Biden

The Washington Post

Illustration of Donald Trump and Joe Biden on a debate stage, each standing behind podiums that face each other. In the crowd behind them, people are waving their fists and shouting.

other

Trump Greenville South Carolina

US-POLITICS-MELANIATRUMP-MOTHER

Contributor

House Republicans hold a press conference in advance of tonight’s State of the Union, on March 01 in Washington, DC.

staff

House Republicans hold a press conference in advance of tonightÕs State of the Union, on March 01 in Washington, DC.

WAUKESHA, WI - MAY 1st: Former President, Donald Trump, makes a grand entrance on stage for a campaign rally on Wednesday May 1st, 2024.(Photo by Sara Stathas for the Washington Post)

For The Washington Post

 Donald Trump Speaks During A Campaign Rally In Green Bay Wisconsin

Gaza protest Columbia

Arizona Republican Senate Candidate Kari Lake Meets With Lawmakers At The Capitol

Stringer

Who will Trump choose for VP? Narrow the list with this quiz.

Republicans and Democrats vote in Pennsylvania primary elections

Robert F. Kennedy

Election 2024 Biden Alabama Ballot

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign

Judge keeps tying Trump to possible intimidation

In court, Stormy Daniels pulled a Trump on Trump 

How Brittney Griner raised and keeps raising the profile of hostages held abroad

Middle East conflict live updates: Israeli officials criticize Biden’s threat to halt weapons over Rafah

Israel puts Rafah in the eye of the storm

RFK Jr’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

The next global crisis could come from the sun. We should prepare now.

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

Cruise worker charged with stabbing 3 with scissors on ship off Canada

France tries to shed its rude reputation ahead of the Olympics

Don’t be a jerk at the airport: A guide for headphones

In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024

Biden back in the battleground state of Wisconsin

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

Why everyone’s mad at Apple’s new iPad ad

A college professor wants to use Section 230 against Big Tech

Commerce Department revokes more export licenses to China’s Huawei

Ask Amy: Relatives keep me giving me updates on my old family home

Carolyn Hax: Was it wrong to approach late wife’s pal for no-commitment sex?

Miss Manners: My roommate and I have opposite sleep schedules

Nationals finally run out of answers and fall to Orioles in 12 innings

These Nationals are pretty fun. They would be more fun with James Wood.

Nats go over .500 the hard way by beating the O’s and Corbin Burnes

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Think you want a dog? Take our quiz to find out if you’re ready.

‘Look at the U.S.A.’: A photographer’s reflection on post-9/11 conflict

Trump trial live updates: Stormy Daniels spars with Trump lawyer during heated cross-examination

Former U.S. President Donald Trump appears at court in New York

See more coverage in your recommendations

Get the weekly Campaign Moment newsletter

Set alerts for major election developments

Election 2024

The Campaign Moment newsletter

Politics alerts

Melina Mara

With one answer in a TV interview, Republican presidential candidate <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/nikki-haley-2024/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_3&itid=lk_inline_manual_2" target=_blank>Nikki Haley</a> again ignited a campaign trail debate about racism and its role in America, putting the precarious politics of race front and center as the GOP nominating contests get underway.

Just a few weeks after Haley’s comments about whether the Civil War was caused by slavery <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/13/haley-trump-civil-war-history/" target=_blank>stirred</a> controversy and division within her party’s ranks, Haley told Fox News on Tuesday that America is “not a racist country” and has “never been a racist country.”

“Are we perfect? No,” she added. “But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.”

candidates-tracker

Get the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/05/09/election-2024-campaign-updates/" target=_blank>latest news on the 2024 election</a> from our reporters on the campaign trail and in Washington.

Election 2024 context box

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/12/biden-trump-win-presidential-nomination/" target=_blank>President Biden and Donald Trump both secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency</a>, formalizing a general-election rematch.

Illustration of a calendar grid with colored boxes forming the U.S. flag.

election-calendar

Here are some of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/calendar-2024/" target=_blank>key dates ahead of the 2024 general election</a> in November.

policy pages

Compare where all of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2023/presidential-candidates-2024-policies-issues/" target=_blank>candidates stand on key issues</a> such as abortion, the climate and the economy.

themoment-campaign-nl-23

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/newsletters/campaign-moment/" target=_blank>Sign up for The Campaign Moment</a>, reporter Aaron Blake’s guide to what you really need to know about the 2024 election.

While Haley has acknowledged her experiences with racism growing up as a person of color, she — like other GOP <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/presidential-candidates-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">presidential candidates</a> this cycle — has doubled down on the belief that systemic racism does not exist in America, and that the nation is not racist. Haley has made similar comments <a href="https://twitter.com/NikkiHaley/status/1298260967256514562" target=_blank>for years</a>, but the sentiments have taken on new life in a presidential election in which race seems to be at the center of many discussions on party politics.

