Republicans and race

Kevin Drum on Nikki Haley:

....Haley's real problem was not realizing how enlightened modern Republicans are about race? Color me skeptical. 

Consider this news item from 2015:

The division over what children should learn in school is clear in Texas, where academic standards list slavery third among the causes of the war, after sectionalism and states’ rights — written deliberately in that order to telegraph what some elected Texas officials described as slavery’s secondary role in driving the conflict.

Slavery was a “side issue to the Civil War,” said Pat Hardy, a Republican member of the State Board of Education, when the board adopted the standards in 2010. “There would be those who would say the reason for the Civil War was over slavery. No. It was over states’ rights.”

In a poll that same year, only 49% of Republicans agreed that slavery was the main reason for the Civil War. Nearly half of Republicans say it would be bad to pay more attention to the history of slavery and racism. 

73% of Republicans say anti-white bias is as big a problem as anti-Black bias—a number that's increased steadily for the past decade. 

82% of Republicans oppose Black Lives Matter and 76% oppose even nonviolent protests against Black deaths. Only 6% of Republicans believe statues of Confederate leaders should be taken down. 

In Congress, two years ago, Republicans voted 2:1 not to remove statues of Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders from the US Capitol....