Nikki Haley’s entire campaign is built on assuaging white guilt

OPINION: From denying America is racist to blaming the divide in the country on the Obama presidency, Nikki Haley makes it clear she doesn’t want white people to feel bad.

Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

Nikki Haley doesn’t have a chance in hell at winning the presidency. 

That is, of course, my opinion, but I am willing to bet cash money that in addition to me “knowing” it, voters know it, Republicans know it and Nikki Haley for sure knows it. 

When you look at the average age of the white people in power in this country, you understand that these people do not relinquish power ever, and they stick around forever because evil never dies. We’ve discussed this before, but in case you need a refresher course, I wrote about this when Dianne Feinstein died. 

Nikki Haley is playing the long game. 

The former governor of South Carolina and U.N. ambassador — who also gave us the gift of Tim Scott — has had time to sit back and observe the radical and racist policies those on the right have been putting in place. 

There is a push in this country to eliminate any and all “sources” of white guilt. I put the word sources in quotation marks because the actual source of the white guilt is their own consciences. 

Because they lack the self-awareness to see that, they blame things like the accurate teaching of American history that includes the atrocities whiteness has exacted upon Black people (or anyone who is not white and cis-gendered). 

The entire “critical race theory” propaganda campaign was evidence of this. They laid the plan out right in front of us — putting up a scare campaign that convinced racist white people that their children were being made to feel guilty for things that happened hundreds of years before they were born. 

And because white fragility is so strong and the need to uphold the structure of white supremacy that ultimately benefits them in some ways, they would rather blame the people calling out the problem instead of addressing the problem itself. 

White people don’t want a colorblind society; they want a society that is blind to racial and social injustice. 

This is why you now see books being banned that teach little Black girls that it’s OK to wear their hair as it grows out of their heads and books that tell queer Black people that it’s OK to be who they are. 

It is about continuing to otherize us while attempting to erase any evidence of said othering. 

Nikki Haley sees where this train is going, and her plan is to ride it all the way to the last stop. 

She’s leaning in fully to the assuaging of white guilt on each and every one of her campaign stops, one of the latest being on “The Breakfast Club” with Charlagmagne tha God and DJ Envy. 

During this appearance, Haley blamed the current division in the country on the Obama presidency, which is when she claims people really started to feel the divide and felt like they were being put into “boxes.”

It takes a certain amount of nerve to form your mouth to say something like that without acknowledging the way it was President Obama who took a lot of racist heat when he got in office. 

It wasn’t about Black people attacking white people; it was about white people feeling affronted that a Black man had ascended to the highest office in the country, and there wasn’t anything they could do about it. 

Rather than suck it up like we did with the Trump presidency, they launched racist attacks at him including suggesting he wasn’t born in the United States and lobbing Islamophobia at him because of his name. 

But please, Sarah Palin — oops, I mean Nikki Haley — tell me more about how it’s the fault of the Obama administration and not the racist white people who took that time to be overtly racist. 

Remember, this is the same woman who refused to say slavery was a major factor in the Civil War getting started, and who has doubled and tripled down on her claims that America is not now and never has been a racist country. 

Nikki Haley is appealing to a base that wants to be racist but doesn’t want to be made to feel bad about it, and in order to do that, she has to absolve them of any wrongdoing. 

Again, she knows she does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination or the 2024 presidential election, but she’s putting herself out there and saying all the right things that are going to curry favor with the people who won’t be able to vote for Donald Trump in 2028 and will refuse to vote for Tim Scott, no matter how much he shucks, jives and bucks his eyes. 

I suppose you have to give Nikki credit. 

If this were the dope game, one could say she got the testers out, and the product is good. 

She’s going to keep the testers out there until it’s time to raise the price and collect on her goods. 

By that time, the racist people she is pandering to will be so high what she’s dealing that they will do anything to get an endless supply of it.

Monique Judge is a storyteller, content creator and writer living in Los Angeles. She is a word nerd who is a fan of the Oxford comma, spends way too much time on Twitter, and has more graphic t-shirts than you. Follow her on Twitter @thejournalista or check her out at moniquejudge.com.

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