The Atlantic writer Jemele Hill insisted on Sunday that former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley is racist because she doesn’t want Vice President Kamala Harris to be president.
Haley is the daughter of Indian immigrants, while Harris is the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica. But that didn’t stop Hill from accusing Haley of "sick" racism when Haley, a 2024 Republican hopeful, posted on X that a vote for a "Joe Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris."
"So part of the reason racism is such a terrible sickness in this country is because politicians like this know they can rally a certain base with the fear of OH MY GOD A BLACK WOMAN MIGHT BE PRESIDENT IF YOU DON’T VOTE FOR ME. Then we want to act all surprised when the most hateful part of the base decides they need to act out on their feelings of hatred," Hill responded, appearing to tie Haley's words to the Florida killings of three Black people in an apparent hate crime.
Critics quickly mocked the far-left journalist for the take, but she doubled down when a user responded that she was twisting Haley’s words.
"So you think she invoked Kamala Harris’ name because of what, then? Because I promise you, if she were a white guy named Tim Harris, she wouldn’t have done that. She knows what she’s doing and it’s sick," Hill wrote.
"If it was a white guy named Tim Harris, would you call him racist? Nope. You clearly hate Indian Americans," radio host Jason Rantz responded.
"Sad that when you see Kamala Harris you can't get past her skin color," Grabien Media founder Tom Elliott responded.
Journalist Andrew Neil added, "Nikki Haley’s parents were immigrant Sikhs from Punjab, India. Kamal Harris’s mother was an immigrant Tamil Indian (who became a distinguished biologist). I fail to see what race has to do with Ms Haley’s remark."
Others pointed out that Harris has a low approval rating and criticisms of her "have nothing to do with race." One user suggested Harris "has proven to be incompetent" as vice president.
"What is she incompetent at? Be very specific," Hill responded.
As criticism poured in, Hill continued to defend her position.
"It’s funny how y’all suddenly want to be colorblind when the oppression has been right there," Hill wrote. "Did you think we were a colorblind society when Black folks didn’t have the same rights, were separated from society, etc? Y’all wanna talk about merit but when we show stats that clearly favor White men .. crickets"
Haley has repeatedly suggested President Biden isn’t going to finish out his term and invoked his unpopular No. 2 as a reason not to vote for him again. Biden, already the oldest president in U.S. history, would turn 86 before the end of his second term.
"My concern is we cannot have Kamala Harris as president. We can't chance this. We have to make sure that we have a new generational leader that's going to bring in not only Republicans, but we're going to pull back the independents. We're going to bring back in the suburban women, we're going to bring in Hispanics. We're going to bring in the Asian community. We have to make sure we win this, because the thought of Kamala Harris being president should send a chill up every American spine," she told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
As for Hill, the former ESPN anchor’s career took a turn in September 2017 when she tweeted, "Donald Trump is a White supremacist who has surrounded himself with other White supremacists." Hill also called Trump a "bigot" and "unqualified and unfit to be president." She added, "If he were not White, he never would have been elected."
ESPN initially declined to punish Hill but then sidelined her for two weeks in October 2017 after she violated the company’s social media guidelines again. Not long after returning from her suspension, ESPN reassigned Hill from its flagship "SportsCenter" to a role at The Undefeated, the company’s site that covers the intersections of sports and race. She eventually left ESPN and joined The Atlantic, where she covers race, sports, politics and culture as a contributing writer.
Hill has since become one of the more prominent far-left pundits on social media, and recently said Asian Americans who supported ending affirmative action "carried the water" for White supremacists.
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Fox News’ Taylor Penley and Kendall Tietz contributed to this report.
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