text: A CNN anchor became the target of rebuke for assuming that the 2017 national spelling champion, a California resident who’s of South Asian descent, is “used to using” Sanskrit. 
   
   Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo were talking to 12-year-old Ananya Vinay on “New Day” after Ananya’s Thursday victory at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Toward the end of the interview — and after several awkward seconds of asking the sixth-grader to spell “covfefe” — Camerota joked about the origin of the gibberish that President Trump conjured on Twitter last week. 
   
   “It’s a nonsense word. So, we’re not sure that its root is actually in Sanskrit, which is what you’re probably, uh, used to using, so, I don’t know. Anyway,” Camerota said. 
   
   Vinay, an Indian American, is from Fresno, Calif. 
   
   [By correctly spelling ‘marocain,’ California girl becomes bee queen] 
   
   Criticism of Camerota’s comment has since been circulating on social media. Many said her comment was racist, while others were simply in disbelief that the CNN anchor had made such an assumption. Here’s a sampling of the reactions: 
   
   CNN guesses the U.S. national spelling bee winner is 'used to using' Sanskrit. If she were Jewish would u say 'your real language Hebrew' ? https://t.co/x4EDTNE6fh — Susan Benesch (@SusanBenesch) June 4, 2017 
   
   12-year-old Ananya Vinay won the National Spelling Bee so naturally CNN had her on to spell "covfefe" and say some racist stuff to her. pic.twitter.com/Qirb8CpBV9 — Jeremy McLellan (@JeremyMcLellan) June 3, 2017 
   
   CNN anchor assumes spelling bee champ, who happens to be of Indian descent, uses Sanskrit to find the origin of a word. Watch: https://t.co/LIPkEGozVF — Asha Dahya (@Ashadahya) June 4, 2017 
   
   "in sanskrit, which is what you're probably used to using"? Really, @CNN this is what you say to the kid who won the English spelling bee?! https://t.co/fU76nHdUyc — Maya Mirchandani (@maya206) June 4, 2017 
   
   A CNN spokeswoman said Camoreta’s comment had nothing to do with the girl’s heritage, and the interview was not the first time the anchor joked about Sanskrit being the origin of “covfefe.” 
   
   “Alisyn made the same joking reference to the root of ‘covfefe’ in an earlier panel discussion that aired Wednesday. If she’s guilty of anything it’s recycling a joke. To assign a bias to what was a fun and innocent segment celebrating Ananya Vinay’s incredible accomplishment is frankly extremely cynical,” the spokesperson said in a statement, referring to a transcript of the Wednesday segment. 
   
   [Bill Maher says he is ‘very sorry’ for using a racial slur on his HBO show] 
   
   Sanskrit, an ancient language closely associated with Hinduism, is rarely spoken today and is generally used by Hindu priests during religious ceremonies. But activists and Hindu nationalists in India still push for the language to be more widely taught in schools. Government officials in India’s northeastern state of Assam announced this year that Sanskrit would be mandatory in public high schools, the New York Times reported. The decision was met with strong resistance from student groups, which argued that other topics are more relevant and that few teachers are equipped to teach the ancient language. 
   
   Twelve-year-old Ananya Vinay of Fresno, California won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on June 1. The sixth-grader correctly spelled the word "marocain." (Reuters) 
   
   The 4½-minute interview with Vinay began with Camerota and Cuomo praising the 12-year-old for her spelling prowess and asking her what it was like to win. Standing in front of a camera next to her trophy, a smiling Vinay talked about how she prepared for the competition. 
   
   “I study, like, a couple of hours a day for the whole year, and I just try to figure out language patterns and … root words so I can see if I could come up with a spelling that makes sense,” said Vinay, who was the first Scripps National Spelling Bee solo champion in years. 
   
   Did she really just say Sanskrit? Folks out here extra comfortable saying any ole thing. pic.twitter.com/MGaQNML04S — deray mckesson (@deray) June 4, 2017 
   
   Then came the challenge. 
   
   Camerota and Cuomo asked Vinay to spell “covfefe.” As she did at spelling competitions, the 12-year-old asked for the word’s definition. 
   
   “Definition is a nonsense word made up by the 45th president of the United States in a late-night tweet,” Camerota said. 
   
