In a no-holds-barred moment on Tuesday's episode of "The View," co-host Sunny Hostin delivered a scathing critique of Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley for her recent comments on the Civil War. The controversy arose when a voter at a New Hampshire town hall questioned Haley about the causes of the Civil War, and the former South Carolina governor failed to mention slavery in her response.
Haley asserted that the Civil War revolved around government issues and "the freedoms of what people could and couldn't do." It wasn't until later, in an admission to Fox News, that she acknowledged, "the first thing I should've said was slavery." Hostin, however, wasted no time expressing her disdain, invoking Maya Angelou's wisdom: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
But Hostin's critique delved deeper, highlighting what she deemed a pattern of hypocrisy on race issues by Haley. The co-host reminded viewers that this incident wasn't the first time Haley had been a "hypocrite" on matters of race. Hostin specifically recalled Haley's claim that she took down the Confederate flag as South Carolina governor voluntarily.
“Nikki Haley, you took down that flag because you were forced to,” Hostin asserted, debunking the notion that Haley's actions were entirely voluntary. While Haley earned praise from then-President Barack Obama in 2015 for the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House, Hostin drew attention to the circumstances surrounding that decision.
Haley's move to take down the flag followed the tragic killing of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston by an avowed racist. Hostin, who covered the event as a journalist, vividly recalled her emotions when the flag was finally removed. She highlighted Haley's previous dismissive stance on the flag, suggesting its presence wasn't a significant issue.
Closing her impassioned remarks, Hostin addressed the camera directly, quoting Haley's earlier words: “So you can kiss my grits when you try to say some nonsense about how you ‘should’ve said slavery, everybody knows slavery.’ She didn’t say it intentionally because 85% of Republicans are white, and she does not want to lose those votes.” Hostin's words echoed with a resounding critique of what she perceived as a calculated political move at the expense of historical truth.
Nikki Haley's recent comments regarding the Confederate flag as a symbol of noble traditions and Southern heritage echo a longstanding narrative that has deep roots in post-Civil War Southern history. The debate over the flag's meaning has been fueled by a concept known as the "Lost Cause," a belief perpetuated by some that the Confederacy fought to defend states' rights rather than to uphold slavery.
This reimagining of the Civil War's cause emerged shortly after the South's defeat in 1865 and was an attempt to cast the South's role and the sacrifices of Confederate soldiers in a more favorable light, according to National Geographic. The Confederate flag, initially not a widespread symbol of Southern pride, gained prominence in the 1940s and 1950s during a massive resistance campaign against the civil rights movement. As Matthew Guterl, a professor at Brown University, pointed out in 2015, the flag's resurgence was intricately linked to opposition against African Americans' fight for equality.
Originally a symbol of explicit white supremacy, the Confederate flag underwent a transformation, becoming a gesture to heritage and history divorced, in appearance, from its associations with the civil rights movement. However, Guterl emphasized that it remains intrinsically tied to that era, serving as a reactionary emblem during a time of significant social change.
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