This week saw the crowning of Miss America, and weirdly, I heard about it. New Yorker Nina Davuluri is the first Indian American to win Miss America. Her crowning induced a racist Twitter backlash postapocolyptic super-storm. Twitter trolls questioned Nina’s Americaness, calling her an Arab and a terrorist. It was racism slathered on top of the misogynist institution of beauty pageants like jelly or jam, or really anything except Nutella. (Sometimes racist sexism makes me hungry!) My least favorite piece of bigotry this week is the racism against Nina Davuluri for winning Miss America.
One twitter person wrote, “If you’re #MissAmerica you should have to be American.” Even grosser, it got ten retweets, and it’s not even funny. Born in New York, Nina is an American. Sorry she doesn’t fit into the stereotype of an American (which is someone who likes guns and doesn’t say please, right?).
The institution of beauty pageants centers around parading young women about in bikinis to be ogled by people old enough to be their parents. So it follows that judging human beings by their looks feeds bigotry like a pet dragon. But the level of hate present in some of the twitter backlash was grosser than a slug having sexual intercourse with a Republican.
Another twitter person wrote, “Miss America? More like Miss 7/11!” I bet any person racist enough to tweet that probably thinks 7/11 is a great fancy date restaurant. Nina wouldest thou like to go to dinner? I know a little bistro that has the most scrumptious corn dogs, taquitos, and buckets of ignorant racism!
I hate that there are still people who think that what it means to be American is being white. What it means to be an American is to be filled with green power ooze that drools out of our mouths when we sleep, right? …right?
I hate sexism, racism, bigotry and any form of making people feel dehumanized, making human beings feel reduced to their physicality instead of appreciated for the dynamic extent of their entire soul. No one human being is one singular thing, and being identified by a race, gender, or sexuality is offensive and also usually not smart. I don’t think I’m the only person on the soap box when I say that internet trolls are not the most empathetic of folk, but hey, prove me wrong commenters, please? On the bright side, a woman of color did win a beauty pageant that is often whitewashed, and while she is sadly suffering the slings and arrows of racism, she still gets to swim in a vat of scholarship money like Scrooge McDuck in a leopard print bikini. That’s been my least favorite piece of misogyny this week, tune in next to try HARDER to make me cry.
I don’t like beauty pageants either. Or racism. Or Scrooge McDuck. So you’re right on with this one.
Tweetarded twits testily twattering tasteless racist titterings betwixt twisted testicle testing.
If you’re not going to actually talk about misogyny, maybe you should change name of the column.
Now let’s talk about copy editing:
“So it follows that judging human beings by their looks feeds bigotry like a pet dragon.”
How exactly do pet dragons feed bigotry? Please do not let your unrelenting desire for useless and not-funny non-sequiturs get in the way of making sure you’re actually using full sentences. While I do appreciate this column’s attempt at being Lindy West-lite, don’t let her be your singular lodestar. Branch out and sample other humorous lady writers who also use non sequiturs; I bet you’d love Tina Fey.
postscript: The name of the company you referenced is 7-Eleven, not 7-11.
For the first time, you have written something I can understand and agree with. The level of bigotry in this country continues to amaze me. Also, the stupidity of some trolls.
I love when one of the commenters says something like, “for once,” or “for the first time” he agrees with you, as if he’s doing you some sort of favor. Like his approval even matters.
Graham seems like a fun person.
Superb display of irony Zach.
Yo, copy editor: “postapocolyptic” ain’t spelled that way.
And yeah, the racism on Twitter/comment boards/everywhere is super gross, but how does the inherent misogyny of beauty pageants not warrant at least a mention?
This is the comment I posted on news stories about the racial outburst in the United States about an Indian being chosen “Miss America”:-
——START OF COMMENT——–
“Indians as a rule are inferior Indian n i g g e r s unfit to talk about strategic matters, especially if it involves the White Master in any way, which it always does. That is why in his ‘Mein Kampf’ Adolf Hitler said “As for India, I would rather see India under the British than under any one else”. It is not just that a handful of the British from half way around the world ruled India for centuries; a lot of other people from various countries did that for a thousand years before that.
A modern day Babar will start each day by killing a million Indians before breakfast every morning, though some think three million will be better (this number can be herded into fairly small extermination circles and then a neutron bomb exploded over them).
I am an Indian, but as far above the other Indians as they may be above cockroaches” — Satish Chandra
“RAW’s Trafficking of Indian Children to Israel to be Used as Food” :
RAWsTraffickingOfIndianChildrenDOTblogspotDOTcom
——–END OF COMMENT——–
I posted the above comment on a story about the racial outburst in Hindustan Times. Someone with a female name posted a comment on my comment saying ‘I can’t believe you are an Indian’ and suggested I am a Pakistani. Well, yes, how can the most intelligent, most handsome man on Earth be an Indian? Another RAW operative posted a comment on my comment saying ‘You are under RAW’s radar. Better get out’. I have described how I have been under 24-hour satellite surveillance for the past 36 years and some of the crimes against me with the fullest participation of the Indians: IndiasLegitimateRulerSatishChandraDOTblogspotDOTcom .
This is a paragraph from my press release dated September 14 ‘13 titled “India Is Now the Sole Superpower“ (thanks to Satish Chandra):-
“There should be no elections in India until the public is familiar with Satish Chandra and his life and work, after which the public will automatically lynch all politicians. But this will not happen because the media are still controlled by CIA-RAW and the meek acceptance for centuries of rule by the British who killed over ten million Indians in just the ten years after 1857 in just Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Bihar and the ferocious loyalty to the Anglo-Americans of Indians both in government (prime examples of which are the Intelligence Bureau and RAW — WhatYouShouldKnowAboutRAWDOTblogspotDOTcom — who go to unlimited lengths to sabotage and damage India in service of their Anglo-American masters) and outside shows that the Indian public can be mobilized for Hindu-Muslim riots by the Intelligence Bureau and RAW, that is all it is capable of. Since India’s status as the sole superpower is based on nuclear weapons emplaced in U.S. cities, the public is not needed to destroy Washington, New York and RAW and, later, for the coast-to-coast destruction of the enemy United States.”
Back in 1968-69 I used to date a beauty queen who was “Miss Rochester” and “runner-up in the New York State Pageant”; I assumed that her float had won the second prize in some kind of an annual agricultural parade, the state equivalent of a county fair; only much later did I realize it was a beauty contest. I asked her why she had given up modeling and worked a factory job and she replied “You have to give yourself”.
As for the Indian woman being chosen “Miss America” — I wouldn’t touch a piece of dog-faeces like that with a ten foot pole.
Satish Chandra