Nina Davuluri, Miss New York, made history on Sunday when she became the first Indian-American Miss America. But instead of being happy for the winner and excited about the pageant’s milestone, many people took to Twitter and unleashed a slew of racist and negative comments upon the winner.
The pageant has come a long way since its start in the 1920s, when the only women allowed to participate were white Americans. There were in fact, no African American contestants until 1970. Since then, the Miss America pageant has been embracing diversity more and more, and it is a welcome change.
In an interview with NPR, Davuluri commented, “I have always viewed Miss America as the girl next door, but the girl next door is evolving as the diversity in America evolves. She's not who she was 10 years ago, and she's not going to be the same person come 10 years down the road.”
But of course, there are always going to be those people who do see Miss America as the stereotypical white, blonde, blue-eyed girl next door—something that is just not true. Just take a look at some of the nasty tweets collected on the Public Shaming Tumblr: one user writes, “It’s called Miss America. Get outta here Miss New York you look like a terrorist. #bye #americanforamerica,” while another says, “For Mrs. America’s talent…building a bomb in 15 seconds! An getting it through Airport security in less than 30! #nojoke.”
Honestly, the only word to describe this behavior is shameful. First of all—Davuluri is Indian American, not Arab, and secondly, a Hindu, not a Muslim. But what else can you expect from a group of people who have made the generalization that all Arabs and Muslims are terrorists? India, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran—they’re all the same to these people, no matter how completely different culturally, not to mention geographically, these countries are.
There is no single way to describe an American: that’s the whole point. We are a culture that is a mixture of all cultures, and all those people who have protested that only ‘Americans’ should win the pageant don’t realize that the stereotypical white woman they believe should have been crowned is also a European foreigner if you trace her roots back far enough. If we go by this logic, the only people eligible to win Miss America are Native Americans.
Our country has come so far—President Barack Obama is the first president of color, and we have, for the most part, moved away from picturing the typical American as white and light haired and moved toward the understanding that there is no much thing as the typical American. The one good thing we can take away from this is that the bigots whose tweets and comments drew so much attention may be extremely vocal, but they are still a small minority.
Photo courtesy of Andy Jones, Wikimedia Commons.