhere?
7
But but but but these other people were nice! Best of the best of the south.
Never mind all that service and sacrifice was for “The Cause” of a “right” to ruin the lives of millions and financially benefit from their misery,
1
Hopefully this is her second misstep (book was first) on her ‘run’ for president.
3
I would take this article more seriously if Mr. Blow could explain how Ms. Haley, a racial minority, was able to overcome her party’s “racial animus” to get elected the governor of South Carolina so that she can shield it. It should be an interesting explanation. Perhaps he could also explain how Bobby Jindal, another Indian-American who also made no attempt to hide his roots (unlike Kamala Harris, who studiously downplayed her Indian heritage while claiming to be African American) overcame the “racial animus” of his party.
The real danger for the Democratic Party is that the first female POC president will be a Republican. How embarrassing that would be. Hence the attempt to tarnish Ms. Haley.
3
I'll explain it to you. Republicans are happy to ignore race in a candidate as long as they tow the party line. and especially if they are willing to sell other POC down the river. That also goes for women.
Nikki Haley's response to the Charleston massacre was pure politics, not any moral center and certainly not a commitment to civil rights.
Haley rightfully calculated that South Carolina could have erupted in violence as a result of such a brutal murder motivated by a white supremacist. She also knew that the Confederate flag on the capital building had been festering sore to the Black community.
So give her credit for being a slick politician, but nothing more. With her symbolic move on the flag she warded off potential violence, took action that gained her more points than she lost, gave her a national stage but fundamentally changed nothing.
Nikki Haley was also smart enough to abandon Trump's sinking ship after she had built up credibility with the Israel lobby, the evangelical right and a host a belligerent war hawks all from the platform of the UN.
By leaving when she did she positioned herself to be Trump's VP (loyal) if he survives impeachment and whether he survives or not, she's clearly ahead of the pack to be the next right wing, neocon, GOP presidential candidate.
Haley's current embrace of the very white supremacy that she distanced herself from earlier is both smart and slick. Black voters count for little in GOP primaries so she cozy's up to the right. Then if she runs in 2020 or 2024 she can still fall back on her false sympathy with the victims of Charleston.
Nikki Haley knows exactly what she's doing. The real question is do we?
9
The Confederate flag is the singular symbol of the South's fight for the right to own and treat human beings, like Charles Blow, as chattel.
It is not the symbol that has been "hijacked."
It is the Party of Lincoln that has "hijacked" to become the Party of Putin, Trump, and White Supremacy.
6
Sorry, Charles. Nikki was no true heroine on the Confederate flag issue. She’s a scheming politician who waited a few days after the AME Church massacre to create her performance complete with crocodile tears. She shed no tears for the thousands of South Carolinians whom she denied healthcare by refusing to accept Medicaid expansion and crushing the ACA.
4
This is her own “Some people did some things.” Where is the indignation, GOP?
4
My, my. Nikki Haley’s true colors some shining through the fog that usually surrounds them. Anyone surprised by her remarks about the Confederate flag is one of the misled millions duped by Haley’s expertly nurtured public relations image, reinforced by a gullible media who sacrificed objectivity in their eagerness to foster the phony image of a female dissenter to Trump within administration ranks.
Haley has never been anything but one more Trump lapdog. She spent her two years at the U.N. as little more than a parrot for Trump’s tweets and whatever else passed as foreign policy. Haley has avidly supported Trump’s racist, xenophobic, misogynistic policies. She plainly showed her role as Trump’s lackey on her retirement by loudly proclaiming she wanted Trump to be president for “six more years.”
Nikki Haley wants to give Trump four additional years to lock up children in wire cages, destroy NATO, and brag about sexually assaulting women and call them bimbo, fat, ugly, Miss Piggy, and dog. Not only do Trump’s lies and gross immorality and corruption mean nothing to her, Haley is currently primping to be Trump’s Vice Presidential running mate. That, of course, explains Haley’s new found reverence for the Confederate flag. She knows which way the extremist wind is blowing in the Republican Party and is adjusting her course to accommodate it.
