Jeeti said:
Harman your points are all valid..As I said her conversion is fine...belief is not to be judged. As far as her name..
I think she shoulda kept Randhawa-Haley...just because it would be nice to see a Sikh American proud of her heritage....not willing to change it for campaign purposes ..which was clearly the purpose of her name change.... given that she used to go by Randhawa-Haley...
Harman..you don't see any lack of integrity in not using the name she originally used (Randhawa-Haley) or Namrita for that matter? Should I have put Jerry Mangat instead of Harjeet Singh Mangat on my dental application in hopes that the admissions committee would somehow perceive me differently...you may think that its a different ball game for politics but it really isn't...
Her being a raghead was clearly an ignorant statement made by an insignificant man..thats all I have to say about that.
If you went by Jeeti instead of Harjeet that wouldn't be a compromise of your values (I think). If she is using the nickname her family gave her I can't really fault her. Now if she just made her name Suzy Haley or something I would understand that it is obviously compromising. The last name change, I agree that is a compromise if she used to go by Randhawa-Haley but got rid of the hyphen. I'm sure it helped, I think a lot of people were even surprised she was Indian, they just assumed she was white.
But really, she is running for election in South Carolina- a state with a very racist past and deeply embedded racial problem. I don't think Jake Knotts is irrelevant...he was on the South Carolina House of Reps from 1994-2002 and has been in the state Senate since 2002. The guy makes important decisions and influences policy and he is holding obviously prejudiced and bigoted views. The fact that he could say what he did and not be fearful of losing public support is telling...he isn't the only one who feels like that.