The View hosts clash in tense discussion on race: 'You can't dismiss my lived experience'

The View cohosts turned the heat up Thursday morning at the Hot Topics table during in a tense discussion about race in the nation following Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley's recent comments about America's racist history,

The group segued into the conversation via Haley's recent appearance on The Breakfast Club radio show, where she spoke about states' rights — including, if a state should want to secede, her feeling that the state should be able to do that.

After legal expert Sunny Hostin said "she's not that bright" when it comes to Haley's understanding of the parameters regarding secession after the Civil War, Hostin further speculated on divisions in America — including a theory that white people felt "othered" and "threatened" by Barack Obama's presidency, enough so that they voted for Donald Trump in response to seeing a Black man in a position of power for eight years.

"I don't agree with where Nikki Haley is on race. I'm much closer to where Joe Biden was in 2021, I don't think the American people are racist, I think there's a history of racism," Alyssa Farah Griffin — a former White House staffer who worked under both Mike Pence and Trump — added. "There are absolutely racist people in this country. It's not the vast majority of people in this country."

Joy Behar cautioned that Griffin doesn't "know that" for certain, to which the Republican panelist responded, "I just don't believe in my day to day life that the people you're encountering harbor racist viewpoints."

Hostin jumped back in after Griffin's assertion. "If you looked like me, you would believe differently," she said, looking at Griffin. "I think there's a significant portion that are racist, and you can't dismiss my lived experience when I say that there are a lot of racists in this country. I just experienced my son [Gabriel] walking down the beach being called the N-word several times in Florida, so, don't. You can't say I believe that the vast majority of people aren't racist. We don't know that."

Griffin called Hostin's reflection "fair," and brought up her own heritage as she told her colleague she would "never minimize" her lived experience — "any more than I would mine as an Arab woman," Griffin continued.

From the other end of the table, Sara Haines said she felt that Haley engaged in "double-talks" and "flip-flops" like most Washington, D.C. politicians, and estimated that her views on race amounted to little more than pandering to a specific base.

"But where is her moral compass?" Hostin asked, to which Haines appeared to get annoyed.

"Where are the moral compasses in D.C.? Sunny, that's naive," Haines said, raising her hand. "D.C. is full of people without [a moral compass]."

Moderator Whoopi Goldberg stepped in to close the segment, bringing attention to issues in key swing states — like former candidate Ron DeSantis' controversial stance on specific education topics in Florida schools.

"You think it's easy to be a little Black kid in a history class? No, the whole point of history is to teach it so we're aware of it and we don't redo it. The minute you stop teaching it, you bring back people like George Wallace, you bring back people who bomb, who shoot up churches, this is what happens when you don't say to people on a yearly basis, daily basis, we are all in it together. We're all in it," Goldberg said. "And, there's nothing you can do unless you admit that it's there and we can fight it."

The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.

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