What does Nikki Haley really believe? Read Trump’s latest tweets.
4
The final two sentences of this poignant and piercing piece by Mr. Blow are the most concise rebuttal of the "Lost Cause" myth and all of its brilliantly perverse celebrations of Southern virtues, military heroics and culture, all while ignoring essential facts. They are worth repeating:
"Bass makes a piercing point: The N.A.A.C.P. and the Ku Klux Klan 'are in agreement about what the Confederate flag is.' There is no true ambiguity."
3
Ms. Haley seems most interested in learning from people like Macchiavelli.
5
Excellent Charles. The stars and bars was, is and will always be a symbol for slavers of all generations. All Nikki the quisling Haley did was affirm her vacuous nature and re upped her lifetime membership in the cognitive dissonance foundation.
3
D'oh. Was the written by Homer Simpson? Nikki has always showed more faults than a Ford Edsel. The few mentioned here only look acceptable because the current president is the comparison. Please stop being an apologist for Trump.
Come on. Nikkie’s only publicly submitting her resume for the soon to be open Secretary of State job.
1
The one thing I know about people like Nimrata neé Riwhanda is that if you take away their money, they will do ANYTHING to get it back.
And I mean anything.
Simply boycott the kkkonfederate states and those traitorous defeated dogs will come to heel in no time.
2
Nikki Haley is showing gradually that she is basically dishonest.
1
You can over-analyse racism. And Haley represents a Republican Party that believes in voter suppression and white nationalism. She can’t run away from that.
1
Nor should democrats run away from its southern history as the party of segregation. And I’m not talking about 1860, but deep into the 20th century. Clinton ensures the confederacy flew over his capitol, Hollings in SC, G. Wallace and esteemed senators Hollings (who raised the flag right there in SC) and Robert Byrd, Thurmond. Sure, we all evolved. But the shallow and repetitive depiction of GOP as the racist party is too easy a way out.
Tiresome symbol-wars.
2
Power and fame weakening your spine.
Nikki Hayley is solidifying herself with the Trump base so she can position herself in 2020
The confederate flag is the symbol of the most treasonous acts ever committed by American citizens. Those traitors fought a brutal, bloody war which lead to the deaths of untold thousands, all in the name of retaining slavery as a way of life in the southern states. After the war, with slavery finally banished, the flag morphed into the symbol of slavery's replacement, white supremacy. Nikki Haley is of Asian Indian descent. Her people were not forcefully brought to this country in shackles, sold as property, and forced to work as slaves for over 200 years. What business does she have even speaking on this subject? Her recent comments are just a brazen play for future votes from what is now the Trump base.
1
My thought: Spot on. My brother the Democrat voted Republican once in his life, for Trump. I am not sure that will happen again, pretty certain his wife and daughter have making their disapproval known. But he loved the song Free Bird, back when it was played at concerts, he went to them and sent me photos. I looked up the video, with the flag. He is a racist. Not against any other race than black, because his wife is Asian. I don't where he picked the racism up. We both grew up in Utah. But, he has lived in Florida for decades, something there changed him.
1
Right you are Charles. Once Haley became an apologist for Trump in the impeachment debate I gave up on her. I don’t need to know any more about Nikki Haley. She is backboneless and interested only in her political future. Let’s not waste any more time discussing this person. She is a waste of our time.
To understand how Slave State Conservatives, Neo-Confederates, came to dominate the Republican party, you only need to look at the presidential electoral map of 1964.
Barry Goldwater won Arizona, and 5 slave states; the Republican party suddenly became captive to the Confederate states, and the 'Lost Cause' became the fake news that the immoral slave conservatives so desperately wanted.
1
Good is good, and she deserves more credit than Clinton or Hollings who flew the flag over their capitols. Blow is doing some revisionist history on his own. In the wake of the church shootings, SC came together. I recall Don Lemon (CNN) asking a leading question of an African American state senator. To paraphrase: “So, you had to overcome resistance from Haley and the Republicans to get this done, right?” Wrong! “No, we were actually all in this together and got it done.” Oops!
