Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley sparked yet another public firestorm on race this week after asserting in a recent interview that she faced racial discrimination in her early life “as a brown girl.”
Haley, whose Sikh parents immigrated to America from India in the 1960s, said she encountered racism throughout her childhood in South Carolina a week after she declared the United States has “never been a racist country.”
“We were the only Indian family in our small Southern town,” Haley told NBC on Sunday. “I was teased every day for being brown. So, anyone that wants to question it can go back and look at what I’ve said on how hard it was to grow up in the Deep South as a brown girl.”
The comments prompted swift backlash on social media, with many voices questioning Haley’s authenticity because she looks and sounds white and accusing her of pandering by drawing parallels between her privileged upbringing and the struggles of Black people.
The controversy emerged just ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, where Haley had closed the gap on Donald Trump in recent weeks but still needs a miracle to beat the Republican front-runner after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis quit the race on Sunday following an embarrassing defeat in Iowa last week.
Haley sparked the newest controversy last week after placing third in the Iowa caucuses and then making an appearance on “Fox & Friends” where she repeated a previous claim that the United States has never been “a racist country.”
During the segment, host Brian Kilmeade played a clip of MSNBC commentator Joy Reid, who spoke to Haley’s identity as a woman of color and her candidacy in a party that Reid characterized as becoming more “anti-immigrant” in the Trump era.
Kilmeade then asked Haley if she considers her party “racist.”
“No, we’re not a racist country, Brian. We’ve never been a racist country. Our goal is to make sure that today is…
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