"Trying the Elizabeth Warren angle now": Nikki Haley slammed over viral clip claiming she was teased every day “for being brown”

Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley once again made headlines after she called herself “brown” during an exclusive joint interview with NBC News and The Des Moines Register. When the interviewer Dasha Burns asked Nikki Haley whether she had “challenges when it comes to talking about race,” worrying Americans “what that would mean for the general election,” the South Carolina native said:

“We were the only Indian family in our small southern town. 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.”

She faced mass outrage online as soon as her “being brown” comment became viral. In this regard, an X user said how she pretended to understand the discrimination faced by people of color, just like former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren often did, despite being a white woman. The comment was posted under @EndWokeness’ tweet on the same.

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Exploring what Nikki Haley said about racism and “being brown”

On December 27, 2023, Nikki Haley was asked by one of the audience members during the New Hampshire Town Hall, “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” Instead of mentioning the word “slavery,” Nikki Haley focussed on other unrelated things, earning backlash from both the public as well as her fellow politicians, both Republicans and Democrats.

While she later issued a clarification during the radio interview with The Pulse, saying, “I’m from the South, of course, I know it’s about slavery,” that did not stop the incoming criticisms.

During her latest chat with NBC News and The Des Moines Register, host Dasha Brown reminded Nikki Haley about her comments on slavery, but she said there was no need to “rehash” it.

“But there were some critics that criticized your comments last night about having black friends as sort of using a trope. What do you say to people who say that you really have challenges when it comes to talking about race and are worried about what what that would mean for the general election?” Brown asked.

In response, the former United Nations ambassador shared her experiences about growing up in the South and being part of an “Indian family” who was “teased every day for being brown.” She explained how she, too, was a victim of racism during her formative years.

“If you want to know what it was like growing up, I was disqualified from a beauty pageant because I wasn't white or black; because they didn't know where to put me. So, look, I know the hardships and the pain that come with racism,” Nikki Haley mentioned.

She added when 50-year-old Black man Walter Scott was brutally “shot down by [a] dirty cop” in April 2015 in North Charleston, South Carolina, due to racial profiling, it was she who ensured that the victim’s family “didn’t suffer because we put the first body camera bill in the country in place.”

Likewise, Nikki Haley also mentioned that the same year, during the Charleston church massacre, which was an anti-black mass shooting and hate crime, it was she who “called for the Confederate flag to come down.” Haley continued by saying how no other Republican or Democrat was willing to do the same.

“It's the reason that I fight bullies every day when it comes to racism, anti-Semitism, or hate, and I always will if I didn't mention slavery on that day. It's because that's an automatic,” Haley added.

She wrapped up by saying how the American Civil War has also been about slavery, and she “misread” the question and thought the questioner was looking for a “bigger answer.” She also stood her ground, saying that “critics can say whatever they want,” but it did not matter to her as she was “comfortable” in her “skin” and what she believed in.

“And my job is not to convince them,” she concluded.

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“Who else is laughing at this joker?”: Nikki Haley faces online backlash for identifying as “brown”

Nikki Haley is facing severe backlash from netizens for calling herself “brown” and saying how she understood racism. Here are some reactions:

Nikki Haley was also called out last week for saying at the CNN Town Hall that the United States “has never been a racist country.” It was a reiteration of what she said during the Fox News interview two days before.

For those uninitiated, Nikki Haley was born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa in January 1952 in Bamberg, South Carolina, to Indian-immigrant Sikh parents. Later, when she married Michael Haley in 1996, she took her husband’s surname.