Same stuff, different day.
That was my reaction to the story linked above about South Carolina politician Nikki Haley. The story outlines how Haley has used her color and gender to her advantage while at the same time espousing the traditional, hateful conservative message. Basically, she's just donned a different color hood for her Klan robes.
That's honestly how I feel about minorities who try to prove they are more conservative than the most loony Tea Party member. They have the Klansman's spirit wrapped up in a new package. That package allows them to escape scrutiny and dodge questions, but it can't truly hide the poison in their hearts.
Haley, whose given name Nimrata Randhawa, is having success by painting herself as the victim of injustice at the hands of hateful whites and blacks, while also promising to inflict the Tea Party's peculiar brand of pain on as many dark-skinned people as possible. (No, she doesn't promise to target darkies, but she sure knows the codewords.) As the story I linked to notes, it's a common strategy of minorities looking to rise within conservative movements, just as adopting a colorblind strategy is useful for minorities wishing to remain popular among liberals.
In reality, these minorities, be they conservative or liberal, trade on the same stereotype just from different perspectives. Both consevatives and liberals view minorities, particularly black folks, as unrelenting complainers always seeking to take something from well meaning white folks to enhance their own station in life. A savvy minoritiy politician seeking mainstream approval learns quickly that distancing your campaign from that idea by any means necessary is the best move.
That could mean pointing out that minorities are just as capable of racism as anyone else, while at the same time denying that white folks are really even racist anymore. It could mean pushing the idea that race is a played out metric, and what we really need to focus on is poverty and our shared interests. Of course that ignores the reality that while everyone is affected by class, some of us are affected by class and race.
Either way, you don the hood. Any time you embrace racial dishonesty to advance your cause, you don the hood.
Share
Pay Attention
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
3 comments:
Kind of reminds me of Uncle Clarence Thomas, one of the greatest race haters of all time. May they be judged by God and burn in hell
Haley is out for Haley. Did anyone see the interview she had done with the Palmetto Patriots?
http://ikeonic.blogspot.com/2010/06/nikki-haleys-shocking-interview-with.html
She's no different than Bobby (Piyush) Jindal.
To be fair I really think that on some things Black folks need to let go of this whole "people of color" concept. Other people don't necessarily see themselves that way. Folks from the Indian subcontinent who are now American citizens have their own interests, experiences and relationship with the US body politic, which are often quite different than the ones that Black folks have.
For some Indian-American citizens who are immigrants or recent descendants of immigrants, Republican doctrines fit their class interests much better than Democratic policies do. Many are quite well represented in the upper echelons of society and frankly may have their own issues with blacks. Not saying this is the case with Haley-I was thinking more about D'Souza. LOL.
@Shady_Grady
Good points that pretty much nailed what I was thinking. She'll have her own issues to deal with in regards to the establishment like Jindal. I guess if the money's "right", a little shuckin' & shinin' won't hurt. When you think of sell outs, these 2 along w/ Mammyman's name drop of Ol' Clarence should be pretty darn close!
Post a Comment