   Vinay, smiling, didn’t spell the “word” right away. Here’s the rest of the exchange: 
   
   Vinay: Language of origin? Camerota and Cuomo: Gibberish. Vinay: Part of speech? Camerota: It’s a noun. Cuomo: It could be a noun but may be used as a verb and as an insult. Vinay: Are there alternate pronunciations? Camerota: Yes, oh, many! (Then she goes on to pronounce “covfefe” a few different ways.) 
   
   Finally, Vinay spelled: c-o-f-e-f-e. To which Cuomo said, “Good enough!” Camerota then went on to spell the gibberish the way Trump wrote it a few days ago — then joked about its origin. 
   
   .@CNN An Indian-American who wins the national spelling bee is not used to seeing Sanskrit just because she's an Indian. — Varsha Venkat…. (@varshaoforange) June 4, 2017 
   
   After making the comment about Sanskrit, Camerota turned to Cuomo, who wrapped up the interview by praising Vinay’s performance at the spelling competition. 
   
   “You did a great job. You know what I love about this?” Cuomo said. “Not only did you make yourself proud and your family, but do you know that there are kids all over the country, probably the world, who are going to look at you and say, ‘I want to put in that work. I want to be a champion. I want to spell like her.’” 
   
   Then Camerota said, “You are an inspiration to us … Thank you so much and congratulations again.” 
   
   Sarah Larimer contributed to this report. 
   
   1 of 59 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Photos from the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee View Photos More than 290 students are competing for the title of spelling-bee champion at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland’s National Harbor. Caption More than 290 students are competing for the title of spelling-bee champion at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland’s National Harbor. June 1, 2017 Ananya Vinay, 12, from Fresno, Calif., standing with her mother, holds her trophy after being declared the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
   
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   Trump’s tweeted typo covfefe becoming vanity license plates ||||| Yes, another Indian-American girl, 12-year-old Ananya Vinay won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in the US. That's not news anymore. 
   
   She just follows in the footsteps of the likes of Gokul Venkatachalam, Vanya Shivshankar, her sister Kavya Shivshankar, Shriram Hathwar, his brother Jairam Hathwar, Sukanya Roy, Anamika Veeramani, Pratyush Buddiga, Nupur Lala. 
   
   Even the stories of "why do desis win spelling bees?" are not news. They have been written over and over again. 
   
   In a world where terror attacks rock Kabul and London (and of course one makes for banner headlines even in India and the other is a just another day in a war-torn part of the world) the spelling bee in America seems insignificant. 
   
   But Ananya Vinay's victory made news outside the spelling beehive for a different reason--a cringe-worthy CNN interview. 
   
   CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo ask her to spell "covfefe", the Trump typo that was ruling the internet. She plays along and gives it a game attempt. Then Camerota tells her it was a "nonsense word" anyway. 
   
   And then she brightly says, "But we're not sure that its root is in Sanskrit which is probably what you are used to." 
   
   CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota. 
   
   The Internet has come down hard on Camerota. How would she react if someone told her she was probably used to Latin? 
   
   A CNN spokesperson dismissed charges of racism and bias. 
   
   "Alisyn made the same joking reference to the root of 'covfefe' in an earlier panel discussion that aired Wednesday. If she's guilty of anything it's recycling a joke. To assign a bias to what was a fun and innocent segment celebrating Ananya Vinay's incredible accomplishment is frankly extremely cynical," says CNN. 
   
   Perhaps so. 
   
   We do not always have to be so sensitive and thin-skinned and bristle about racism at the drop of a hat or a recycled joke. And let's give her some credit. She knows which part of the world Sanskrit is from. 
   
   The issue is not what Camerota intended. The problem is the way it came across. And that was neither "fun" nor "innocent" the way CNN portrays it. A 12-year-old girl was savouring her moment of hard-won victory. There was no need to inject Donald Trump snark into it. 
   
   The issue is not what Camerota intended. The problem is the way it came across. 
   
   The problem is not that she jokes that the origins of covfefe might be Sanskrit. The problem is the fact that she said Sanskrit is "probably what you are used to". CNN sidesteps that distinction. 
   
   The former just shows simple ignorance. It also betrays a certain presumption that a gibberish word must be put into the basket of something far-out exotic like Sanskrit. But the "probably what you are used to" is a presumption about the other. 
   
