On Birtherism, Haley Gets Burned by the Flame She Stoked
In a rather predictable twist of political fate, Nikki Haley finds herself on the receiving end of the same divisive tactics she once sidestepped or enabled. As the former South Carolina Governor climbs in the polls, her former boss Donald Trump is now claiming Haley is ineligible for office, challenging the status of her citizenship. The former president, still far and away the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, now claims Haley is ineligible to run for the office because her parents were not citizens at the time she was born. To be clear, Haley was born in the United States and is fully eligible to run for president. However, this new birther attack against his former U.N. Ambassador — an echo of his infamous claims against Barack Obama — serves as a stark reminder of the precarious position of minorities in the Republican Party, particularly those who've previously aligned with Trump's ideologies.
Haley, like other Republican minorities, has unabashedly embraced Trump, denied the existence of racism in the United States, railed against DEI and so-called ‘wokeism,’ and even refused to acknowledge slavery was the cause of the Civil War. Non-white Republicans have often found themselves walking a tricky tightrope, tapping into minority narratives and experiences enough to stand out as a diverse or authentic voice — while simultaneously denying charges of racism against their own party’s base and leadership. Former 2024 contender Senator Tim Scott, for example, has taken pains to deny the realities of racism in America, yet at other times has acknowledged being pulled over 7 times in one year as a black man in America despite being a Senator. Both Scott and Congressman Byron Donalds — committed MAGA Republicans —drew the ire of the Trump base and Republican colleagues when they dared to criticize Governor Ron DeSantis’s slavery curriculum that noted the “silver linings” of enslavement.
As a white-passing Indian American, few have navigated their minority identity in the Republican Party as cautiously as Haley. Worse, Haley has weaponized her minority status to gaslight the public about Trump’s racism. Not only did she take no issue with Trump’s racist birther lie challenging Obama’s birth certificate and citizenship status, she went to go work for his administration. Trump began his tenure by calling white supremacists in Charlottesville ‘very fine people’, instated a Muslim ban, and repeatedly and specifically used his bully pulpit targeted Black women, among a laundry list of racist actions.
Still, speaking from her perspective as a minority, Haley took the stage at the 2020 RNC to declare claim that Trump had healed racial divides in the country. This summer she attacked former President Obama saying he “set minorities back by singling them out as victims instead of empowering them. In America, hard work & personal responsibility matter. My parents didn’t raise me to think that I would forever be a victim. They raised me to know that I was responsible for my success.” It’s a common refrain that successful ‘model minority’ immigrant groups weaponize against other minority groups in the country. Perhaps most egregiously, in the context of Trump challenging her citizenship status, last year she called for the deportation of U.S.-born African American Senator Raphael Warnock. Warnock, like Haley, is a natural born American citizen.
In so many ways, as any student of history could have predicted, Haley has made her own bed when it comes to Trump inevitably turning his racist furor against her. This episode serves as a harsh lesson for minorities within the GOP. Aligning with a party that has increasingly entertained nativist and exclusionary ideologies is fraught with risks. It's a reminder that no matter how high a minority might rise within such ranks, their position remains conditional, vulnerable to the whims of the party's more extreme elements —in this case,Trump’s MAGA base who is sure to run with this latest attackon Haley’s presidential eligibility.
Haley's predicament is not just about her; it's a reflection of a larger, more troubling, dynamic. For minorities in the Republican Party, the illusion of inclusion and acceptance is just that – an illusion. It's a clear reminder that embracing such ideologies or aligning with figures like Trump doesn't grant immunity from the very prejudices they propagate.
While Trump's birther-style attack on Haley is undeniably racist and unjustifiable, it's also a moment of reckoning. It's a wake-up call for minorities who believe that alignment with the GOP's current trajectory offers a path to wider acceptance. History has shown that such alliances are tenuous. The Republican Party, as it stands, remains a complex and often unwelcoming landscape for those who don't fit a certain mold. Nikki Haley's current struggle is a testament to that harsh reality.
