Another explanation for Jindal/Haley could be that it’s a myth, or an outdated perception, that the South is inimical to racial minorities. Conventional wisdom has it that Southern whites vote Republican because the Democrats are the party of civil rights. That may have been true in 1964, but has been much less so since. (James Taranto wrote a terrific op-ed on this subject in The Wall Street Journal in 2004, and his points all hold true today.) It is more accurate to say that blacks vote Democratic (both in the South and elsewhere) because they perceive the Republican Party to be racist, and that today’s white Southerners vote for the GOP because they are conservative on other matters such as religion, abortion, guns, the size of government, and national defense. This does, however, give rise to an appearance of a racially polarized electorate, which, in turn, keeps alive the stereotype of Southern intolerance.

One could make a different argument, too: In desperate times such as these, conservatives—who are, in any case, more serious about their conservatism in the South than in the North—are inclined to embrace anyone who is an effective representative of their core views, regardless of race.

I do wonder, sometimes, whether America’s toxic black-white history and its legacy create a need for a “third way”—for emblems of the Other that are not part of the toxic mix, especially in the South. Indians, here, offer a great political convenience. They have an irrefutable profile as strivers and self-starters. The worst you hear of them in demotic conversation are the “Quickie Mart” jokes of the Simpsons variety (remember Joe Biden and his 7-Eleven quip?) And what does that mean? That there is an immigrant who owns his own family business in America within a generation, and whose kid just won the spelling bee en route to Chapel Hill, or Harvard.