How racist was our country? Take a look at the numbers.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
www.washingtonpost.com /politics/2024/01/18/haley-racism-us-polling/
How racist was our country? Take a look at the numbers.
Aaron Blake 5-6 minutes 1/18/2024
A Republican presidential primary campaign that has often focused on issues of race — Donald Trump’s “ poisoning the blood ” rhetoric, Ron DeSantis’s slavery curriculum in Florida and Nikki Haley’s initial failure to cite slavery as the cause of the Civil War — has now turned to this question: The lingering effects of systemic racism aside, has the country ever been racist?
As The Washington Post’s Mariana Alfaro and Maegan Vazquez report, Haley is doubling down on her claim that it has not. Haley has said for years that this isn’t a racist country, but she has extended that claim to cover 250 years of U.S. history.
“America has always had racism, but America has never been a racist country,” Haley’s campaign said in a statement Wednesday night.
Many people, including The Post’s Philip Bump, have unpacked the ways in which racism is ingrained in America’s past — and often in its official policies.
What Haley’s updated statement seems to suggest is an attempt to separate racism that has clearly existed in the United States from the country’s underlying character.
But as we digest that, it’s important to understand just how pervasive racist beliefs have been in the relatively recent past. A country, after all, is made up of its people, however much President Biden likes to say that “America is an idea.”
For that, we have polling dating back to the 1930s that provides insights, courtesy of the Roper Center’s great archive. Those polled at the time were disproportionately educated, White and male , but that also means the polling reflects how the most powerful demographic groups in the country felt. And depending on the question posed, a plurality or even a majority expressed racist views.
What may be the oldest, extensive, detailed data we have on this topic comes from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) in the 1940s. It found:
- 47 percent of Americans said restaurants shouldn’t serve both White and Black customers (surveys back then generally used the word “negro” instead of “Black”).
- 46 percent wouldn’t like being treated by a Black nurse.
- 51 percent said White people should get the first shot at a job over a Black person.
Some other key findings around this period:
- 63 percent said White and Black troops should be separated (Gallup, 1948).
- A majority supported school segregation in the South (Life magazine, 1950).
- 71 percent said Black people were less intelligent, and nearly half both agreed with that and said it was because they were born that way (Fortune magazine, 1939).
- While 94 percent disapproved of how the Nazis treated Jewish people, nearly two-thirds said the persecution of Jews in Europe was entirely (11 percent) or partly (54 percent) the Jewish people’s own fault (Gallup, 1938).
- Just 39 percent said Jewish people should be treated the same as all Americans; the rest preferred statements cautioning against Jews intermingling with others (11 percent), wanting to prevent Jews from gaining too much power in the business world (32 percent), or wanting to deport them to a “new homeland” (10 percent) (Fortune, 1939).
- Americans were about evenly split on whether Jewish people “have too much power and influence in this country” (Office of Public Opinion Research, 1942).
Polling on these subjects really picked up in the 1960s, amid the rise of the civil rights movement. A 1965 Harris Poll found that, while few Americans would object to working with or sitting next to a Black person:
- 37 percent would object to having a Black family live next door.
- 85 percent would object to a friend or relative marrying a Black person.
- 92 percent would object to their teenage daughter dating a Black person.
- 41 percent agreed that Black people had less “native intelligence.”
- 58 percent agreed that Black people had less ambition.
Around the same time, a 1968 NORC poll asked similar questions, breaking out how non-Black respondents felt. It found:
- Most blamed Black people’s failure to achieve equality more on their lack of initiative (54 percent) than on restrictions imposed by White society (38 percent).
- Most agreed that Whites had a right to keep Black people out of their neighborhoods, and that Black people “should respect that right.”
- About three-fourths agreed that Black people “shouldn’t push themselves where they’re not wanted.”
This is an incomplete picture, in large part because we don’t have good data on where Americans stood for about two-thirds of our nation’s history. Given the trends and how the country treated Black people, in particular, racism almost surely was significantly more pervasive in the 1800s.
But we’re also talking about findings that aren’t too far in our nation’s past; about half of the numbers you see above reflect the country as it existed when both of our likely 2024 major-party presidential nominees were alive.
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www.washingtonpost.com /politics/2024/01/16/nikki-haley-racism-republicans/
Haley’s politically useful denial of America’s racist past
Philip Bump 6-8 minutes 1/16/2024
Speaking on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday, hours after her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses was finalized, former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was asked to respond to comments made by MSNBC host Joy Reid on Monday night: Was the Republican Party racist?
