Multicultural Initiatives: A Lot Of People Are Very Upset That An Indian-American Woman Won The Miss America Pageant

What's this blog about?

I teach several courses under the broad topic of "Multicultural Education," prioritizing social justice issues of access, power/privilege, & narrowing the academic achievement gap. I am a person of color and I almost always have a white co-teacher. We include topics, such as: racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, ethnocentrism, deculturalization, transforming curriculum, etc. This is a place where I post information that we teach; lesson plans for activities; and resources we use and/or which are shared with me by my adult students.

Monday, September 16, 2013

A Lot Of People Are Very Upset That An Indian-American Woman Won The Miss America Pageant

Racism alive and well - hint - if you begin a sentence with "I'm not a racist, but… " then there's probably a problem there. America IS DIVERSE! http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/a-lot-of-people-are-very-upset-that-an-indian-american-woman

But Don’t Call Them Racist: Right Wing Freaks Out Over First Indian-American Miss America http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/16/miss-america-right-wing-racism/
Moments… no, seconds after the new Miss America was crowned, the Twitterverse exploded with racist Tweets. Miss New York, Nina Davuluri, is the first woman of Indian descent to win the title of Miss America. The 24-year-old from Syracuse is studying to be a doctor. After she became Miss New York, Davuluri told the Syracuse Post Standard:

“Everything happens for a reason. If it’s meant to be it’s meant to be. It’s a win-win just to be in it.”

If Ms. Davuluri is correct and everything does happen for a reason, maybe the reason she won the title of Miss America was to demonstrate that Americans come in all varieties. After all, in a competition that included one contestant rocking a knee-brace (Miss Florida) and the first ever contestant with tattoos (Miss Kansas), this year’s batch of beauty queens was pretty diverse.