Her name is Nina. Nina Davuluri.
Since the winner of the Miss America pageant was announced, every effing headline I seemed to glance at online or hear on some news outlet spoke about her ethnicity or the racist backlash against her victory. Although I tend to enjoy Vice’s more political coverage (traveling to North Korea and dodging danger), this one rather pissed me off (and not just because I’m bitter about not being Miss America material myself). Vice isn’t alone in making this mistake. However, it serves as an excellent example of hypocrisy in these sorts of stories.
The content was finger-wagging, yes; but it was peppered with screen caps of hateful tweets (Yes! by all means, give the supremacists the spotlight!). Also worthy of note, is just how many hyperlinks I had to click through before I could find out whether she was an actual human female with an actual name:
No link and Twitter troll’s name blocked out.
Well, that’s a relief! She’s a person! I was starting to wonder if friends and family referred to her directly by the color she isn’t. I’m imagining a hypothetical introduction taking place between Nina’s agent and a young fan excited to meet her (who suddenly thinks the agent has a speech impediment):
Agent: “Okay, little girl! Here she comes! This is NotWhite!”
Schoolgirl Fan: “What’s not right?”
Good question, young one! I’ll gladly explain what’s “not right”:
1. That hatred is indulged via regurgitated racism that makes “news”.
2. Dehumanizing in the name of hyper-objectification.
3. The fact that our unifying factors are never what are celebrated.
With the power of the press in your hands, if you can’t start by spotlighting and celebrating the commonalities of the human race itself, it’s going to be pretty hard to hope the world reading your drivel can change their programmed and ingratiated bigotry to start seeing that even less significant “differences” – like skin color – aren’t differences at all.
Congratulations, Nina.
Keep being as beautiful internally as you are externally, and do something wonderful with your win. I don’t know how important beauty pageants themselves are, but your victory will indeed give you a social platform from which you can help mold the minds of young admirers into celebrating the similarities we all share.
Xx
<3~A
Velt
“Miss America is Indian. This is bullshit!” – some asshole whose family probably arrived to america only about 50 years before hers did