Nikki Haley doubles down on ‘black friends’ comment, says she knows the ‘pain’ of racism

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley defended comments she made during a Thursday night CNN town hall on her upbringing as an Indian-American daughter of South Carolina caught between white and black communities.

“We were the only Indian family in our small southern town. I was teased every day for being brown,” Haley told NBC News’s Dasha Burns and the Des Moines Register‘s Brianne Pfannenstiel in a joint interview on Friday. “So anyone that wants to question it, can go back and look at what I’ve said on how hard it was to grow up in the Deep South as a brown girl.”

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The former two-term South Carolina governor has spent the last nine days cleaning up comments she made at a New Hampshire town hall last week where she failed to accurately name slavery as a cause of the Civil War, prompting heavy blowback from Republicans and Democrats.

At the CNN town hall Thursday in Iowa, Haley claimed she “had black friends growing up” when she was asked about the Civil War gaffe. One day later, Haley stuck by those comments despite some criticism.

“What I will tell you is saying that I had black friends is a source of pride, saying that I had white friends as a source of pride,” said Haley. “If you want to know what it was like growing up, I was disqualified from a beauty pageant because I wasn’t white or black because they didn’t know where to put me.”

Haley is the only Republican woman seeking the White House in 2024 and only one of two current GOP presidential candidates of color still running in the primary. But she hasn’t made her possible history-making campaign, should she win the nomination or the presidency, a key component of her campaign.

Haley has touted her foreign policy credentials, drama-free campaign, and rising poll numbers as arguments for why she, not former President Donald Trump, should become the GOP’s next standard-bearer. But with 10 days left until the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses, Haley has been forced to address the issue of race since the Civil War brouhaha erupted.

“I know the hardships, the pain that come with racism. It’s the reason that I fight bullies every day when it comes to racism, anti-Semitism, or hate, and I always will,” said Haley. “If I didn’t mention slavery on that day it’s because that’s an automatic … the Civil War’s always been known about slavery.”

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“So critics can say whatever they want. I’m very comfortable in my skin. I’m very comfortable with what I believe in, and my job is not to convince them,” she concluded.

Voters, however, will decide if they are convinced that Haley is best fit to face President Joe Biden in November.