Liberals, NAACP activists target Nikki Haley with debunked claim that she avoids 'brown-person-sounding' name

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Reid attacks Nikki Haley following 2024 announcement

MSNBC's Joy Reid attacked Nikki Haley following the announcement of her 2024 presidential bid, claiming that the former South Carolina governor was trying to fit in by converting from Sikh to Christianity.

Liberal activists are targeting Nikki Haley with false claims about her real name and claiming she is trying to hide behind her race "to fit in" and "kowtowing" to "white folks."

"NIMRATA RANDHAWA HALEY Say your real name @NikkiHaley. Are you afraid the white folks you’re kowtowing to won’t vote for someone named Nimrata?" activist NAACP leader Talbert Swan wrote in a Twitter post.

"You not only want to erase the history of Black people to satisfy racists, you want to erase your own. You’re a disgrace," he said.

Despite the left's claim that Haley changed her name from Nimrata to Nikki to "erase" her ethnicity, the former U.N. ambassador set the record straight on several occasions: "Nikki is my name on my birth certificate. I married a Haley. I was born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa and married Michael Haley," she wrote in 2018.

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Swan, who in December was elected to a seventh two-year term leading the Greater Springfield Chapter of the NAACP, took another shot at Haley, claiming that her pro-American comments in a video Tuesday "denies and whitewashes America’s history of enslaving, murdering, raping, lynching, brutalizing, segregating, stereotyping, mass incarcerating, criminalizing, and dehumanizing Black people in 17 seconds."

Haley has for years faced attacks for not using her first name, but she has gone by her middle name, Nikki, since she was a child. In 2021, PolitiFact called the assertion that Haley "whitewashed" her name a "pants-on-fire" falsehood.

After Haley announced her presidential bid, journalists from prominent media outlets such as CNN, ABC and MSNBC quickly launched a wave of attacks against her — including targeting her Indian heritage.

"In the 2023 Racial Draft, I, on behalf of all self-respecting South Asians, hereby announce we are cutting Nikki Nimrata Haley from our team. We advise you not to pick her up off waivers. Oops! Too late. GOP scoops up another token. Well, we warned you. Good luck!" MSNBC columnist Wajahat Ali wrote.

In her first campaign video, Haley talked proudly of her Indian heritage and what it was like growing up with immigrant parents in South Carolina.

"Just submitted a piece on Nikki Nimrata Haley shamefully using her Indian heritage to launder white supremacy and GOP talking points. It was cathartic for the soul. Hope you enjoy it whenever it's published. Look for it on @MSNBC.

"Calling Nikki Haley Nimrata is giving Trump-using-Obamas-middle-name vibes and I hope y'all realize that," Terrence T. McDonald wrote in a post.

Haley launched her 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday, entering into the race against former President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination.

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Another user accused Haley of hiding behind her name: "Nikki Haley spends the first 1:00 selling the idea that America *isn’t* a racist country anymore. Kind of a weird take from someone who refuses to use her actual first name, 'Nimrata,' because it’s too brown-person-sounding," Jamie O'Grady wrote.

After the announcement, MSNBC's Joy Reid claimed Haley was just trying to "fit in" by converting to Christianity.

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"And she's had this sort of – she talks about her Indian-American heritage, but she focuses not on her Sikh background but on her conversion to Christianity. She’s definitely trying to fit in," Reid said.

Fox News' Aaron Kliegman contributed reporting.