There seems to be a belief that if you keep telling a blatant lie, that lie morphs somehow into the truth.  Nikki Haley classifies herself as white, although she is the daughter of Indian immigrants.  In the past, she has recounted that her parents were discriminated against in this country; yet she asserts that the United States is not racist.  That African Americans, for example, are disproportionately deprived of fulfilling the major indices of quality of life does not seem to indicate to Haley that something is amiss.  It is not because there are innate things in Blacks that make many of their lives challenged in the well-being categories.  Therefore, there are other elements outside of themselves that preclude the possibility of such fulfillment.

Now, it is not because Haley and other Republicans of her ilk are unintelligent or have difficulties with understanding research data.  Instead, they are consciously and deliberately denying a reality because they do not want to confront the evidence that institutionalized, or systemic, racism is pervasive in our society.  They want to claim that racism might have been a part of the past—since the enslavement of Africans is clearly something that cannot be denied—but they do not want to realize what the history entails and how it continues adversely to affect the descendants of slaves into the twenty-first century.  Such denial of structural racism allows Haley and others in the GOP to ignore the flagrant injustices against Blacks (and other racial and ethnic minorities) and do nothing about the impact such oppression has upon them in the present day and in the foreseeable future.

An ideology that counters self-evident facts is more than just ignorant.  As a matter of fact, it is probably not ignorance at all.  For ignorance gives such stupidity a pass.  Rather, it is an unethical and evil stance so that the issues of the suppression of many American citizens do not need to be addressed or redressed.  And I use the word “citizens” purposely, for Haley, during the Senate race between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock, actually stated that the latter, born in Savannah, GA, needed to be deported!

Thus far, the candidates for the presidential nomination aligned with the Republican Party all cater to the drum and fife of racial prejudice and white supremacy.  They are trying to save the United States for white people—as if they can really stop what has been badly characterized as the “browning of America.”  The fact of the matter is that over two-thirds of the world are people of color, so to speak, and that actuality is going to become the reality of the United States by the end of this century.  To put forth that idea is not a scare tactic; rather, it is merely a statement of fact.  No matter how hard it is for some folks to accept and appreciate, there is nothing any individual, group, organization, or institution can do to counter this inevitability.

Certainly, there are some Republicans who are able to face this reality and who appreciate the beauty of diversity.  Rather than fight against it, seek to delay it, or use their current advantages to practice forms of genocide, are there not some who want to fight for an egalitarian society where everyone has the opportunity to seek the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?  Will we continue to travel down the road of culture wars and xenophobic division in order to exploit and dehumanize fellow Americans because they have more melanin in their pigmentation?  Must we seek to protect our future generations from learning about the violence the early settlers of this nation perpetrated against the indigenous peoples and against Black and Hispanic folks, and others, to foster a system of advantage and superiority?  Or should we not grasp the adage that those who fail to remember and study history are doomed to continue to practice the evils of the past?

For all intents and purposes, the 2024 election cycle has already begun.  Are we going to allow the prevarications and the supremacist attitudes to rule the period?  Or are we going to challenge at every turn the ludicrous lies and historical falsehoods and contemporaneous denials that pollute the political discourse of the Republicans?  Can we not identify and bolster those who recognize their words and behaviors as anathema to our democratic republic and pluralistic nation?

I do not have any illusions about where we are today.  If we do not object to the ideological dangers we see around us, we will continue to go down a road that will be a dead end for democracy.  It will place us in the camp of other states, past and present, that are fascistic in nature.  Those who believe in freedom and inclusiveness and equal opportunity must come together and continue to fight tooth and nail against the stoppage of the so-called American Experiment.  The struggle is real.  God help us to be fit for the battle!