She’s getting subjected to the same garbage criticisms as Clarence Thomas.
She’s getting subjected to the same garbage criticisms as Clarence Thomas.
O nly in 21st-century America can you call yourself the “proud daughter of Indian immigrants” and get accused of whitewashing your immigrant background.
For the Left, the verdict is in, and has been for a long time — Nikki Haley is not Indian-American enough.
Her offenses are myriad, from using a more easily pronounceable name to converting to Christianity to once checking “white” on a voter-registration card to touting the value of hard work in getting ahead to defending America against charges of racism.
This has subjected her to ignorant, highly personal, racially charged attacks.
The NAACP activist (and pastor) Talbert Swan tweeted:
NIMRATA RANDHAWA HALEY
Say your real name @NikkiHaley.
Are you afraid the white folks you’re kowtowing to won’t vote for someone named Nimrata?
You not only want to erase the history of Black people to satisfy racists, you want to erase your own.
You’re a disgrace.
— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) February 15, 2023
This is long-running criticism. When Haley came up on an episode of The View last year, Sunny Hostin asked derisively, “What is her real name again?” Hostin, whose given name is Asunción, called her a “chameleon” and remarked that it might be different “if she leaned into being someone of color.”
This is dumb and ill-informed. As this USA Today fact-check notes, Haley’s name at birth was Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. Rather than being a westernization, “Nikki” is a common nickname in Punjab, where her parents are from. Tunku Varadarajan has written that it “means ‘little one,’ often used as a term of endearment for the youngest girl in a Sikh family.”
She used the name Nikki since she was young, and then took the last name of her husband Michael Haley, in what is still the common practice in the U.S.
All that aside, the Hostin critique gets to the bottom of the real indictment of Haley from the race obsessives — she’s not obsessed with race enough.
Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says Haley has an “on-again, off-again” relationship to her race. An NBC News piece in 2020 used the same description, citing “South Asian American experts” for the proposition that conservative Indian-American politicians such as Haley “seem to have an on-and-off relationship with their Indian identity.”
What does “on-and-off” mean except that, while talking about her background and expressing pride in it, she doesn’t let it wholly define her? In what world is this not a healthy, well-adjusted attitude?
Was her announcement video, which did acknowledge the difficulties of growing up as an Indian American in the South Carolina of that time, supposed to be an angry screed about all the terrible things that have been done to her by the country her parents chose to come to?
The answer for her woke critics is basically “yes.” Again and again, critiques of Haley mention that she’s perpetuating the “model-minority myth,” by which they mean she extols up-from-the-bootstraps hard work instead of painting a picture of immigrant futility in a fundamentally racist country.
It’s not enough that I succeed, my friends must fail, goes the famous line. Even if they are willing to admit that some immigrants succeed, the opponents of the so-called model-minority myth want the emphasis to be on struggle and failure, so as to highlight what they believe is the underlying rot of America.
The other charges against Haley are as meritless. She reportedly checked “white” on a voter registration card more than 20 years ago. Apparently, the form only offered the options of white, black/African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Native-American or other. These categories, an unavoidable aspect of American life, are insanely reductive and imprecise. Asian is often taken to mean East Asian, not South Asian, and if Haley didn’t want to “otherize” herself, she might have checked white as one of a number of not-accurate options. (Only 40 percent of Indian Americans embrace the term “Indian American” — it’s complicated.)
Regardless, what’s the allegation here? That she thought no one would find out about her Indian heritage if she checked a certain box on a form no one knew about?
Haley also converted to Christianity, which she has explained thoughtfully and sensitively. It’s a feature of Christianity, not a bug, that it is open to all, from every nation and every background. And she’s not the first person to convert to Methodism. You could look it up. (About a fifth of Indian Americans are Christian, by the way.)
At the end of the day, the Left is willing only to accept the legitimacy of minorities who toe the party line and are adherents of the worst sort of identity politics and of the 1619 version of America. Anything less stokes their rage:
Just submitted a piece on Nikki Nimrata Haley shamefully using her Indian heritage to launder white supremacy and GOP talking points. It was cathartic for the soul. Hope you enjoy it whenever it's published. Look for it on @MSNBC
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) February 15, 2023
This is why Clarence Thomas is never considered truly black and why it doesn’t matter how often Haley says she is proud of her heritage. She’ll still be assailed as a false Indian American working to support white supremacy.