Haley On Slavery Flap: I Had Black Friends Growing Up

“I should have said slavery right off the bat, but if you grow up in South Carolina, literally in second and third grade you learn about slavery. You grow up and you have– you know, I had Black friends growing up. It is a very talked about thing.

“We have a big history in South Carolina when it comes to, you know, slavery, when it comes to all the things that happened with the Civil War, all that. I was over– I was thinking past slavery and talking about the lesson that we would learn going forward. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have said slavery.

“But in my mind, that’s a given, that everybody associates the Civil War with slavery. We were the only Indian family in a small, rural southern town. We weren’t White enough to be White, we weren’t Black enough to be Black.

“They didn’t know who we were, what we were, or why we were there. It was not just slavery that was talked about, it was more about racism that was talked about.

“It was more about, you know, we had friends, we had Black friends, we had White friends, but it was always a topic of conversation, even among our friends, and in the south, we’re very comfortable talking about it because we know that’s what it is.” – Nikki Haley, last night on CNN.

Nikki Haley’s daughter also married a Black man who is probably biting his tongue every time he sees his mother-in-law.

“I have Black friends,” is something white people say in an attempt to clean up a cringeworthy comment, but it only makes it 10X worse. https://t.co/STrSDESVMq

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) January 5, 2024