Nikki Haley, after announcing that she was running for president in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, raised curiosity regarding her race and heritage. As it turned out, not many people knew that was a woman of color because they straight-up assumed that she is white. The politician was born to immigrant Sikh parents from Punjab. So, to anyone asking if Nikki Haley is a woman of color, yes, she is, of South Asian race.
Nikki Haley is an American politician and diplomat. She was the first female governor of South Carolina and the second of Indian descent. She served as the 116th governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017. In 2017, she also became the first Indian-American member of a presidential cabinet when she took the post of the United States ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018. She is now running for president in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election.
When Nikki Haley announced she was running for president, she made a bit of history again as one of the first prominent women of color to seek the Republic nomination. If Vice President Kamala Harris is chosen to be President Joe Biden‘s running mate if he runs for the second time, as he has said he will, it could be the first time that both major political parties in America could simultaneously have a woman of color on their ticket.
But not everyone is aware of this. There’s a chance that people are not aware that Nikki Haley is a woman of color or what race she is because well, she has fair skin and most just assume that all people who are not Americans are brown skin or distinctively not white. Of course, because she is a woman of color, she inevitably drew questions regarding her heritage and race.
Also, check out the stories of Cara Delevingne’s great-grandfather and Domino Kirke’s kids.
Nikki Haley’s Nationality: She is a Woman of Color Raised in America; She is Not of White Race!
Well, Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) is of Indian heritage. She was born to immigrant Sikh parents from Punjab, India. Her father, Ajit Singh Randhawa, and her mother, Raj Kaur Randhawa, were originally from the Amritsar district in Punjab. They later emigrated from there to the United States. She is a woman of color through and through. Her race is very clear. Her father used to teach at Punjab Agricultural University and her mother had earned a law degree from the University of Delhi.
Nikki Haley’s parents first moved to Canada when he was offered a scholarship by the University of British Columbia. After he got in Ph.D. in 1969, he moved to South Carolina with his family to be a professor at Voorhees College, a historically black institution. Her mother who obtained a master’s degree in education taught in Bamberg public schools for seven years. It could not be clearer that she has South Indian heritage and is a woman of color even though she may not appear so.
And she made history as a woman of color of the South Asian race when she decided that she was running for President from the Republican party. This immediately highlighted the consideration of race and ethnicity in American politics. One of Nikki Haley’s themes for her presidential announcement is unity and to emphasize that, she showed the state’s response to hate she received for not being white.
In 2015, when Nikki Haley became the governor of South Carolina, a mass killing occurred when a white supremacist murdered nine Black parishioners at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. She had addressed the tragedy in a video of herself joining hands with fellow leaders in the wake of that crime,
We turned away from fear toward God and the values that still make our country the freest and greatest in the world.
As a woman of color and a person of South Asian race, Nikki Haley recognized the need for a quick response to those racially-motivated murders. She famously and promptly signed the law to get the Confederate flag removed from the state capital complex grounds after the Charleston shooting.
For those who wish to show their respect for the flag on their private property. No one will stand in your way. But the statehouse is different. Today, we are here in a moment of unity in our state without ill will to say it’s time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds.
Nikki Haley was widely appreciated for the prompt decision she made. Former Democratic Governor Jim Hodges spoke to her during that period and found it impressive how she recognized that the flag needed to be taken down, despite not having championed that cause before, he said. This decision was prompt surely on her part because of her race. She is a woman of color so she recognized the motivations behind such killings.
In an event in 2016, Nikki Haley talked about those gruesome murders and even slammed former President Donald Trump in her speech.
The KKK came to South Carolina from out of state to protest on our statehouse grounds. We saw and looked at true hate in the eyes last year in Charleston. I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the KKK. That is not a part of our party. That is not who we want as president. We will not allow that in our country.
An appropriate and proper response from a woman of color and a person of a different race, many thought. But she baffled everyone when she took the post of US Ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration less than a year later.
Now, Nikki Haley is challenging Trump for the Republican nomination. She is one of the candidates with a tricky pattern of vehemently opposing Trump, then embracing him, and now running against him.
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