Miss America Racism: Nina Davuluri Responds to Racist Tweets

Anyone watching Sunday’s Miss America Pageant witnessed a shocked and delighted Nina Davuluri receive the crown. Anyone watching BuzzFeed and twitter, however, were shocked as well. Tweets such as “I am literally so mad right now a Arab won” were churned out every second. NBC’s “Today” mentioned over 6,000 tweets had the word “terrorist” in them referring to Davuluri. Another Tweet read, “Miss America? You mean Miss 7-11.” The tweets came from a number of viewers who probably didn’t expect this kind of national exposure. Buzzfeed collected a lot of the tweets and exposed the statements to a shocked national audience.

These tweets couldn’t rob Davuluri of her victory, however. Demonstrating the true character of Miss America, Davuluri responded to the hateful sentiment: “I have to rise above that. I always viewed myself as first and foremost American.” AP reports that she is “so happy that this organization has embraced diversity.” Thick skin, not dark skin characterizes this Miss America. Davuluri hopes to become a doctor one day and wears the Miss America crown proudly. She is only the second Asian-American to win in the history of the Pageant, the first being Angela Perez-Baraquio in 2001, who’s of Filipino descent.