“No, we’re not,” Haley replied. “We’re not a racist country. We’ve never been a racist country.” She did not address the actual question, instead adding that the United States wasn’t perfect and that she had experienced racism. But her goal, she said, was to “lift up everybody, not go and divide people on race or gender or party or anything else.”
Intentionally or not, Haley in those quotes succinctly summarized the often surreal race politics of the GOP.
We can start with the claim that the United States has “never been” a racist country, a claim that no serious person could defend.
Black people in the United States used to be enslaved, you’ll recall. The first three censuses measured the size of the White population and the number of enslaved people — in large part to accommodate the Constitution’s three-fifths compromise , boosting the power of slave states by allowing them to count five enslaved people as three people. There was also a category for non-White free people, but by 1820, non-enslaved Black people were counted separately.
Black Americans got the right to vote only after the Civil War, a conflict driven by the dispute over slavery. In many Southern states, though, that freedom was constrained for decades by laws intended to limit how many Black people could vote. That sat alongside other constraints, such as segregated schools and facilities.
More time passed between the 1877 Hall v. DeCuir decision, allowing segregation, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act than has elapsed between the Civil Rights Act and today. Jim Crow lasted longer than the post-Jim Crow era has.
Of course, racism didn’t end with the Civil Rights Act. The civil rights movement was very effective at convincing Americans that overt racism — segregation, burning crosses, Klan hoods — were unacceptable. But the belief held by many White Americans that Black people were less intelligent or more criminal simply manifested in other forms, including systems that quietly separated them out or targeted them.
About a decade ago, the Black Lives Matter movement drew attention to disparities in how law enforcement treats Black Americans, an effort that expanded awareness of systemic racism. The biennial General Social Survey, a national poll, shows a big increase in the percentage of Americans who attributed the lower economic position of Black Americans to anti-Black discrimination.
There was no real increase among Republicans. Instead, a plurality of Republicans in 2022 said the economic differences were because Black Americans “don’t have the motivation or will power to pull themselves up out of poverty” — a statement about an innate quality that reflects a racist belief. (It is perhaps an improvement over the once-popular response in the GSS that the differences were because Black Americans “have less inborn ability to learn.”)
This brings us to the first part of Haley’s comment, that the United States is not currently a racist country. This was not rhetoric she was unveiling for the first time on Fox News this morning. She used the line when speaking at the Republican convention in 2020 when Trump was being renominated by his party. She posted it to Twitter at the time, too.
That’s because, by 2020, the focus on systemic racism had triggered a backlash on the right. It predated the protests that unfolded that summer, but those protests made the pushback more salient. Trump was seeking reelection and used the protests as a foil, a way to present (as in Haley’s tweet) the Democrats as overly extreme in their assessments of race in America. The left’s focus on racism prompted the right to highlight the idea that considering how Americans deal with race is inherently negative and unpatriotic — if not somehow a deliberate left-wing effort to weaken the country.
Is America racist? There are certainly racists in America, and there are unquestionably manifestations of racism in systems. (One good example is that employers are less likely to consider applications from people with names associated with Black Americans.) Beyond that, the question doesn’t matter much. It is intentionally framed in a way that allows Haley and other Republicans to deflect debate onto friendlier terrain.
Notice that Haley — who, as governor of South Carolina, removed the Confederate flag from outside the state Capitol after a white supremacist killed nine Black people in a Charleston church — makes these claims in the context of electoral politics. This is also why she declined to identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War when asked at a campaign event; for a Republican presidential candidate , using the question to attack the federal government rather than historical racism is the smart play. Republicans, after all, are more likely to see discrimination against Whites than against Black Americans. (White Americans do not face more racism than Black Americans.) That Haley herself is not White increases her utility as a messenger.
Her line on Fox that she sought to avoid “divid[ing] people on race or gender or party,” meanwhile, reflects the common belief on the right that the only reason issues of racial or gender parity are raised by the left is so that they can be used as a partisan cudgel. That the Republican Party is so heavily White has made it easy for this idea to take root, with the effect of prompting Republicans to seek out examples in which the left or Black Americans purportedly contrive examples of racism.
The Iowa caucuses took place on the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. The holiday is a celebration of King’s life and of the success of the civil rights movement in combating overt discrimination in American society.
In recent years, Republicans have often latched onto King’s famous quote about judging people not on the color of their skin but the content of their character, as though this was an endorsement of ignoring differences based on race. But of course, King’s speech (and his life more broadly) made very clear that his point was not that colorblindness should be the default approach but that he dreamed of a day when it could be.
When King was alive, it’s worth noting, he was far less popular than he is today — thanks to hostility from White Americans.
If what you say is true, then you must hate the country....right?
I have no idea where you get that idea, but clarity is not your strong suit.
