Please, Stop the Trial of Nikki Haley's Skin Color
/I don’t understand why so many figures on the Right find it unbelievable that presidential hopeful, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, was teased for being “brown.” I would assume “every day” was an exaggeration, but hyperbole is something many humans use, especially politicians. I’d find it far more unbelievable if Haley claimed her family didn’t experience racism.
The Randhawa family. Nikki Haley is in the jumper on her father’s knee.
When I attended an urban school, I dealt with ignorant children who questioned my “blackness” at times. When I moved to a rural school district and became one of the few black students in my graduating class, I dealt with ignorant comments and questions, and I responded with grace, patience, and firmness when it became necessary (and “necessary” certainly happened). But with everything I had to deal with, I can say I’ve never been maliciously called a “nigger” to my face.
But someone did that to my younger sister, and she’s lighter than me. She’s even lighter than Nikki Haley. So, if my sister was called a nigger in Michigan during the 2000s, you honestly don’t believe Haley faced racism during the 70s and 80s in a post-Jim Crow South Carolina?
Yesterday, I saw something incredibly disturbing on social media. A black male Trump supporter with over 180K followers posted a video of Nikki Haley with darkened skin, a laugh track, and the quote: “We were the only Indian family in our small Southern town. I was teased every day for being brown.” I was disappointed by hundreds of comments filled with laughing emojis.
Libs of TikTok also recently posted an image of a faded Haley photo. “Nikki Haley when she was supposedly ‘teased for being brown.’ What do you notice?”
Terrence K. Williams also mocked Haley. “Nikki, you’re colorblind. You can’t be the president of the United States. You don’t even know what color you are. You ain’t brown, baby girl.”
If people on the Right are questioning if Haley is “brown” enough, would they not consider my sister to be black? I bet if she put on a MAGA hat and said, “Joe Biden is a racist, vote Trump,” she’d be black enough. She’d be “evidence the black community is leaving the Democrat plantation.” And if a Democrat ever claimed to be removing her “black card,” there’d be a bombardment of conservatives calling them out.
My parents are black, but my dad is light-skinned. His father was a dark man, but his mother was light. She was certainly treated as a black woman and considered herself to be one. The only time I’m aware of her denying her blackness was when she didn’t feel like moving to the back of the bus, so she lied about being Italian. Her mother was dark, but she had to tell my grandmother that when she visited the store, she could never address her father. If white people discovered he was a black man, he would lose his job.
That’s the history of America. It’s not “my truth.” It’s the truth. I don’t believe in wearing your trauma on your sleeve or allowing it to warp your entire worldview. I’m grateful to live in this country, and I’m glad to be living in this day and time. But what happened, happened.
It’s not as though the Right doesn’t believe there’s a plethora of racist people in the country. If they can spot a white liberal engaging in “reverse racism” or the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” we are quick to point it out. Candace Owens accused Krystal Ball of being a racist because she asked for Owens’ opinion on the lack of minority representation in Trump’s administration, yet she finds Haley’s childhood beauty pageant tale to be so unbelievable. In 2022, the Right was quick to criticize Sunny Hostin for attacking Haley over her name. “There are some of us that can be chameleons and decide not to embrace our ethnicities so that we can pass, so that we don’t have to go by…”
Haley later said it was racist for Sunny to judge her name. “Nikki is an Indian name and is on my birth certificate—and I’m proud of that. What’s sad is the left’s hypocrisy toward conservative minorities. By the way, last I checked, Sunny isn’t your birth name…”
Haley is correct. Her birth name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. Sunny’s name is Asuncion Hostin.
Yet since the 2024 presidential cycle began, subtle digs at Haley have been thrown. Vivek Ramaswamy’s team would use Haley’s full name (which they originally spelled wrong) on their “fact check” site. Why go out of your way to not call her “Haley,” as if she’s not married to her husband? And the night Ramaswamy epically dunked on Haley and held up a sign calling her corrupt, Ramaswamy skated around comments he made, mocking Nikki Haley for shortening her name and converting to Christianity. “An easy thing for me to do being a politician to follow this track is shorten my name, profess to be a Christian, and then run.” He said, “Let’s be honest—it happens. Make Vivek ‘Vikki’ or whatever.”
Questioning Haley’s policies is fine. Using Sunny Hostin’s tactic of painting Haley as a whitewashed Indian to gain favor is extraordinarily disappointing for a candidate who claims to hate identity politics.
We don’t have to roll our eyes and attack Haley every time she speaks about her experience as an Indian woman growing up in America. How is that so different than Ramaswamy going on the “Flagrant” podcast and talking about his challenges with Christians in Iowa?
The viral clip of Nikki Haley talking about her experience as a “brown” girl, wasn’t brought up out of nowhere to bash America or gain sympathy. She was asked a question by Dasha Burns and responded. If people on the Right don’t want people to talk about their experiences with racism, they should stop creating racist experiences for them to talk about.
I’m not writing this article because I love Nikki Haley, or because she needs me to defend her, or because I want to spill my guts about the racial woes of America. My sister promptly punched that girl in the face. She can take care of herself, and so can I. I’m writing this because I’m far more concerned about the integrity of the Right.
I’d like to think the people making these horrible comments about Nikki Haley aren’t racist—as the Left always claims—but I think they’ve given themselves permission to say and do terrible things because she’s a candidate they don’t like. Even if Haley were embellishing her past or straight-up lying, does that excuse your behavior?
You don’t have to fill in Nikki Haley’s name when you see it on your ballot during a primary election, but your integrity is on the ballot every single day, and many on the political right are failing. So, this is a heartfelt plea to be better.
