After having to compete in numerous pageants, the big day finally came for Miss New York’s Nina Davuluri as she has been crowned the new Miss America. Just 24 years old and of Indian descent, this young lady has no intentions of slowing down anytime soon. She has already decided to use her scholarship money wisely and put it toward her scholastic endeavors with the hopes of being accepted into the medical school of her choice. While this new title was a big accomplishment of hers that she seems really ecstatic about, there were quite a few people who had an issue with the new Miss America not being “fully American.” Just seconds after the announcement of the new winner was released, several people took to Twitter to express their outrage and disappointment of Nina Davuluri being selected to hold this special title. The Twitter posts were highly insensitive with people constantly tweeting racial slurs and comments. The posts ranged from anything linking Ms. Davuluri to terrorism, convenience stores, and even claimed that she was not “American” enough to hold this title. Despite this display of complete and total ignorance, Ms. Davuluri has chosen to ignore the negativity and focus on the positives of the situation. Having been born and raised in New York, Ms. Davuluri sees herself as plenty American and has always identified herself as this first. Although there was much negativity about the outcome of the pageant, many people stood in support with the decision of Ms. Davuluri being selected as winner. These people also took to Twitter to display their happiness and joy over her being crowned the new Miss America.
It is still very interesting to me that in 2013 there are still prejudices, and racial hatred being so openly displayed. Of course it comes as no surprise that we do not live in a picture perfect world where everyone is going to get along and love everyone, however, it would be nice to see progression. I believe that by now we as a society should be much more evolved, and that we should be experts on respecting one another’s personal preferences and differences instead of bashing or belittling other races, genders, and religious groups. When will we as a people realize that it is not okay to make racial comments and slurs about other individuals because no one wants that reciprocated back to them. Of course opinions that people have about a particular group of people may never change for some, but instead of making this hatred known to those people, it’d be nice to see people act maturely and keep these divisive thoughts and comments to themselves. I am glad to see that the new Miss America is not letting the negativity bring her out of her character or causing her to respond back with hateful statements. The outcome of this pageant shows that America has come a long way because the judges of pageants are now more accepting of selecting diverse individuals to hold titles, but despite this we still have a very long way to go.