Republican presidential candidate and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has been under fire for claiming America “has never been a racist country.” Despite being presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Haley still would not concede America’s undeniable history of racism, citing the Declaration of Independence, which said “all men are created equal.”
During Thursday’s town hall with Haley on CNN, moderator Jake Tapper pressed the former governor of South Carolina, about the statement she made to Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade earlier this week. The question from Tapper was direct and filled with context:
This was Haley’s response:
For obvious reasons, Tapper pushed back, and ended up getting nearly the same response:
Watch the video above via CNN.
The post Nikki Haley Defends ‘Racist Country’ Comment: ‘The Intent Was Everybody Was GOING to Be Created Equally’ first appeared on Mediaite .My god.
First of all, we could both live in "the best country in the world" and it could be racist.
Secondly, most people alive in 1776 believed that Africans were inferior to whites , including the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and including the man who wrote it, Thomas Jefferson. Sure we can look back and say the D of I applied theoretically to "all men", but at the time "all men" did not mean all men, or women.
Haley is still digging, as they say. It wont hurt her in the GOP primaries, but if she were to somehow miraculously become the nominee it could hurt her in the general.
Take care of the racists in your own party first. Starting with Brandon.
She does realize that Black Veterans faced discrimination during WWs I and II? That Black Veterans couldn't get the VA home loans that white veterans did. They couldn't get the educational assistance.
About a year ago, I was talking to an African-American Woman where I work. She told me about her great-uncle who served in WW II was finally being awarded the Purple Heart he earned. It took that long to award him his medal. That;s a great shame
It wasn't just blacks but all minorities, Trout. My dad had three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star from WWII and couldn't buy a house. In 1965 I was on my way home after a second tour in Nam and they would not serve me in a diner in Devils Lake ND and I ended up in jail because I beat the shit out of two racists.
Haley should pull her head out of her ass and get some oxygen before making such ridiculous comments.
Yes, and I apologize for that
No need for an apology, Trout.
Yeah, I do. I have a tendency to over look the Native American history of rascism. It wasn't emphasized in any of the schools I went to
You are totally correct imo. I went to grammar , and even high school, at a time when the great majority of white people still believed that Custer was a hero. As I recall, we werent taught a thing about great Native American leaders.
And then I watched "Little Big Man". I know it wasn't historically accurate but they got the part right about Little Big Horn.
My opinion, for what it is worth.
While what Haley said about America never having been a racist country is hard to defend as stated, I understand what I believe she actually intended with the statement, as it coincides with my own views on the subject. In my view, concerning racism, the founding of our country is a great example of cognitive dissonance as one could wish for and, to a large extent, partially explains the civil war and the civil rights era of the 60's.
If I understand Haley's view, she meant something like America never having been founded on racist principles. The key to such a view centers around the idea that all men were created equal. And, in spite of the fact that, originally, the constitution held provisions for the protection of the institution of slavery, it overwhelmingly contained the idea for the support of inalienable rights of the individual. In my opinion, the cognitive dissonance of the early form of the Constitution and the behavior of people would inevitably be confronted by the very nature of the Constitution itself and we've seen this, historically.
To put it a different way, I think Haley was speaking of the fact that, if we were going to create a country shaped by the ideals of the Constitution was based on, it was inevitable that racism would have to be dealt with. In that sense, Haley was correct. We could not exist as a country based on the principles upon which the Constitution was based on and allow racism to continue as the cognitive dissonance of such a thing would not allow it. IOW, the country was never founded on racist ideas but, rather the opposite. Those ideas would force a confrontation with racism, as we have seen, historically.
I think there is some truth to that. Of course, Jefferson and some of the other early presidents owned slaves until the day they died , and even George Washington owned slaves that he did not free at his death. The majority of the first dozen or so presidents were slaveowners. Jefferson did try to prevent slavery from expanding to the northwest territories , and lost that vote, but what is left out of that praise for him was that restricting the expansion of slavery to the west would make his own slaves in Virginia more valuable.
The past is what it is, and cant be rehabilitated as Haley apparently wants to do. We can correct the mistakes of the past though and that is what everyone should co-operate with.
True.
But it can be made to seem other than what it was.
I haven't followed this issue, really, but I doubt that she wants to rehabilitate the past. Of course, that depends on what you, JR, define as rehabilitation. I doubt you and I have the same view concerning that.
I think most do, but perhaps not in the manner you might wish. CRT is the intentional viewing of society through racial lenses. In Marxist terms, it is the examination of a society through class struggle, whereas race is substituted with class in CRT. In such a view, the individual is erased and replaced with an ideological concept. Not a fan.