The "Proud Daughter of Indian Immigrants:" Nikki Haley, Race, and the Story of America in the Contemporary Republican Party

Abstract

How might a Republican, Indian American politician such as Nikki Haley reconcile her racial identity with conservative politics? How does she use her identity to appeal to white voters? I explore this by examining Nikki Haley’s written works–including her memoirs Can’t Is Not An Option: My American Story (2012) and With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace (2019)-- along with her most recent book If You Want Something Done (2022) and visual media from her presidential campaign to decipher how she discusses her identity as an Indian American woman and relates it to her politics. While Haley centers her racial identity in discussions of her politics, she often decouples race from systems of oppression, and instead favors racial identity as a feature of an individualistic narrative of her success. She discusses personal experiences of racism as isolated incidents of the past rather than as systemic, enduring problems. Additionally, in describing her relationship to Indian-Americanness, Haley highlights and reinforces model minority ideals, painting herself and her family as having earned acceptance by demonstrating their goodness and worthiness in their communities. In promoting these ideas, Haley is able to legitimize conservative policies that target the poor and people of color, leveraging her experiences of racism to assert that the onus is on the racialized individual to make themselves accepted and successful in the dominant white society. Ultimately, Nikki Haley uses her Indian American identity to claim authority in discourse surrounding race and gender, and in doing so is able to keep the conservative white voter comfortable and advance her political career.