The former U.N. ambassador’s response was sparked by a viral moment from MSNBC host Joy Reid, who on Monday said Haley is “still a Brown lady that’s got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant. … I don’t see how she becomes the nominee of that party.”

In a Tuesday interview with Fox News, Haley said she and Reid must live in “different” Americas, and that although she faced racism as a “Brown girl that grew up in a small rural town in South Carolina,” she became “the first female minority governor in history, who became a U.N. ambassador and who is now running for president.”

“If that’s not the American Dream, I don’t know what is,” Haley added. “You can sit there and give me all the reasons why you think I can’t do this. I will continue to defy everybody on why we can do this, and we will get it done.”

Race has been a delicate issue for Haley, who began her campaign as the only woman in the GOP field and is now the only remaining person of color vying to represent a Republican Party that is still <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-profiles-of-republican-and-democratic-voters/#:~:text=than%20Republican%20voters.-,Racial%20and%20ethnic%20composition%20of%202022%20voters,compared%20with%20the%202018%20midterms." target=_blank>predominantly White</a>. After a white supremacist killed nine people in 2015 at a historically Black church in Charleston, Haley — then South Carolina’s governor — signed legislation to remove the Confederate flag from State House grounds. But that came years after she <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/28/nikki-haley-slavery-civil-war-cause-answer/" target=_blank>resisted</a> earlier efforts to remove the flag from the grounds.

“America has always had racism, but America has never been a racist country,” Haley’s campaign said in a statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday evening.

It went on to say that despite media portrayals, it “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.”

The United States has long struggled with a history — and a foundation — of racism. The nation’s Indigenous populations were displaced and massacred by settlers, and much of the country’s economic foundation was built on the labor of enslaved Black people. Divisions over slavery sparked the nation’s Civil War, with slavery being abolished only after the Confederate Army — which espoused white-supremacist beliefs — was defeated.

The end of slavery, however, did not mean the end of racism against Black Americans. Jim Crow laws made segregation the rule of the land in the South. It wasn’t until the civil rights movement of the 1960s — including the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 — that many of the Jim Crow laws were repealed and Black Americans began to experience some semblance of equality that is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2017/08/17/the-economic-impact-of-racism/" target=_blank>still</a>, to this <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/05/16/black-communities-excess-deaths/" target=_blank>day</a>, not <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/cdc-racism-public-health-crisis/2021/04/09/27dbbc22-995b-11eb-b28d-bfa7bb5cb2a5_story.html" target=_blank>ubiquitous</a>.

At a CNN town hall Tuesday night, fellow Republican presidential candidate <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/ron-desantis-2024/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_3&itid=lk_inline_manual_2" target=_blank>Ron DeSantis</a> — who criticized Haley last month for making no mention of slavery when she was asked about the cause of the Civil War — did not take the fresh opportunity to attack his rival. Instead, he echoed Haley’s sentiments, saying the United States is “not a racist country.”

“We’ve overcome things in our history,” he added.

As Florida governor, DeSantis has led intense efforts to de-emphasize racism in his state’s public school curriculum by, among other things, <a href="https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20653/urlt/6-4.pdf" target=_blank>establishing </a>new African American history standards that civil rights leaders and scholars <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/07/19/florida-black-history-standards/?itid=lk_inline_manual_15" target=_blank>say misrepresent centuries of U.S. reality</a>. Earlier <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/22/desantis-slavery-curriculum/" target=_blank>in the campaign</a>, DeSantis drew criticism for arguing that some Black people benefited from being enslaved.

Further pressed during the CNN town hall, DeSantis said the country has “had challenges with how race was viewed.”

“And so, for example, those were universal principles in the Declaration of Independence,” he said, before referencing the <i>Dred Scott </i>decision by the Supreme Court, which found that Scott, a Black man, was not a U.S. citizen.

“That was wrong. That was discriminating on the basis of race,” DeSantis said. “That’s why you ended up having the 14th Amendment ratified to overturn <i>Dred Scott</i>.”

Peter Loge, director of the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, noted that when confronted with the question of whether America is a racist country, politicians tend to argue that the nation continues to discover “who we want to be as a nation, who we aspire to be as a people.”

“There are racists who live here. A lot of our founding documents have racism baked in, like racism was … literally written into the U.S. Constitution,” he said. “But we can strive to be better as a nation.”

Loge noted that the spirit of a question like “Is America a racist country?” is not meant to result in a nuanced response, but rather an answer that will rally a political base.

“The point of the question was not to elicit a thoughtful answer,” he said. “Like, he could have said, ‘How do you think America is doing wrestling with its, confronting its, racist history? … [Or]: We just celebrated the memory of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. How do you think he would say we’re doing?”

