'It started with Obama': Nikki Haley blames first Black president for regressing race relations

17 May 2023

Fox News host Will Cain and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley discussed racism in the United States on Wednesday's edition of Fox News Tonight. In a segment spanning fewer than three minutes, Cain essentially declared racism extinct and accused President Joe Biden of fomenting a race war, while Haley villainized former President Barack Obama for ringing the alarms about the rise in hate that continues to shadow Donald Trump.

Cain:

I think it's actually undeniable that we are living in the least racist moment in human history. And within that context, we are the least racist country on the planet. And we are almost at the least racist moment in the entirety of our own personal American history.

I say almost because, take a look at this Gallup poll. In June 2008 just before Barack Obama won the presidential election, nearly seventy percent of Americans believed race relations were 'somewhat or very good.' By Obama's last year, the number of Americans that had a positive view of race relations dropped by nearly twenty points, including less than half of Black adults. Additionally, the number of Black Americans who worry a great deal about race went from around forty percent during Obama's presidency to nearly seventy percent today. The number of white Americans who worry about race nearly doubled in that timespan as well. Between the last year of Trump's presidency and the first year of Biden, the number of Americans who worried a great deal about race increased from thirty-one percent to almost fifty percent.

Gallup's September 2nd, 2020 survey is available here, in which it concluded that "positive ratings of White-Black relations have deteriorated slightly more in the past 18 months among White Americans (down eight percentage points to 46%) than among Black Americans (down four points to 36%). The figure among White Americans roughly matches the prior low of 45% recorded in 2015, while Black Americans' perceptions are the lowest yet."

Gallup's 'Bottom Line' was this:

When it comes to White-Black relations, one such indicator involves Black Americans' reports of feeling they have been unfairly treated in each of several public situations -- in stores, at work, in dealings with the police, and so on. Gallup's recent finding that nearly half of Black Americans felt unfairly treated in at least one setting in the past month suggests relations are far from perfect.

Another indicator of the health of race relations is how Americans themselves assess those relations when asked directly. On that basis, Gallup finds that even before the situation in Kenosha erupted, White-Black relations were at a two-decade low, with Black Americans even less positive than White Americans. This contrasts with Americans' more positive reviews of the state of relations between other racial/ethnic groups.

Cain trivialized Gallup's results.

"If you did a word count by the way for The New York Times, for example on the word 'racist' over the last fifteen years, what you would see — one of those word bubbles — is an absolute explosion," he said.

Cain thusly shared his own interpretation:

All the race-mongering, all the division, it's working. Just over a decade ago, we were headed to that moment of judging each other according to the content of our character and not the color of our skin. But since that time, politicians have used our worst instincts to pit us against one another for their own political gain. They are happy to tear apart our carpool in exchange for your support at the voting booth. Telling lies, creating bogeymen, reinforcing tribes. Joe Biden will divide us. He'll tear us down. He'll fill us with hate for his own gain. For power.

Next, Cain introduced Haley.

"One person who is running to stop that from happening is Nikki Haley. She's a former ambassador to the UN and the governor of South Carolina. Nikki, great to have you with us this evening," said Cain.

"Great to be with you," Haley replied.

Cain ignited the grill.

"Why is this happening? Why do politicians insist on dividing us and seemingly pushing us toward a race war?" he asked Haley, whose White House campaign commenced in February with Haley recalling her experiences with race while growing up in Bamberg, South Carolina:

The railroad tracks divided the town by race. I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. Not Black, not white, I was different.

Responding to Cain, Haley suggested that Obama — the first Black president of the United States – was responsible for the recent rising racial animosity among Americans:

You look, inflation is running rampant. You've got wokeism in schools. You've got crime at all-time highs. You've got, you know, illegal immigrants, the totally open border. You've got China on the march. And that has nothing to do with race. And the idea that he brought up white supremacy goes back to exactly what you said. It started with Obama, now it's with Biden.

Cain was one of the panelists on last Sunday's edition of Fox & Friends who called Biden "evil" for denouncing white supremacy. A similar meltdown happened shortly after Biden was inaugurated.

Haley concluded:

The leftists insert race into everything. Into everything! And all that does is pit people against each other and it doesn't allow us to get to any solutions. So their answer to everything is to blame everybody else for being racist. But not them, and we've seen how that plays out.

Watch below via Media Matters for America or at this link.

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