Opinion
Nikki Haley can’t beat Trump in the game of identity politics
Summary
- Haley has had no response to Trump’s signalling on her lineage and her campaign seems somewhat ill-equipped to contest her rival’s race plank.
First Nikki Haley tried to eliminate slavery as a cause of the Civil War. Now she’s trying to erase racism from American history. In an interview with Fox News last week, Haley was asked if the Republican Party is racist. She ignored the specific question and went broad. “We’re not a racist country... We’ve never been a racist country," she said, adding that while she faced racism as a kid, she ended up living the American dream. “Our goal is to make sure that today is better than yesterday. Are we perfect? No. But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can." She is playing her version of identity politics, using her singular story of breaking racial barriers as an argument against racism. It’s a familiar move for non-Caucasian Republicans.
[In the US primaries], Haley is trying to appeal to a voting bloc that increasingly sees ‘whiteness’ as a politically salient and threatened identity. It’s a tough spot for the daughter of Indian immigrants, but Haley’s trying her best to assure these voters that she isn’t an outsider or a threat to the status quo. And that she won’t make them feel bad about being Caucasian.
But it won’t work—at least not for Haley. Not in Donald Trump’s Republican party. That’s because Trump is the master of stoking Caucasian grievance. The former president, fresh off a big victory in Iowa, is reminding voters that Haley’s first name is Nimarata. Her given name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She took her husband Michael Haley’s last name when they got married.
In fact, Trump has dusted off his entire ‘birtherism’ playbook and is deploying it against Haley. “Anyone listening to Nikki ‘Nimrada’ Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary," Trump posted on Truth Social, misspelling her name. He also suggested that Haley, born in Bamberg, South Carolina, was ineligible to be president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born. Trump also posted a photoshopped image of Haley as Hillary Clinton. In other words, not only is she an Indian American, whose parents were immigrants... she’s also a woman!
This noxious brew of Caucasian identity politics wrapped in toxic masculinity has worked well for Trump. He sailed to the Republican nomination this way in 2016, and appears poised to do so again. He was among those who questioned the citizenship of Hawaii-born Barack Obama, and as Axios reminded us, a Trump campaign official spread a false conspiracy theory that Vice-President Kamala Harris was ineligible for office because her parents weren’t naturalized citizens when she was born. For her part, Haley has mostly ignored Trump, tending instead to downplay any suggestion of racism. “America has always had racism, but America has never been a racist country," a campaign spokesman said. “The liberal media always fails to get that distinction. It can throw a fit, but that doesn’t change Nikki’s belief that America is special because its people are always striving to do better and live up to our founding ideals of freedom and equality."
This, folks, is what’s called splitting hairs and a distinction without a difference.
“Part of what Haley is trying to do is make a distinction between individual prejudice and systemic racism," said Ashley Jardina, author of White Identity Politics. “The goal of that strategy seems to be an attempt to write off racism as the problem of a few fringe members of society. It allows Republicans to distance themselves from the claims of more widespread racism that have defined the Black Lives Matter movement and the political agenda of many of the left," Jardina said. Haley’s statements also allow her to distance herself from claims about Trump’s racism.
Haley is trying to make history. If she wins in New Hampshire, she’d be the first woman and first person of colour to ever win a state in a Republican nomination contest. The first ever. It would be a noteworthy achievement for her and her party, some 40 years after Jesse Jackson broke that barrier as a Democrat. Trump knows that one of the easiest ways to block her path is to stoke Caucasian grievance—to suggest that a vote for Haley is a vote for their own diminishment and marginalization. His goal is to essentially remind Caucasian voters [of their race] and suggest that their status is threatened. But Haley, wedded to ignoring racism and “sticking it to the libs," can’t call him out on it.
In letting America off the hook for racism, Haley lets Trump off the hook. As a result, she has deprived her flailing campaign of yet another line of attack against the former president. Trump said that Haley is facing a very strong ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) base and there is nothing she can do. On this point, he is exactly right. ©bloomberg
