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Former Trump employees team up to characterize The View's Sunny Hostin as 'racist' [1]
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Date: 2022-09-21
I will admit, when Hostin, who is Puerto Rican and Black, mentioned passing, I cringed. It is often thought of as a survival technique of our past afforded to Black people with lighter skin who faced such dire, life-threatening circumstances in America that they would sooner live life as a white person than deal with the ramifications of society perceiving them as Black.
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I view passing as more indicative of our failures as a country than a judgment on the people who made the difficult decision to pass. So to hear it used as an insult—even when targeting a Republican opportunist who otherwise very much so deserves insults—was disheartening.
New Republican host on the show Alyssa Farah Griffin, another former Trump employee, defended Haley by explaining that she’s gone by “Nikki” since she was a child and probably used the name to avoid prejudice having grown up in South Carolina.
It’s funny how the people now seeking to assert themselves as mindful enough to defend Haley as a woman of color seem to have no problem working for a man who publicly defended white supremacists, called Black people “the Blacks,” and characterized Mexican immigrants as “rapists.”
RELATED STORY: 12 times Trump really did say that awful, racist thing you thought had to be fake news
But since Griffin’s on The View now, we’ll go with her newly cemented sense of morality.
x .@NikkiHaley fired back after @TheView host @Sunny criticized her for not going by her first name.
Haley, whose first name is Nimrata, has gone by her middle name, Nikki, another Indian name, since she was a child.
READ:
https://t.co/Zzk8B0xktw
pic.twitter.com/y3f9YJ1HEj — Julia Johnson (@juliaajohnson_) September 20, 2022
Co-host Sara Haines interrupted Hostin to remind her that she herself goes by a different name.
“That’s because most Americans can’t pronounce Asunción because of the under-education in our society," Hostin said.
ABC's Sara Haines suggested that the explanation Hostin provided is in essence Griffin’s point, that “people gravitate to names for different reasons.”
Haley tweeted redundantly in response to the discussion: “Thanks for your concern @Sunny. It's racist of you to judge my name. Nikki is an Indian name and is on my birth certificate—and I'm proud of that. What's sad is the left's hypocrisy towards conservative minorities. By the way, last I checked Sunny isn't your birth name…”
It in fact is not, as Haines pointed out in real time on the show.
And while I can appreciate Haley feeling the need to make some kind of statement, Hostin suggesting an elected official should embrace her Indian heritage is not racist. The fact that Haley and conservatives like her think it is, is exactly why public schools should be teaching Black history more thoroughly instead of banning it for fear of offending the descendants of enslavers.
RELATED STORY: Word of advice on banning Black authors: Don't
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