Candidate Nikki Haley criticized for her comments on America's slavery past

Charlie Neibergall Associated Press La candidate républicaine à la présidentielle américaine Nikki Haley dans la ville de Nevada, dans l’État de l’Iowa, le 18 décembre dernier

Presidential candidate Nikki Haley, the new darling of the American right, was under fire Thursday for refusing to mention slavery during a question about the causes of the Civil War.

“Why did the Civil War break out in the United States ?,” one voter asked during an exchange Wednesday evening with the 2024 candidate, in New Hampshire.

“Well, that’s an easy question,” the former US ambassador to the UN quipped about the 19th-century conflict, before launching into a tirade about US management. American state of individual freedoms at the time.

“I find it crazy that in 2023, you can answer this question without mentioning slavery,” his interlocutor retorts.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), the Confederate South had declared its independence from the United States and fought to preserve slavery, which was abolished in the rest of the country.

“What do you want me to say about slavery ?,” the fifty-year-old replied, visibly defensive. Then to the crowd: “Next question. »

Nikki Haley received a barrage of criticism for this sequence, captured by television stations across the country.

“It was slavery,” President Joe Biden said on ~

“Nikki Haley got herself into a huge mess of her own making,” quipped a spokesperson for the campaign team of Ron DeSantis, one of her rivals in the primaries Republicans, in which Donald Trump also participates.

Asked about this sequence, Nikki Haley tried to backpedal Thursday morning: “Of course the Civil War was linked to slavery, we all know that,” she told a local radio station.

Several, however, shared comments made by the candidate, dating from the time when she was governor of South Carolina. Nikki Haley then refused to change the Confederate flag of this state, although considered by many to be a symbol of slavery and racism.

She had a change of heart after a shooting by a white supremacist at a church in her state, which killed nine African-American worshipers in 2015.