Haley’s and DeSantis’s comments encapsulate the thin line that Republican candidates toe when talking about race on the campaign trail to a GOP base that has upheld former president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/donald-trump-2024/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_2" target=_blank>Donald Trump</a> — a figure who has espoused racist rhetoric, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-conspiracy-theory-republicans/2020/10/16/a056e97c-0fc4-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html" target=_blank>struggled </a>to condemn white supremacists and who last month <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/22/trump-campaign-immigrants-mass-deportations/" target=_blank>said</a> immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” — as its front-runner.

Soon after Haley’s comments, Trump embarked on a tirade against his former U.N. ambassador, posting about her on his social media site Truth Social using her first name — which he misspelled — in an attack that appeared to be a racist dog whistle.

“Anyone listening to Nikki ‘Nimrada’ Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary,” Trump said. “She didn’t, and she couldn’t even beat a very flawed Ron DeSanctimonious, who’s out of money, and out of hope. Nikki came in a distant THIRD!”

Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants who moved to the United States in the 1960s, was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. Her father, Ajit Singh Randhawa, is a professor of biology who got his PhD at the University of British Columbia and later moved to Bamberg, S.C., a segregated town where Haley was born, to teach at nearby Voorhees College — a historically Black university. Even before the campaign began, Haley repeatedly stated that she has always gone by her middle name, which is Punjabi for “little one,” and that she changed her last name to Haley after marrying her husband, Michael Haley.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/vivek-ramaswamy-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Vivek Ramaswamy</a>, who dropped out of the Republican presidential primary race earlier this week, had also publicly <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/politics/pretty-pathetic-nikki-haley-fires-back-at-childish-vivek-ramaswamy-after-he-mocks-her-indian-maiden-name/" target=_blank>referred</a> to Haley by her Indian maiden name. At the time, Haley told Fox News: “First of all, I was born with Nikki on my birth certificate. I was raised as Nikki. I married a Haley. And so that is what my name is, so he can say or misspell or do whatever he wants.”

This is not the first time Trump has used a rival’s name or background as a tool in his efforts to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/17/trump-playbook-foes-haley/" target=_blank>“other” them</a>.

During the 2016 presidential race, Trump referred to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who was then a GOP presidential candidate, by his first name, Rafael. Trump also built favor with the extreme right of the Republican Party when, in 2011, he began floating racist and baseless claims about former president Barack Obama <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/16/trump-admits-obama-was-born-in-u-s-but-falsely-blames-clinton-for-starting-rumors/" target="_blank">not being born in the United States</a>, and he frequently emphasizes Obama’s middle name, Hussein.

Just three months ago, Trump <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck3mHnq2kd4" target=_blank>blamed</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a> and “his boss, Barack Hussein Obama,” for the Oct. 7 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Hamas</a> attack on Israel.

Loge said Trump is playing to voters who share a similar background as him. These voters, he said, are the people who say, “‘I want to know my president is somebody who gets me, who understands my frustrations, my anxieties … [who] kind of gets me.’” Loge argued that, by using Haley’s first name, Trump is sending his voters the message that “she’s not like us. She’s not one of us.”

The discussion also expanded beyond the GOP primary race.

Vice President Harris told ABC’s “The View” on Wednesday that while the history of racism in America shouldn’t be reduced to a sound bite, “racism has played a role in the history of our nation.”

“We all would agree that while it’s part of our past and we see vestiges of it today, we should also be committed, collectively, to not letting it define the future of our country. But we cannot get to progress on the issue of race by denying the existence of racism, by denying the history of racism,” she continued.

Three years ago, Harris made a slightly different assessment of the issue on “Good Morning America,” which echoed some of Haley’s sentiments.

“I don’t think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak the truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today,” Harris said in 2021.

Northwestern University, BS in Journalism

Northwestern University, MS in Journalism 

Mariana Alfaro is a reporter for The Washington Post's breaking political news team. The El Salvador native joined The Post in 2019. Before that, Mariana interned at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Insider, and The Texas Tribune. 

Mariana Alfaro

National Press Foundation Paul Miller Fellow, 2018

New York University, BA in journalism and social and cultural analysis

Maegan Vazquez is a politics breaking news reporter. She joined The Washington Post in 2023.

Maegan Vazquez

Is America racist? Nikki Haley sparks campaign trail debate on U.S. racism.

the-washington-post

Live updates

Indiana primaries

Who is running

Key issues

Republican delegate tracker

2024 calendar

Balance of Power Pair

U.S. House Aggregate

U.S. Senate Aggregate

Elections

washpost

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/politics&limit=20

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Politics

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.

prism://prism.query/site,/politics/the-fix&limit=6

prism://prism.query/elections-feed-with-transparency-labels,News,Analysis,Perspective,Advice,Opinion/&limit=20

News about the 2024 election, plus video and opinions.

prism://prism.query/todays-articles-by-subtype-and-section,live-all,/elections,[now-4h+TO+now]/?limit=1