   There's nothing wrong with Ananya Vinay being used to Sanskrit. If she was it would be commendable. But the presumption that Vinay must be familiar with her Sanskrit just reeks of the assumption that she is still more Indian than American even if she was born in Fresno, California. (Of course most Indians in India are not that familiar with Sanskrit but that's another story.) 
   
   Let's face it. If she had been asking Trump the same question, would she have asked if the word had its roots in old German, because of course he must be familiar with German given his grandfather's Bavarian roots? Trump is unquestionably Americanised in a way Vinay is not. 
   
   Ananya Vinay of Fresno, California celebrates with family after winning the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, U.S., June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein 
   
   It's a variation of the old origin question, that brown people routinely face in America. 
   
   Where are you from? 
   
   San Francisco. 
   
   No, where are you REALLY from? 
   
   Arre baba, San Bernardino, Southern California. 
   
   It may not be asked with any hostile intent, just simple curiosity, but it does get old especially when you are third generation American. "It feels like someone is trying to point out their otherness: 'You're quite obviously not American, so where are you from?'" says Michele Norris, host of The Race Card Project. 
   
   This can seem trivial especially in America today where an overt racism seems to have acquired political license. And the bullies claim presidential blessing. Matthew Heimbach, a 26-year-old white nationalist says he shoved a black woman at a Donald Trump rally because he was acting "pursuant to the directives and requests" of Trump. Since Trump exhorted the crows to "knock the c*** out of" protesters and promised to pay their legal fees, Heimbach claims charges levied against him "must be shifted" to the President. 
   
   In a world where a man with grouse against Middle Easterners in general shoots an Indian engineer in Kansas City, a blonde television show host making a bad joke about Sanskrit with a little Indian-American girl is probably fairly benign on the Richter scale of racism. 
   
   It's easy to call out racism that's angry and tells you to go back to your own country. 
   
   Yet it is annoying because it is symptomatic of a kind of patronising white liberalism that seems accommodating of 'the other' but in the end never accepts the other as one of them. It's just a joke just as chilled monkey brains in Indiana Jones was a joke, not to taken too seriously. But it leaves an aftertaste. As Sabrina Dhawan who wrote the screenplay for Monsoon Wedding in 2002 and now Monsoon Wedding the musical in 2017 says, a decade of multiculturalism has not changed one basic fact. Everything is still judged by how the "white housewife in Idaho" will react. In the movie, the groom was an Indian immigrant. In the musical he is an Indian-American. It's an important point that could be lost in the song and dance and marigold showers on stage--the Americans in the play are brown. "Being American does not mean looking white. They are Americans. They have been here 30 years," she says. 
   
   It's a point that needs to be made over and over again and a spelling bee is as good place to drive it home as any. 
   
   It's easy to call out racism that's angry and tells you to go back to your own country. It's much trickier when it comes with a patronising smile but still assumes that you are really, in some essential way, from another country. 
   
   But both in the end make the Ananya Vinays of America very firmly 'the other'. 
   
   Also On HuffPost:
target: – CNN is taking heat after a host assumed a teen spelling bee champ of Indian descent was "used to using" Sanskrit. The Washington Post reports the exchange occurred on the network's "New Day" program following 12-year-old Ananya Vinay's victory at Thursday night's 90th annual Scripps Howard Spelling Bee. After asking Ananya to spell "covfefe," hosts Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo joked that President Trump's "nonsense word" has dubious origins. "We’re not sure that its root is actually in Sanskrit, which is what you’re probably, uh, used to using," Camerota told Ananya, who was born and raised in Fresno, Calif. Criticism that Camerota's quip was insensitive and "racist" swept social media. "If she were Jewish would you say 'your real language is Hebrew?'" one woman tweeted. "Are you serious @CNN?" tweeted another. "That's some straight racism there." Sandip Roy writes in Huffington Post India that while "there's nothing wrong with Ananya Vinay being used to" the ancient language of the Hindu scriptures, "the presumption that (Ananya) must be familiar with her Sanskrit just reeks of the assumption that she is still more Indian than American." He compares it to Camerota being asked if "she was probably used to Latin." CNN dismissed the dust-up, per HuffPo, calling the segment "fun and innocent" and noting that Camerota was following up an earlier joke about "covfefe's" roots. "If she's guilty of anything it's recycling a joke," the network said. (Ananya nailed her bee win with this word. Meanwhile, Americans find these words vexing.)