Onumba.com —- Nikki Haley flat-out lied when she said that there is no racism in America. Why she would say something so unhinged and irrational beats the crap out of me.
But then again, does she really believe that? Or was she simply indulging, as usual, in a spectacular sycophancy to President Trump?
Either way, this much is clear. Haley, has joined the pantheon of once reputable Republicans refusing to call out President Trump for his extremely bizarre presidential conducts, wayward ways, feckless and reckless leadership. Given all of that, Trump is on a trajectory to become the worst president in the history of the United States. No question about that.
Haley, in my view, doesn’t believe her assertion for one New York second. It was grandstanding galore, an obsequious statement made to please Trump. So don’t read more into it. It’s precisely the kind of political pickle Haley and her fellow squad of sycophant and spineless Republicans find themselves stroking the bloated ego of a woeful president they know damn well is manifestly appalling and copiously unfit for office.
Unfortunately, the Trumpian era brought us this stinking mess, an era of depressing and inundating idiocy. What we saw over the last four years was a saturation of codswallop and utter collapse of open and civil discourse. After his election as president, Trump took complete control of the GOP and quickly emerged as a formidable force not to mess with. He kept congressional Republicans on a short leash. And they feared being targets of his early morning tweets. That left the party littered with a cavalcade of pathetic milquetoasts behaving like kids terrified about getting in trouble with their strict parent. These wimpish Republicans, notably Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Ted Cruz of Texas, to name just a few, essentially sold-out. Over the last four years, they shamelessly engaged in cowardice act of constitutional vandalism, openly deciding to swap the oath they took to support the laws of the United States in favor of molly-cuddling a narcissistic Trump and his outlandish, heterodox and lawless brand of conservatism. The sad result of that atrocious sellout has been to look the other away as the president on a daily basis engages in a barrage of mind-numbing foolishness, bombardment of hyperbole and outright lies, utter disregard for the rule of law, and a wave of conducts and pronouncements that really belie basic presidential norms. It has been an epic gas-lighting of American people the height never seen before.
So when former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said during the recent Republican convention that “America is not a racist country,” it all made perfect sense. Realistically though, it was a deranged thing to say. In short, it was a bulging pack of claptrap, a tumid and robust fawning bazaar. Haley indulged in an epic mangling of the truth in a dramatic display of Trump fealty.
Ironically, it was Haley who as governor of South Carolina made a convincing case that led to the confederate flag, the Holy grail of all hate symbols, being pulled down from the capitol building. That flag, an iconic emblem of man’s inhumanity to man in the antebellum south, flew unperturbed for decades to the delight of White Supremacist cabals and to the dismay of everyone else. But it was always a racial tinderbox. In the end, Haley decided to yank it down. It was the right thing to do. Yet in that convention speech, for the life of me, she managed to puncture a gaping hole in her own case in favor of bringing down the flag, a case she eloquently made after casting the flag as an enduring symbol of racial hate and citizenry polarization. In that speech, Haley faced a conundrum tiptoeing through sort of a semantic minefield to avoid offending Trump who is prone to unleashing apoplectic rage at even the littlest slight.
“In much of the Democratic Party, it’s now fashionable to say that America is racist. That is a lie. America is not a racist country.” she said, in a speech deluged with equal parts of sycophantic accolades of President Trump and a blizzard of straight up lies to match. Her speech painted a rosy portrait of a president who in reality has been nothing but atrociously nauseating.
Please understand me: America is still bedeviled by a splitting problem of racism. No, the country is not as bigoted as it once was, but to say that racism is no longer wreaking havoc on minority communities is a seismic departure from reality. Minorities, especially Black people, are still quietly and openly catching the hell of White Supremacy racism every day in this country. And no, it does not make the local evening news, and those suffering its impact do not dwell on it, but it happens. It sure is reassuring to know that President-elect Joe Biden is not oblivious to it when he said recently: “The fact of the matter is, there’s an institutional racism in America.”
In a broad sense, racism is two-pronged. There’s straight-up racism and then there is White skin privilege, which is a mute form of racism that neither requires saying anything nor doing anything. More pointedly, what white skin privilege does is flag down all White people for special treatment —– this happens whether they know it or not, whether they understand it or not, whether they like it or not. All White folks are beneficiaries of it.
Of course, it would be irrational to indict all White folks as racist, but enough of them are. While some are proudly racist, others are glib and cagey about it. One thing is for sure, though. Racism is a dogged anachronism, an antiquated dogma still practiced by, at least “72 million”, ignoble misfits who refuse to embrace the enlightened human family. In short, for the most part, racism is no longer cool. As a result, most racist White folks have cleverly made the adjustment necessary to engage in it while warding off the shame and frown it often conjures up. Part of that snitty adjustment involves (in large part the society is to blame for this too) resorting to cloaking their disdain for Black people and other minorities under the unanimously, morally and legally acceptable gazebo of ‘tolerance.’
The benefit of being White in America is unending, sort of a gift that keeps on giving. Even White folks who are totally devoid of racism, and want no part of it, still cannot escape its benefit due to the irreversible nature of White skin privilege, a phenomenon which puts Black people and other minorities at a place of perpetually unfair disadvantage. Complete eradication of racism, which is only possible in our sweet dreams at night and Utopian wishes during the day, is the only thing that can kibosh White skin privilege. That will be a time when skin colors will still exist, but will not matter.
One last point. For the most part, those who unleash racism on minorities do not always broadcast their intention as was the case decades ago when racism was open and in your face. Because of the clandestine and friendly nature of modern assault of racism, sometimes, hapless victims are neither aware of their plight nor able to eloquently articulate it’s veiled intricacies.
Taken together, we are pretty much left with one inescapable conclusion. which completely goes against Haley’s assertion as well as unveils the nuances of racism. That is, much of what we satisfactorily dangle as racial equality is actually racial tolerance, which is perfectly fine with me, if only to help ward off the peril of strangling each other. But let’s be very clear, touting tolerance from the rooftop as the irrefutable proof of racism being a relic of the past and therefore no longer constitute a social burden for Black folks and other minorities, is dead wrong and disingenuous. Such posture does nothing but continue to fan the flame of bigotry, which nourishes the ground where institutional and systemic racism easily thrive.
