(Where the ol" Bloviator's opinions are concerned, the problem has never been supply, but demand. Since the tragic shooting in Charleston on June 17 and the ensuing moves against the Confederate battle flag as public symbol, the OB and other hoary denizens laboring in the normally tangled obscurity of the southernological jungle, have been engulfed in a gnat-like swarm of exceedingly persistent media types. actually bent on soliciting their views, though intent primarily, it seems, either on simply appropriating them as their own or distorting them so grotesquely as to made the kindly, unsuspecting prof seem like a complete ninny. Realizing that he could accomplish the latter just fine on his own, a weary OB finally gave voice to his own voice in an outcry actually heard and passed on by a few semi-respectable outlets. What follows is an expanded and updated version of his Cri de Coeur.)
The most
striking aspect of the Bamberg, South Carolina, grade school class photo
(ca.1980) is not the nine black youngsters scattered among the twenty-three
white pupils. Bamberg schools had been integrated under a court order roughly a
decade earlier. Rather, the real eye-catcher in the shot is the little girl
with the flowing black hair and skin only slightly lighter than that of some of
her African American classmates. A few years earlier, this little girl and her
sister had also stood out among the contestants at the annual Miss Wee Bamberg
Pageant where, in the wake of school desegregation, it had become the practice
to crown both a white and a black winner. Though she seemed irresistibly
huggable in her ruffled dress and black patent shoes, there would be no crown
for contestant No. 40, for she and her sister had introduced an unforeseen and
unwanted element of racial ambiguity that left pageant officials fearful that neither
the white or black parents in the audience would accept the two little
brown-skinned daughters of an immigrant Sikh couple in their racial category. What may well prove to be the most striking of
all the many ironies in the life and career of Nikki Haley, born Nimrata Nikki
Randhawa, came when, at her mother's request, she was at least to perform her
talent number, a very capable rendition of "This Land Is Your Land." Anyone
searching for a compelling visual testimony to the brutal absurdity of the
American South's racial obsessions surely need look no further than the photo
of little Nikki, still standing thereafter on the pageant, uncertainly clutching
the wrapped package containing the fittingly deflated beach ball that she and her sister received as
consolation prizes for their disqualification. Surely no one in attendance that night, save,
one senses in retrospect, perhaps the little girl herself, that some
thirty-five years later, a not-exactly thriving Bamberg ( Population : 3,600.
Major Points of Interest: A Hardees fast food restaurant and a Dollar General
Store.) would boast four signs welcoming motorists to the "Home of Nikki Haley,
Governor of South Carolina."
It is tempting to see a story of
both personal triumph and regional redemption in the meteoric political ascent
of this woman who was born an "other" to blacks and whites in a society where
skin color really mattered. Yet contrary to deep-seated liberal presumptions, Nikki
Haley has proven to be anything but the empathetic, compassionate champion of
minorities and women that her background seemed almost to mandate. Instead, if
anything, for a savvy young woman like Haley, growing up almost astride the
color line may have encouraged a rather precocious decision on which side of
the racial divide offered the better prospects for fulfilling her ambitions.
The same was true of the partisan divide as well, for South Carolina was
already an established GOP stronghold when she entered the 2004 primary where
she stunned the pundits by knocking off the longest-serving incumbent in the
state House of Representatives before sailing unopposed in an overwhelmingly
Republican district through the general election to take her seat as the first
Indian-American member of the South Carolina legislature.
Haley's success in this contest was
surprising, but it paled in comparison to her victorious shoe-string
gubernatorial campaign which ultimately dispatched three better-known and
better-funded primary rivals and opened the door to the governor's mansion for
its first-ever female and non-white occupant. Haley's gender had earned her no
gentlemanly deference during a campaign marked by persistent rumors of her
marital infidelity and a fellow Republican politico's reference to her as a
"f**king raghead." This public display of bigotry was a bit over the top even
in South Carolina, and it doubtless helped Haley more than it hurt her, as
state and national Republican leaders rallied to her defense, including Sarah
Palin, who praised her as "the proud daughter of immigrants who worked day and
night to achieve the American dream."
