Double-Entry Journal Notes: What Does American Beauty Look Like?
Abigail Merha/Fennell102
MARTIN: “So Deepa, let me just ask you what
you make of the Twitter hate directed at Nina
Davuluri. I mean, it's always hard to know how
seriously to take it because just, you know, you
put a device in some people's hands, they don't
even know why they're saying what they're
saying. But what do you make of it?”
IYER: “...And racism by some on Twitter, as you
said, but I think it's important to lift up that
angle of the story because it's connected to an
undercurrent of racial anxiety that we see in
this country. You know, this fear that when
there are certain iconic institutions that people
who are considered to be foreigners or others
are occupying. There's this fear or anxiety that
for some reason we're losing our American-ness
or that these aren't American values. And I
think that's kind of what we saw with these
comments about her being called a terrorist,
connected to al-Qaeda, other stereotypes
associated with South Asians. It's about that
racial anxiety.”
IYER: “No, I think we can do a lot about it. You
know, I think the first thing is that we just need
to recognize that our country's changing, and I
think that Miss Davuluri talked about this too.
We're changing demographically. We're going
to see people of different races and
backgrounds in a lot of different positions that
may have been the exclusive domain of other
communities in the past. And so I think we need
to get used to this change as Americans and our
national identity as the Americans. But I also
think we need to speak out and have this
conversation. I do think that's important as
well.”
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Twitter is a very common place for
people around my age to express their
emotions and opinions on whats going
on in the world at a given time. What I
do agree with is that twitter feedback
on certain current events on extremely
biased towards the negative and
positive extremes. Opinions expressed
on unofficial uncensored social media
sites are skewed by both people who
feel strongly towards a particular issue,
whether that be negatively or
positively, and by young people who
are just looking for attention and don’t
actually feel any type of way about a
controversial issue.
I find it really interesting how some
people think that America is becoming
less and less American as time
progresses when it is actually the
opposite case. America is not a native
country as we all know. It is a country
referred to as the melting pot because
it is a land where people come from all
different places on the globe on a
search for anything from freedom, to
financial stability. Technically not even
white Americans are natives of this
land. Therefore it makes no actual
sense to say that someone who just
happened to come a little later down
the line is any less entitled to American
recognition than someone whose
ancestors are from the U.K.
One thing that always remains true is
that the first step to improving an issue
is to recognize that it exists and that it
should be no more. America is evolving
quickly and our goal as its citizens
should be to keep up with its speed so
that we don’t get left behind.
Double-Entry Journal Notes: What Does American Beauty Look Like?
Abigail Merha/Fennell102
MARTIN: “You know, what's interesting,
though, is this whole issue of the, you know, the
hierarchy around color is global. We talked with
- it was actually one of the things that was
pointed out in the course of this conversation it is that in India, Nina Davuluri, might not
necessarily be considered beautiful because
she's more tan. And, you know, we spoke with
Indian actress Nandita Das, and she's working
with the Dark is Beautiful campaign in India,
which is a group trying to work against the
negative stigma of having dark skin in India. And
this is what she had to say about colorism in
that country.”
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NANDITA DAS: “Everything around you is kind
of telling you that you're just not good enough
if you're dark skinned. So as a child grows up
everyone says, oh, poor thing, she's dark. I don't
know what it's got to do with the colonial hangup - the fact that the British ruled us for 200
years or is it to do with the caste system? Very
often the higher castes were fairer.”
IYER: “Right, well, I think that it actually goes
beyond a perception of beauty as well here
because there is an element of race. Because,
you know, people who are seen as darker
skinned are perceived to be suspicious or
untrustworthy or not smart, not competent, so I
think it also plays itself out in what kind of
access that you might get to jobs or education being profiled, targeted in the light. But I think
that her win here does kind of expand how we
look at beauty and how we think about beauty.
And that is something that we've been hearing
from a lot of the folks that are connected to our
organization.”
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Many people don’t realize how large
scale the institution of racism is around
the world. Racism is something that
haunts every continent on the face of
the earth. So many people recognize
the issues that Racism cause and its
negative effects yet it seems like all we
ever do is talk about it. At least India
has people recognizing the issue and
working towards educating people. I
mean honestly, we in America are
supposed to be bearers of the free
world, yet our non-white citizens
encounter notorious acts of legal racism
every day, through profiling.
British colonialism had such a great
impact on so many countries that they
are still facing its consequences today.
As a result of their brainwashing
techniques, which placed the British
whites at the top of the triangle, many
of its former colonies are still struggling
to rid their societies of racist
tendencies. Were it not for this, skin
color would not be an issue today, after
everything else we’ve made it passed.
Iyer makes a good point here by
reminding us that race isnt just about a
woman’s beauty, it affects society as a
whole, especially men. But because
beauty is the focus here, race is still a
huge party of what certain cultures
consider beautiful. While the institution
of racism still largely exists in America,
we are taking a huge step forward by
voting a non-white American as the
winner of Miss America, a title so
faithfully won by a white woman every
year.
Double-Entry Journal Notes: What Does American Beauty Look Like?
Abigail Merha/Fennell102
LUCAS: “I mean, definitely. I'm incredibly
surprised to hear that there's a campaign in
India that's really targeting and working
towards colorism. I mean, just - any AfricanAmerican community there's such incredible
colorism and there's such - you know, if you go
on Twitter, you know, you will see people say
team light skin or team dark skin or lightskinned people do this or dark-skinned people
do that. And sometimes it's all in jest - but
there's also an undertone of conflict and
tension there. So I think India, in the sense that
they're actually addressing colorism in a very
public way, that actually puts them light years
ahead of us.”
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MARTIN: “Yeah, but she said she got the most
backlash from other Asian-Americans who
accused her of being ashamed of her heritage.
And she said, look, at the time, to me it was a
practical career decision. And what about
that?”
LUCAS: “You know, I have mixed feelings about
that. And I wrote about that for The Root in my
She Matters column recently. I find, similar to
what Julie Chen talked about, is that when
you're talking about Asian features or typically
African-American features - a lot of the change
and a lot of the pushback for leading to conform
often comes, at least now, from people of your
own race.”
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Something really interesting that I keep
seeing in this interview is talk of women
getting the most beauty criticisms from
women of their own ethinicities. While
ironic, I can personally attest to this
fact. As an Ethiopian, I receive the most
criticism regarding my body and
physical appearance from women of my
own decent. Why? I don’t exactly
understand it, other than the fact that
they’re just hating. Nothing about our
physical appearances, let alone our skin
colors, should determine anything
about the course or value of our lives.
To allow race to linger is to allow
slavery to breathe.
While I could never fully understand the
predicament that she was in when she
made this decision, I have to disagree
with her decision to allow television
directors to make a permanent change
to her identity. Because the
corporations played out the divide and
conquer method of mind control, its
like they’ve all of the sudden resorted
to duplicating everyone to look and
think the same so they can control us
that way.
Again here the notion that black hates
black more than white hates black is
given light to. This is an issue relevant
to almost every culture ever. If we
could all just learn to accept people for
whats on the inside rather than physical
appearance, many of the world’s
greatest struggles could be resolved
with the recycled energy.