Except that they don't. And the mascots they use to prove they're also tolerant actually prove that they are anything but. Most troubling of all, these "mascots" are willingly allowing themselves to be used. I don't see how Republicans think Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, and Haley, the Republican candidate for governor of South Carolina, represent the "new face" of the GOP when they hew to the same homogenous, unrelenting party, and racial, line.
Take Bobby Jindal. Please. His real name is Piyush. He was born and raised in Baton Rouge, and although he was raised Hindu, he got sucked into the conservative culture of the South and converted to Catholicism his first year at Brown. People call him Bobby, he uses Bobby, and his signature is just a line of squiggles, so you don't know if he regards himself as Piyush or Bobby officially. Now his entire family attends a Catholic church; don't know if they quit Hinduism to make him happy.
At least he didn't change his name, has a wife that uses her given Indian name (Supriya), and named his three kids with South Asian first names and American middle names. Nikki Haley, the presumptive new governor of South Carolina, has willingly dove into the waters of assimilation when Jindal has waded through. Haley was born Nimrata Randhawa and raised Sikh. But like Jindal, she decided to ditch her ancestry and converted to a Western religion, Methodism, before marrying his husband, Michael.
More startling are her current views about her blood and her current views on relations with her parents, who have decided to stay with Sikhism. She goes to a Sikh temple when invited by her parents; one gets the feeling she's thinking, "Ew-ew-ewwwwwww!" when confronted with Sikh ceremony. And when faced with the question of bridging her upbringing with her current beliefs, according to this Newsweek article:
Haley shies away from talk of breaking racial and gender barriers. She says she’s proud of her heritage and of the accomplishments of Indian-Americans—their educational attainment, their income levels, their philanthropy. But that’s about as far as she’ll go. “Everybody else is looking at this to be something special,” she told me. But “there was actually nothing special about this at all.” Pressed on the matter, she allowed that “the fact that I happen to be an Indian female, of course that brings a new dynamic. But what I hope it does is cause a conversation in this state where we no longer live by labels, but we live by philosophies.”
In other words, fuck my past. I'm an American now! I'm a Southerner!! And I'm white!!! (That's not she would say, she's too smart; she's only thinking this. Jindal too.)
Tell me how this makes Jindal and Haley a "new kind" of Republican? They pray like white Republicans, talk like white Republicans, believe like white Republicans and, most importantly, hate like white Republicans. They are white Republicans. Yet white Republicans pull Jindal and Haley by the scruffs of their necks and say, "See! We can be diverse! Just like Obama!"
This is a false sense of racial intolerance. Whether or not this is genuine belief or a cynical ploy is up to you. Bottom line is, besides Jindal and Haley's extraction and dark skin color, these two ambitious politicians have managed to erase everything "exotic" about themselves, and thus they have been accepted into the Republican party. These two are Diverse Republicans In Name Only. Anyone with intelligence should utterly dismiss any chest beatings by the GOP that these two whitewashed symbols prove they're just as racially progressive as Democrats.
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