14 DAY TRIAL // Miss New York Nina Davuluri is the newly crowned Miss America 2014. She is, at the same time, the first beauty queen of Indian heritage to take home the tiara and this has upset many Americans, who did not hesitate to voice their anger online.
The Twitter hashtag #MissAmerica includes plenty of congratulatory messages for the 24-year-old and beautiful messages of support for her, for having managed to bring diversity to the pageant.
Unfortunately, as BuzzFeed can confirm, it also includes very nasty messages from Americans who think that having a winner of Indian heritage is not “American” enough.
Many of them, for instance, say that the terrorists have won, mistaking her olive skin and dark hair for confirmation that she’s Arab.
Others even go as far as to find it terribly offensive to crown an Arab as Miss America so close to 9/11, which marks the tragic anniversary of the terrorist attacks that took the lives of thousands and left an entire nation in mourning.
“The last time I checked, this was America,” one obviously disappointed user writes on the social networking platform.
“I swear I'm not racist but this is America,” adds another one.
For the sake of comparison, others offer their take on the “real” winner of the beauty pageant: Miss Kansas Theresa Vail, an ex-military, hunting aficionado model who has become the first contestant to openly display her tattoos on the pageant.
The fact that Vail also has blonde hair and fair skin only recommends her more in the eyes of those who say she should have won and was, consequently, robbed of her tiara by an… “Arab.”
As for Nina herself, she’s not about to let all this negativity bring her down. Deep down inside, she was probably expecting the backlash.
“I have to rise above that. I always viewed myself as first and foremost American,” she says in a brief statement for The Times.