Foreignism, the cool new way to be intolerant
The Miss America competition, besides often being a bit too synthetic and antiquated for my liking, is usually at the very least a feel-good event. Its goal to pick a woman who represents the values of America – talent, a bikini body, philanthropy, a bikini body, and a really good bikini body – makes for an occasion filled with truly beautiful women both inside and out. I was lucky enough to have a good friend take home first runner-up as Miss California and am both blessed to know someone as special as her and proud of what she’s achieved.
This year’s competition also marked the first winner of Indian descent, another breakthrough for minorities, and seemed to expose the growing inclusiveness that Americans felt towards immigrants and first-generation Americans. (A notion which was reinforced by runner-up Crystal Lee being of Taiwanese descent) However, as has since also been reported by the likes of Buzzfeed and CNN, a much less beautiful feeling among parts of America was also exposed – a nauseating mix of racism and ignorance.
Some tweets from right after the event ended:
“Miss America? You mean Miss 7–11.”
“9/11 was 4 days ago and she gets miss America?”
“Congratulations Al-Qaeda. Our Miss America is one of you.”
It’s tough to decide where to start when deconstructing these, as there is as much pure stupidity as there is hatred within them. My gut reaction to anyone calling an Indian-American a “terrorist” is to buy that person a book, tell them to read it, then ask him/her to beat the shit out of themselves with it. To be as stupid as misplace your own racism is a trait reserved for the most vile and worthless of life-forms. Luckily, the people behind these tweets are too dumb to be of any consequence after their 15 minutes of Buzzfeed fame. They’ll retreat back into their suburbs, trailer parks, and various other cloaks of digital anonymity, leaving the civilized world with a “Twitter page has been deleted” error message and a faint stench of Axe body spray.
More troubling are the tweets which imply, or claim outright, that there is something fundamentally “un-American” about a “foreign” Miss America. Or that the gun-toting, military-loving, tattoo-rocking Miss Kansas was the TRUE Miss America. Some more tweets (again, thanks to Buzzfeed for curating):
“Asian or indian are you kiddin this is america omg”
“Miss New York is an Indian.. With all do respect, this is America”
“Man our president nor our new Miss America isn’t even American I’m sorry but Miss Kansas I salute you your the real American #MissAmerica“
Todd Starnes sucks, and so do his tweets.
Luckily, these tweets originate largely from the cousins (aka boyfriends, girlfriends, brothers, and sisters) of the lowlifes mentioned above. There is, however, one voice of much more rhetorical significance which echoes their sentiments, and he is Fox News radio Host Todd Starnes:
“Miss Kansas, a gun-toting, deer-hunting, military veteran was America’s choice – but not the liberal Miss America judges’ choice.”
“The liberal Miss America judges won’t say this – but Miss Kansas lost because she actually represented American values. #missamerica“
According to Todd, only liberals would ever pick a Miss America whose parents weren’t born here, and by no means can a first-generation American represent “American Values”. From a nation spawned by the mass emigration of Europeans, and the subsequent genocide of that nation’s true natives, that is a pretty wild statement. America exists purely because of people that weren’t born here, and by those people being much, much bigger assholes than those showing up today. If anything, today’s immigrants and their kids (the less genocide-y newcomers like Miss NY, her family, and my own) are responsible for founding 40% of Fortune 500 companies, meaning that immigrants didn’t just start this country but are the ones keeping it on its feet. 40 percent! And that’s just the founders! Run into Google, Facebook, or Cisco and see what percentage of the workforce is first or second generation American – the proportion will astound you. But it seems that capitalism is only an American value when executed by a “true” American, you know the kind that doesn’t use chopsticks or pray to a silly elephant.
Rather than give credit to this nation’s immigrants for making fantastic food, providing endless amounts of cultural capital, guiding our economy through a dark time, and founding the damn nation to begin with, it’s becoming increasingly OK to label them as a problem, a Bollywood-dancing un-American problem keeping our homegrown Miss Kansas from getting to wear her tiara while shooting stuff. To immigrants and children of immigrants such as myself, this exclusion is deeply offensive. And to label those that honor the American spirit of inclusion as “liberal”, the right is widening the chasm between minorities / immigrants and the Republican party. It also essentially adds an explicit racial element to the liberal-conservative picket fence; if you are OK with immigrants you’re a liberal, if not you’re a conservative. To Todd Starnes and presumably much of the Fox News faithful, it’s as black and white (or Indian and white?) as that.
Let’s keep the melting pot a-melting.
This type of backwards-thinking and horrifically polarizing talk from the right is as worrisome as nuclear murmurs from Iran in my opinion. I am as scared of a Tea Partier with a gun as an Iranian with a weapon of mass destruction. Both have made it fairly clear they don’t like me, and I can’t do anything to change their mind. It sucks because I’m just being me, and making America a better place while I’m at it. So are almost all of the immigrants in America, and so is Miss New York.
I remember when my teachers told me that America was the great melting pot, filled with the creamy fondue of freedom and diversity. Some are trying to tell us that we’ve over-melted and the party’s over, but I beg everyone not to turn the stove off. Don’t let us harden into the congealed, racist goop that some conservatives would rather have us be. It tastes bad and isn’t nearly as good for dipping.
-James
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Originally published at jmwaura13.wordpress.com on September 17, 2013.
