Nikki, Nimarata, Nimbra – How Whiteness Is Trump Card

Donald Trump has won New Hampshire’s primary as thumpingly as Iowa’s. Nikki Haley’s odds of becoming Republicans’ presidential nominee are now super bleak. Since money is equal to power, and definitely so in America, one would have expected the economic might of Indians to extend to politics. But between Haley’s floundering and Vivek Ramaswamy’s stillborn presidential campaigns, it is clear we are still far from that.medium102303751Reason is simple: US is majoritarian when it comes to politics. Political leadership is presumed to be male, white, and Protestant Christian. It has had no female president, no Jewish president, Kennedy was its first Catholic president and Biden is the second.106904157Even Obama was kind of ‘white’ | It did elect a black president. But Obama was very ‘white’ from his Harvard background to his way of speaking to politics. Even so, Trump always calls out the ‘Hussein’ middle name of Obama to imply he is not American. Obama did not go to Amritsar’s Golden Temple for fear of being photographed covering his head, which would then be used to provide evidence that he was, believe it or not, Muslim.Republican Party does represent conservative majoritarianism and Trump in its extreme end. But why haven’t Indian-Americans found it any easier to access political power in Democratic Party? After all, it has, since 2014, adopted equity as a guiding principle. This means it wants to give opportunities to under-represented minorities in political sphere. But in a fantastic twist of logic, even here, Indian-Americans find themselves out in the cold.103991272Indians are branded ‘white adjacent’ | The underlying presumption for the equity-based concept of social justice is that in a just world, there is equality of outcomes. So, if a group has significantly better outcomes, it means they have benefited due to systemic bias and prejudice. By this logic, Indians, who are by far the most prosperous immigrant group in the US, are considered an ‘aggressor class’, over-represented in the distribution of the wealthy. They are deemed ‘white adjacent’ and treated as a dominant group, despite having never held any kind of political power in US. One twisted logic is explained by another. Focus is shifted to their country of origin, to deem Indians in America as having been oppressors in India. Chinese immigrants, on the other hand, nearly as prosperous, do not get this level of attention on their antecedents.102302874Indian PACs are MIA | One reason for this uneven treatment has been that India’s diaspora – the billionaires in it – has not ‘impact invested’ in its community like other representatives of prosperous immigrants have. They would instead invest in cricket teams in Major League Cricket. As a result, there are no powerful, cash-rich lobbying groups or Political Action Committees for Indian-Americans. Nor grassroots identity-based ‘Get out the votes’. So desis take anglo names | This is why, for Indian-American politicians, there are only downsides to the Indian part of their identity. Kamala Harris ran on her Caribbean identity from her father’s side rather than on the Indian identity of a mother who brought her up. Haley has not used her first name, ‘Nimarata’, for many years, just as Piyush Jindal, another presidential also-ran, went by Bobby Jindal.medium102303528Now that she is his only rival for the Republican ticket, Trump has started calling her ‘Nimbra’ to signal to his base that she is ‘not American’. Even though Haley has said she has faced a lot of racism growing up (natural, given she is from South Carolina), she also has to say that America is not a racist country. She has to pretend to be ‘white’ to appeal to Republicans while not having the ‘white’ experience.Although Vivek didn’t | To his credit, Ramaswamy has been the only Indian-origin politician to run on his identity and religion without trying to shove them in a pocket. Even he constantly justifies his Hinduism as being like Christianity in its basic tenets. In any case, he was never a serious candidate. Haley will go further, and she already has, having been South Carolina governor, partially because she jettisoned her Indian identity allegedly in 2001, identifying herself as ‘white’ in her voter registration.medium nocaption102253587For Indian identity to count, Indian billionaires need to step in, supported by multi-millionaires, to mimic the pressure blocs formed by other powerful immigrant communities that influence media coverage, universities, and elections. For some reason, no one is holding their breath for that.