With the Miss America pageant this week, we were once again reminded of the prevalence of racism and xenophobia in U.S. society. It once again became evident just how much social media facilitates it. Nina Davuluri, 24 year-old Miss New York and the daughter of Hindu immigrants from India is the first Indian-American contestant to be crowned Miss America. Upon receiving her crown, twitter was flooded with hateful tweets that took a punch at Davuluri’s race and ethnicity, where many chose to read her brown skin as muslim, which they used as a stepping stone to refer to her as a “terrorist.”
Below you’ll find some of the tweets I’m referencing:
Given that the micro-aggressive modes of racism we’ve seen as an aftermath of Davuluri’s title are not surprising speaks for itself. It shows that people are more invested in jumping to social media sites like twitter and facebook before having any kind of dialogue. Because we live in such a highly mediated age we’re forced to account for the impact that the internet and social media really has on the dialogues and lack-there-of around racism and tolerance. In a tweet, Lue Brasili said, “9/11 was 4 days ago and she gets miss America,” and user Karl Sharro said “Al-Qaeda influenced the liberal judges.” In addition to acknowledging the obvious threat that white people feel with a person of color winning this pageant, we see an immense amount of basic ignorance where people read a person’s skin color to justify their own racial anxieties.