So, pick apart as you do, and apply your own distortions. The parishioners got it right, and elevated everyone in the shooting’s aftermath. And it all came together under Haley’s leadership.
4
Still pandering after all these years.
Like all other Republicans, they cleave strongly to the racist, homophobic, narrow-minded, past-looking positions in hope of 1) pleasing Great Orange in hopes of the greatest lives ever, and 2) not angering his low-information, aggrieved base so he does not unleash a childish twitter tirade that makes them take action.
1
If it is a symbol of pride, why is the south so proud of 4 years of war to maintain slavery? What about the other 400 years of Western Civ history there? Isn't there anything else to be proud of?
1
Nikki Haley is so anxious to become Trump's next VP she'll say and do anything. Shameful.
Never lived in SC, but a flag is symbolic and in this case represents repression in the worst way (slavery) ... period!
Nikki Haley is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
2
The residue of any points Amb. Haley got for removing the flag from the SC capitol building were long gone when this interview demonstrated her moral pliability and political priorities.
Ms. Haley doesn't seem to grasp that the guy who spoiled the Confederate battle flag for the south was Ulysses Grant, not a 21st century killer.
If Southern white people don't think Confederate flags show hate, fine. They still symbolize an armed uprising against the lawful government of the United States in which millions of Americans were killed, injured, or damaged by the loss of fathers, husbands, brothers and sons.
It's logically maddening for those super-booster MAGA types to venerate the US flag and tolerate Confederate ones.
Those who still deny the hatred and racism any of the Confederate flags show displayed on a private building might reflect about what they exude flying on a seat of state government.
Several decades ago, when the late Tom Petty, himself southern-born, started banning them from his concerts he explained his epiphany. He suddenly saw that Confederate flags represent hate to African Americans exactly the way the swastika does to Jews. Can anybody imagine the flag of a German stadt or burg incorporating a swastika?
But it's even worse than a demonstration of hate for one part of our people; Confederate flags show contempt for anyone who has served in the U.S. military since 1865. And ror the rule of law and applying it equally to all.
Keep it going. Come on!
Rivers and lakes disappearing in Australia, blocks in San Francisco flooded, acres, acres of land below stagnant sea water in Florida, fires, Venice under water. Haley not that important now, confederate flag not that important now. Droughts, flooding, designer meat and vegetables, and displacement this is our future.......be content not to be content
Can someone please help me understand why Indian-Americans, virtually alone among immigrants of color, are flocking to the Republican Party, which is overwhelmingly white?
What accounts for Bobby Jindal in Louisiana? For Nikki Haley in South Carolina? Why is Ajit Pai doing the GOP's dirty work for big corporations at the FCC? And Dinesh D'Souza espousing the most extreme Republican views in the media?
While immigrants of color are virtually all flocking to the Democratic Party, which is protecting and championing American diversity, Indian-Americans seem to be coalescing around the GOP, the white people's party.
Sad and inexplicable.
2
She is pandering to Trump, Republicans and those who voted them into office .. Clearly thinking of her political future. Nikki has drunk the kool-aid. Is anyone surprised by that?
Her willfull ignorance and twisting of historical fact should not surprise anyone. She is looking towards her political future and trying to ensure she is not on the receiving end of a mean girls nick name or juvenile tweet from Trump.
It did not take a mass murderer to hijack ANYTHING. Yes, Nikki, you do have hateful people in South Carolina.. Hateful people are everywhere. She stopped short of mimicking Trump's comment about fine people on both sides.
Someone send this woman some history books, please.. Or a suggested reading list.
When are we going to call the Confederacy for what it was? When a group of people rise up in revolt against a duly elected government they are called traitors, THAT is what the Confederacy was.
2
Nikki has a little shine to her when she went to the U.N. That is long gone and she has been exposed. You know that in the 1800's there were Indians who betrayed their people.
1