I think (and granted you’re constrained by the tweet length) that that’s a gross oversimplification. Look, I’m an Indian-American of Piyush Jindal’s generation (and I guess by way of disclosure, I do maintain some — not most, but some — Indian customs at home) and I find him loathsome, but I find Nikki Haley, of whom you could make similar accusations, OK. One reason for that is that while Ms. Haley has, yeah, essentially adopted a lot of “white” cultural signifiers (like a religious conversion), she’s also gone out of her way occasionally to show she has an understanding of and insight into her parents’ culture and interests, and values it. Jindal on the other hand seems almost comically to contort to show that, I don’t give a crap about none o’ that Indian crap.

And that’s _not_ American. If you want to say people can reinvent themselves, fine — although note that that goes a lot of ways, with people “assimilating” and also occasionally with the white dudes getting real real into Brazilian culture or converting to Nichiren Buddhism or whatever. But it’s also part of the melting pot ideal that we’re trying really hard to understand and accommodate each other, and Jindal, who ought to have a natural advantage there, seems instead to want to minimize it and be whiter than the white guys. So Nikki Haley’s assimilation at least feels honest to me, and to a lot of Indian-Americans, whereas Jindal’s reeks of a self-promoting attempt to “pass.”