A Letter to Nikki Haley
Dear Nikki,
This morning I read the transcript of your speech at the RNC. I was curious to see what you would say at this moment when Americans are finally recognizing, to some extent, the existence of structural racism. Rather than discussing this, dear Nikki, you chose to ignore the murders of Black people by the police, the detention and deportation of Brown Latinx individuals, acts of hate against Asians and Asian Americans, and the violence enacted against people who physically resemble you. When you deny the Democrats’ proclamation that America is racist and declare that “America is not a racist country,” you erase the histories and experiences of Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Brown (South Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latinx) communities. By highlighting that you are the “proud daughter of Indian immigrants … [whose] father wore a turban…and mother wore a sari,” you are invoking the outdated and demonstrably fictitious narrative of America as the land of freedom where everyone can succeed. When you state that your “parents never gave in to grievance and hate,” you are saying that victims of racism must silently endure the pain of racism, while the perpetrators carry on. Hate cannot be overcome through silent suffering.
Dear Nikki, what your personal narrative demonstrates is the pernicious nature of the “myth of the model minority”. The designation of model minority is bestowed upon communities, most often East Asian and South Asian Americans who aspire to whiteness and distance themselves from Blackness. This involves actions like changing your name or using a nickname that Americans can pronounce easily, dear Nimrata — I mean Nikki. Your conversion to Christianity from Sikhism also helps since the average American does not know anything about Sikhism, let alone that Sikhs wear turbans. And due to the prevalence of Islamophobia, anyone with particular racial characteristics wearing cloth on their head, or for that matter anyone who has brown skin, might be told to get out of America or attacked for being a potential terrorist. While all these factors concern me, perhaps the most telling part of your ‘success story’ and the model minority identity is the rehearsal of anti-Black racism. In your quest for whiteness — I mean success, dear Nikki, you have adopted the talking points of a party that has embraced white supremacy as part of their platform.
Dear Nikki, when you assert “every single black life is valuable” and follow it up with lines about Black cops being shot, Black business owners watching their businesses burn, and Black kids being shot in a playground, you are invoking the racist trope of “Black on Black violence”. We know that politicians and police have used this to justify state sanctioned violence against and surveillance of Black individuals and communities. When you say, “their lives are being ruined and stolen by violence on our streets,” we hear the dog whistle blowing. We know that you are just trying to invoke white innocence, redirect our attention, and place the blame on Black people for the structural violence that afflicts their communities. The incidences that you speak of are the result of a white supremacist society that targets Black and brown people, whether it be through employment practices, access to medical care, immigration, detention, imprisonment or being gunned down or suffocated by police.
Dear Nikki, you tried to use the Mother Emanuel Church massacre, where a young white man killed nine Black people, to suggest that white supremacy is an act of individual hatred. This does not fool us. We know that white supremacy is an ideology that is woven through your party’s political platform. It is a set of beliefs, values, policies and practices that upholds whiteness as a venerated norm and systematically and disproportionately marks Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies for social exclusion, deportation, imprisonment or state sanctioned violence and murder. When you praise this party and president, you are forgetting one important factor. If your parents had attempted to immigrate in this historical moment, they would have probably been barred from entry.
Sincerely,
Tanisha*
*Thanks to Sailaja Krishnamurti, Shana Sippy and Debbie Lunny for their edits and suggestions.