While I agree with most of the article and its intellectuality, I am saddened with the ignorance of the writer on the name. The writer's attack on name is offensive to many who have adopted an additional name for whatever reason.
Eesha Pandit is implying that Nikki and Bobby changed their names for political gains, that is the not the case. I have added "Mike" to my name at the very beginning - but not for any gains. Here is my story. http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2010/01/my-name-is-mike-ghouse.html
Mike Ghouse
The curious case of Nikki Haley: What the Republican governor can tell us about American racial identity
Haley finally spoke out against the Confederate flag yesterday — after years of compromise with a racist system
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/23/the_curious_case_of_nikki_haley_what_the_republican_governor_can_tell_us_about_american_racial_identity/
In the wake of an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated against nine black worshipers of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the governor of South Carolina is making the news.
The day after the racially motivated shooting at the 199-year-old black church steeped in American history, the Confederate flag flew high and proud in front of the South Carolina statehouse. In 1822, one of the church’s co-founders, a free black man named Denmark Vesey, attempted to start a slave rebellion in Charleston. Word of the rebellion leaked, Vesey and five others were judged guilty by the secret proceedings of a city-appointed court and condemned to death. They were executed by hanging on July 2, 1822. In total, the city killed 35 people who were deemed connected to the rebellion planning. The gruesome and violent history of chattel slavery in the U.S. is wrapped in the Confederate flag. It is flown by supporters of racially motivated crimes, white supremacists (historically and today). A jarring number of people claim its historical significance outweighs its symbolism, and the terror and anxiety that rise in the throats of black Americans and people of color throughout the country when they see it fly.
Consequently, many called for the governor of South Carolina to take down this flag in the wake of the murder of nine Black South Carolinians. At a tearful press conference that same day, Haley denounced the tragedy, though declined to recognize it as a racially motivated hate-crime, despite the killer’s confession of it as such. Yesterday, she finally responded to the thousands of calls to remove the flag and recommend that it be taken down and placed in a museum, stating “The events of the past week call on us to look at this in a different way,” and adding that now is the time “to remove the flag from the capitol grounds.” She affirmed her commitment to freedom of expression, and said, “for those who wish to show their respect for the flag on their private property, no one will stop them.” In her remarks, she straddled a line – acknowledging that the flag as a symbol of history, ancestry and respect and how many others find it offensive. Not once in her remarks did she name that the offense in question is systemic racism, chattel slavery and state-sanctioned violence against Black Americans.
She plans to call a special session of the state legislature so that they may vote on removing the flag from the statehouse grounds.
In this moment, Nikki Haley’s ethnicity and heritage are back in the news, and a 2011 story that discovered that Haley identified herself as “white” on her voter registration card in 2001 is circulating again. But Nikki Haley is not white. Born Nimrata Randhawa and called “Nikki,” meaning “small one,” by her family, she was elected South Carolina’s first female governor in November by the largest margin of victory for a South Carolina gubernatorial candidate in 24 years.
She is the nation’s second Indian-American chief executive and the first Sikh governor in the U.S. Her parents emigrated to the U.S. from India and Haley was born in Bamberg County, South Carolina. In September of 1996, she married Michael Haley — a captain in the Army National Guard and combat veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan — in both a Methodist church ceremony and a Sikh gurdwara. Today, she identifies as a Christian. In 2001 she identified as “white” on her voter registration card. And in 2011 Haley was an outspoken champion of legislation designed to prevent voter registration fraud.
The day after the massacre in Charleston, in addition to an emotional press conference, she posted on Facebook, “While we do not yet know all of the details, we do know that we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another.”
Surely, she does. As all of us knew, even before all the facts confirmed it, that this was racist violence. Nikki Haley is not a stranger to racism, herself, and at the hands of elected officials of her own party.
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