Nikki Haley, the Civil War, slavery, and why it’s all important

Nikki Haley isn’t stupid. But four days ago, when asked what was the cause of the Civil War, the former SC governor pretended she was when she responded empathically and movingly with the equivalent of, “Huh?”

After a ton of bewildered pushback, Nikki remembered that she did indeed know what the Civil War was about after all and on Thursday she ‘fessed up. “Yes, I know it was about slavery” she snapped.

This post today is not about what Nikki knew and when she knew it. It’s about the stunning importance, fear, discomfort, and guilt around race that is so prevalent in this country that it stops us in our tracks. Why this quagmire? Why did Nikki feel that she couldn’t just come out and say the simplest of things? Four simple, honest words. “It was about slavery.” In a more perfect world, a world where politicians strive to bring us together rather than drive us apart…a world where politicians strive to build an America that is one nation under God with liberty and justice for all, she might even have followed up with, “We don’t like to acknowledge our role in the horrors of slavery. But until we do and as Abraham Lincoln long ago said, this country will always remain a house divided against itself and we will not be able to stand.”

Instead of widening the national gap, she’d have closed it a tiny bit. Maybe had she shown courage and honesty instead of cowardice and deception, she’d have generated some courage and honesty among her fellow citizens and fellow politicians. She had a chance. She just didn’t have the courage. And the country suffered another self-inflicted, avoidable wound.

She initially tried to dance around the question with a typical politician’s non-answer answer. Why? Because her extreme right-wing, MAGA constituency does not want to talk about any aspect of any history that reflects poorly on White American greatness. Better to lie. To avoid. To ban books. To ban entire curriculums. Better to refer to slaves as immigrant laborers – as they do in some Texas schools. Better to paint slavery as actually kinda a good thing as divisive politician Ron DeSantis did in Florida; “Slaves learned valuable skills as slaves that they could then put to good use in their freedom.” implying that slaves were merely short-term indentured servants, guaranteed to be free in just a few years to pursue the American dream. A war over slavery?!? It never happened.

Remember when right wing politicians loved Nevada welfare rancher Cliven Bundy but then ran away screaming and denying when Cliven said that “Negroes were better off during slavery because their families were intact.” Now instead of running from Cliven, they’re mimicking him. “Slavery taught valuable skills.”

When I was in school, American history was taught as a series of triumphs that we have bragging rights to and that remain front and center over wrongs that were relegated to the distant and unimportant past. We portray that we are an honorable country always marching towards good. Slavery was evil, but the Civil War ended that evilness. Then there was segregation, but America-the-good gallantly addressed that with the civil-rights movement and with the help of White people ended segregation and all that had been unfair and un-American. Problem solved. Move on. There was no atoning for the near elimination of Native Americans, yet it somehow didn’t invalidate our national narrative of perpetual greatness. Abroad, the U.S. had led the cause of freedom against fascism and communism. At home Japanese internment, McCarthyism, and Vietnam were mistakes but they didn’t erase the larger picture of our greatness.

That’s a pretty optimistic narrative. And it’s false. As a country we did some remarkable stuff. We floated and even enacted some remarkable ideas: That all men (and eventually all races and later all women) are created equal. That citizens of a country can and should be governed by those fellow citizens who, by our collective vote, are freely given the authority to govern us. Money and lineage don’t count. One person – one (unsuppressed) vote. That idea of democracy was a uniquely American idea.

And we did some things that were not so nice. Nikki did us a favor by showing how fearful some Americans are of our history. Of our truth. But here’s the thing: If your friend who had suffered great mental and physical abuse and anguish decades ago came to you for advice and help with her deteriorating condition, you would recognize that all those years of repressing her trauma, not acknowledging it, not talking about it, feeling ashamed as though it were her fault, feeling that if known it would make her less of a person in the eyes of the world – all of that had slowly made her sick. And now she has to deal with it, painful as it may be. Otherwise, she will only get sicker…more dysfunctional.

Your imaginary friend? That’s us. America has her own national trauma and after some 150 or so years of not talking about it, not seeking therapy, pretending it never happened, that it wasn’t that bad… it’s made America sick, and here we are… doing our best to remain increasingly sick by insisting it never happened. Somehow better to be sick, ban the subject of race in America then to not be the superior beings and superior race we founded this country on.

“Huh?” America has a thing with race and all we ask of America is for America to live up to what America wrote down (Doctor Martin Luther King) rather than pull a Nikki Haley and pretend nothing ever happened that interfered with our national greatness.

Related posts:

https://waynehare.substack.com/p/education

https://waynehare.substack.com/p/lift-every-voice-and-sing-vs-the

https://waynehare.substack.com/p/dilbert

https://waynehare.substack.com/p/monuments-to-the-unthinkable-part

https://waynehare.substack.com/p/monuments-to-the-unthinkable-part-af2