Such an
endorsement might seem a tad hypocritical coming from someone who has hardly
distinguished herself as a friend of immigrants or people of color in general,
but then, truth be told, neither has Nikki Haley, an early Tea Party favorite whose
votes and positions as a legislator and governor amount to a checklist of Palin's
favorite things. For example, she is an ardent opponent abortion rights, gun control,
higher taxes on high incomes, and a pathway to citizenship for illegal
immigrants. As governor, she championed
a new law requiring state-issued photo IDs for all voters, and despite her
state's large indigent population, she refused the Obama Care plan's offer of
increased Medicaid funding, flatly declaring "we will not expand Medicaid ever."
On the other hand, Haley is just fine with forking over lavish public subsidies
to new employers who also have the governor's personal assurance that "we'd
rather die than have unions here."
Truth be told, Haley's stance on
any of the foregoing issues is hardly unique among today's Deep South governors
and her unwavering faith in bringing in new industry at any cost has long been
nothing less than gubernatorial gospel in the region. Forced increasingly to
weigh their obligations to preserve segregation against the development
imperative, the balance began to tip in favor of the latter in the 1960s, when
concerns about the potentially harmful effects of racial violence and defiance
on industrial recruitment helped to pave the way for the initial desegregation
of public schools and other public facilities and accommodations. A similar
consideration has factored heavily in more recent disputes over removing the
Confederate battle flag from state property or excising it from the flags of
several southern states.
In South Carolina, that flag might still be
flying atop the state capitol had a torrent of threatened economic and tourist
boycotts and pressure from the state's business community not forced the
legislature fifteen years ago to at least move it to the capitol grounds. Though
this placement was still far from satisfactory to most black South Carolinians,
Governor Haley had shown no public inclination to move against it until the cold-blooded
slaughter of nine African Americans inside their Charleston church by a Rebel
flag-worshipping gunman became both catalyst and premise for a step that
southern white political officials had been at once eager but too timid to
take. The flag issue has long been the proverbial elephant not simply in the
room but squarely astride the shoulders of southern GOP governors and
congressmen, not to mention business and development leaders. Not only did it
pose a threat to party unity, but clinging to such a divisive and seemingly
hostile and provincial symbol is hardly indicative of a state or community
ready to host a major production facility of an international and even global
corporation. Make no mistake about it, the moves by Nikki Haley and her
counterparts in other southern states amounted in no small sense to what a
proponent of ditching the Confederate insignia on the Mississippi state flag once
called a "strategic business decision." Without questioning the sincerity of
their expressions of horror and grief over the Charleston tragedy in the least,
distancing their state and their party from what so many see as an emblem of
hatred and persecution seems to have a huge upside for southern and national Republicans,
especially those with presidential (or perhaps, vice-presidential) ambitions
like South Carolina's Senator Lindsey Graham or perhaps even, its governor as
well. One thing is certain,with the flag now furled and consigned to a museum, Governor Haley's
brilliant, genuinely impassioned leadership over the last three weeks truly
dwarfs anything Sarah Palin accomplished as governor of Alaska.
Newsweek's
decision in July 2010 to herald Nikki Haley on its cover as "The Face of the
New South" may have startled some at the time, but this has become a common
trope in recent days. Its aptness, however, rests not in Haley's skin color or
gender but in her politics. Lest we get a tad carried away here, let's note
that, over the last generation or so, the GOP has gradually abandoned its old
blatantly racialized "southern strategy" in favor of a new, ostensibly
"colorblind" but hardly race-neutral conservatism anchored in the rigidly anti-tax,
anti-welfare, anti-labor but pro-gun, pro-voter suppression, and indisputably
ardent pro-corporate attitudes that essentially define Governor Haley's mindset.
For Haley and her cohort, that mindset is unlikely to change anytime soon, regardless
of what flag flies where. All of that
said, however, regardless of whether her motives were at least partially political
or not, she has done the right thing. History is hardly so flush with examples
of right things done for precisely the right reasons to afford us the luxury of
being picky.
