A New Miss America: Nina Davuluri

A New Miss America As Nina Davuluri took her first walk as the new Miss America on Sunday night, audience members and viewers at home showed their true colors. They exclaimed dismay over the crowning of the Indian-American beauty by expressing their views through a social media, especially Twitter. They attacked the former Miss New York through a variety of insults, including using racial slurs and dubbing her “Miss Al Qaeda” (@SHANN_Wow). The main accusation by social media users online is that Davuluri is “not American.” “Shes like not even american and she won miss america” and “this is America. not India” proclaimed the Twitterverse (@kathrynRyan50, @sarawhitton). Born in Syracuse, New York, and raised in Oklahoma and Michigan, it is hard to pick a more American story than that of Davuluri. The daughter of Indian doctors who immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s, Miss America embodies all ideas of the great American Dream. But an uneducated public is trying to crush that dream with their negativity. Misidentifying Davuluri as Muslim, Arab, Egyptian, and Indonesian, among other ethnicities, Twitter users did not just stop at proclaiming that, essentially, non-white participants of the pageant should be disqualified. They also linked her to terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda. Some took it even further, outraged that she should be crowned in the same week as September 11. Those who correctly acknowledged her Indian heritage made racist jokes, playing on the stereotype that Indian-Americans often work in the grocery and food industries. It is ironic that the 24-year-old New Yorker is bullied about her race after her answer in the question round of this weekend's pageant. Asked by Miss America judge Carla Hall about TV host Julie Chen's plastic surgery to appear “less Asian,” Davuluri responded, “I've always viewed Miss America as the girl next door. And the girl next door is evolving as the diversity in America evolves... Definitely