South Carolina Gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley is pushing on with her message—and leading the polls by quite a margin—despite the all-too-usual disdain some hold for women in politics … and the stigma attached to her ethnicity (a state senator referred to her as a “raghead”). Oh, and she’s also been accused of sleeping around.
Will Folks, a conservative blogger, and lobbyist Larry Marchant, a former campaign worker for rival Andre Bauer, who sits at the bottom of the poll, said they’ve shared pillow talk with Haley. Then, state Sen. Jake Knotts used “raghead” to describe Haley and the president of the United States, two elected officials who may be politically opposed but are similar in the way that matters most to Knotts.
Haley, a Methodist, was born and raised in South Carolina and attended Clemson University there; her parents, immigrants from India, are Sikhs, which must make Haley some sort of stealth candidate in Knotts’ view.
The politically tainted accusations of sexual misconduct, the ethnic slurs passed off as harmless and “intended in jest,” reek of sexism and nativism that is unfortunately as American as the apple pie some would also see as under attack – maybe by a sexy dish with multicultural spices. While Americans talk a good game about welcoming everyone, it’s clear that to a lot of people some citizens are more American than others. In 1928, the Catholicism of presidential candidate Al Smith was a deal-breaker. That you have to now have Muslims or Sikhs in the family tree to engender the wrath of some Christian Americans could, I suppose, be considered slow progress.