Nikki Haley and the Confederate Flag

Nikki Haley in November. Credit…Emily Elconin/The News & Advance, via Associated Press

Former South Carolina Governor and Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley made some controversial comments about the confederate flag recently. In this article from the New York Times we read, “Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, came under criticism on Friday after she told a conservative radio host that the Confederate flag symbolized “service, sacrifice and heritage” for some people in her state until Dylann S. Roof ‘hijacked’ it. Mr. Roof, the avowed white supremacist who killed nine black parishioners when he opened fire on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015, posed with the flag in several photos before the long-planned attack. Ms. Haley, a Republican and former United States ambassador to the United Nations, made her comments on Friday on the podcast The Glenn Beck Program, hosted by Glenn Beck. During the podcast interview, she paid tribute to the people targeted by Mr. Roof, calling them “amazing people” before she turned her attention to him and the flag. ‘Here is this guy who comes out with his manifesto, holding the Confederate flag and had just hijacked everything that people thought of,’ she said on the podcast. ‘We don’t have hateful people in South Carolina. There’s always the small minority who are always going to be there, but people saw it as service, sacrifice and heritage. But once he did that, there was no way to overcome it.’ In the aftermath of the shooting, Ms. Haley called for the flag’s removal from the Statehouse. She accused the ‘national media’ of ‘wanting to define what happened.’ ‘They wanted to make this about racism. They wanted to make it about gun control. They wanted to make it about the death penalty,’ Ms. Haley said on the podcast. Her remarks touched off a heated debate on social media. ‘Really, Nikki?!’ Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, posted on Twitter, adding that Mr. Roof ‘inherited’ the meaning of the Confederate flag.”

In response to the criticism, Ambassador Haley responded, according to this article, “Sad that the outrage media has gone crazy about my recent interview with Glenn Beck. What I said was accurate. Many in South Carolina did see the Confederate flag as symbolizing heritage and many others saw it as a symbolling (sic) hate. That’s why it was such a difficult issue for so long.”

It’s worth recalling what she said four years ago when she ordered the flag to come down from South Carolina’s Capitol grounds. This article tells us, “Shortly after the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse grounds, Gov. Nikki Haley told CNN’s Don Lemon that placing the flag in 2000 was a poor decision. ‘I think the more important part is it should have never been there,’ she said. ‘These grounds are a place that everybody should feel a part of. What I realized now more than ever is people were driving by and felt hurt and pain. No one should feel pain.’ Haley, a rising star in the Republican Party, is the youngest current governor in the U.S. She is also the first woman and the first Indian American to serve as Governor of South Carolina. Haley said the flag should be in a museum, a place that preserves history, not in a place where people gather to implement policies about the state’s future. ‘There is a place for that flag,’ she said. ‘It’s not in a place that represents all people in South Carolina.’

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley visits “Fox & Friends” at Fox News Channel Studios on Nov. 12. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)

This article by Professor Adam Domby of the College of Charleston tells us, “On Friday, Haley declared the Confederate flag was ‘hijacked’ by the racism of a single white supremacist terrorist in 2015, and that before then, ‘people saw it as service, sacrifice and heritage.’ While perhaps a shrewd statement for a potential presidential run, Haley was not presenting accurate history. Indeed, the flag had long been tied to white supremacy, racism and racial violence. The Confederate flag was already tied to racism in 2000 when the state legislature agreed to move it from the top of the capital to the nearby Confederate monument where it would remain for the next 15 years. Indeed, the flag had first flown at South Carolina’s State House, at least partially in response to federal orders to desegregate. The Confederate flag was a favorite symbol of those resisting the civil rights movement, including, in this case, the South Carolina government. It was no accident that in 1948, the pro-segregation Dixiecrat party flew the Confederate flag as part of an openly racist campaign. With a platform that declared ‘We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race,’ the party opposed ‘the elimination of segregation,’ ‘social equality’ or ‘the repeal of miscegenation statutes.’ At the Dixiecrats’ 1948 convention, supporters of Strom Thurmond — then governor of South Carolina — held up Confederate flags and pictures of Robert E. Lee. When Haley says South Carolina doesn’t have ‘hateful’ people, she obscures the long history of racist hatred demonstrated alongside the Confederate banner. Look no further than Charleston in 1875, where armed members of the Carolina Rifle Club of Charleston marched through town behind a Confederate flag in an effort to intimidate black voters as part of a statewide white-supremacist campaign that included voter intimidation, ballot box stuffing and terrorism. White supremacists at the time did not need to appropriate the symbol; it already belonged to them. Indeed, the flag first flew in front of an all-white army fighting to create a slaveholders’ republic. In 1864, it was under the Confederate flag that Nathan Bedford Forrest’s troops killed unarmed U.S. Army soldiers at Fort Pillow in Tennessee because of the color of their skin. It is important to note how Confederates understood their cause and symbols. The second national flag of the Confederacy, often called the ‘stainless banner,’ was a white flag with the Confederate battle flag in the canton designed to symbolically evoke racial pride. An 1863 editorial supporting the new design declared that ‘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 emblematical of our cause.’ The white-supremacy movement did not hijack the memory of the Confederacy; in many ways, the modern white-supremacist movement evolved out of the failed Confederate movement. Confederate veterans were rarely embarrassed when called white supremacists. In fact, Julian Carr, who led the United Confederate Veterans and spoke at more Confederate monument dedications than perhaps any other North Carolinian, campaigned for U.S. Senate in 1900 under the slogan, ‘The White Man Must Rule or Die.’ He lost his primary because he was seen as too friendly toward African Americans.”

