Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is recounting how states like her native South Carolina have rebounded from racist violence, saying, “America is not a racist country.“
During the first night of Republicans’ national convention, the former South Carolina governor said Monday that, “in much of the Democratic Party, it’s now fashionable to say that America is racist.”
Referencing the 2015 shooting of nine Bible study attendees by a white man at a historic Black church in Charleston, Haley noted that South Carolina didn’t erupt into the violence seen after some shootings of Black Americans in other cities.
Haley also took a spin off the Black Lives Matter movement’s terminology, saying that the lives of Black police officers shot in the line of duty, Black small-business owners affected during rioting and “Black kids who’ve been gunned down on the playground – their lives matter, too."
Haley is seen as one of the rising stars in the Republican Party, with a recent move back to South Carolina and a memoir sparking conversation that she may mount a presidential run of her own, possibly as soon as 2024. She says President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence “have my support.”