Professor Domby concludes his article, “Whitewashed history and a lack of empathy, promoted by political leaders, seem to foster nostalgia for a past than never was. Bad history allows the terrorist attacks at Charleston and Charlottesville to appear as aberrations instead of part of a longer history of white-supremacist violence. Only by ignoring the long history of racial discrimination and violence can we pretend racism is just a problem in the hearts of a few and not a persistent, institutional issue. Indeed, racism and white identity politics still play a major role in our political discourse. Pretending racism isn’t a problem may appeal to some white voters, but it’s bad for the country.”

In my view, Ambassador Haley is not completely wrong. There are a significant number of people who view the confederate flag as a symbol of tradition, honor, and heritage. But in the long run, she’s more wrong than right, because the flag has also always symbolized a fight to perpetuate slavery and white supremacy. It has always been a banner carried by an army of treason that fought to keep African Americans enslaved and that fought to prevent African Americans from gaining equal rights. During Reconstruction it was a banner that was carried by the Carolina Rifle Club, a white supremacist terrorist organization. It was a banner displayed by the Dixiecrats, a party dedicated to maintaining segregation and racist laws. It was a banner carried by those who opposed civil rights for African Americans. It is the go-to symbol for white supremacists in this country.

So why does Ambassador Haley bring this up? This article from 2016 may shed some light. “South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) announced Wednesday that she is endorsing Marco Rubio for president, potentially giving the Florida senator a much needed bump in the state ahead of Saturday’s primary. But Donald Trump supporters in South Carolina’s lowcountry aren’t bothered that the real estate mogul lost the governor and rising GOP star’s endorsement. Voters at Trump rallies on Wednesday told ThinkProgress that Haley lost their support when she made the decision last summer to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol, where it had flown for 54 years. And they said they will never forgive her. ‘That’s history,’ said Tammi Lawton, who attended Trump’s rally in Walterboro with four friends. ‘No matter which way you look at it, that is history. That’s Southern history, and she’s a stupid idiot.’ Ridgeland, South Carolina-resident Dianne Lawson said that she voted for Haley in 2014, but wouldn’t do it again. ‘She lost her support in South Carolina this past summer,’ she said. ‘I’d always been a supporter of Nikki Haley, but I don’t believe the package that she’s selling anymore. She knuckled under to political pressure and she went too quick and didn’t care what South Carolina residents thought. It was all about what was going to make her look good.’ And Chris Horsley said he is upset that Haley didn’t let state residents vote on the issue. ‘She was a totalitarian on it,’ he said. ‘It should have been up to the people of South Carolina.’ The feelings weren’t limited to just the lowcountry. Bruce Mayer, who saw Trump speak later Wednesday in Sumter, South Carolina, agreed. ‘I voted for her twice and I’m extremely disappointed in her,’ he said. ‘No matter what your views are on the Confederate flag in South Carolina, I feel like she leveraged that situation shamelessly down in Charleston where all those poor people were murdered. She took that situation and immediately politicized it and started screaming for the Confederate flag to come down.’ ” I speculate her ambition is driving her attempt to define her 2015 actions and her attempt to woo white southern heritage instead of history types back.

My friend and blogging colleague Andy Hall has this to say on the issue.

Those looking for more information should consult John Coski’s excellent book, The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem, for an excellent analysis. My review here.