In 1983, Vanessa Williams was crowned the first colored woman to win the title of Miss America. She held her reign for 10 months, until controversy rose when nude photos surfaced in a magazine. Although these nude photos were taken PRIOR to the Miss America competition, they weren't supposed to be released until her title ended and was transferred so that the name wasn't connected to Miss America, but the magazine went against the wishes of her management to make a special issue, and Williams became embarrassed that she had disgraced the name of Miss America, especially being the first woman of color to win the title, that she resigned her title two months before she would have officially been dethroned.
This year at the 2015 Miss America pageant, Williams made her first return to the show to guest judge, when all of a sudden, after 32 years of living in Miss America infamy, the host apologized to Williams, saying that the Miss America organization did not handle the situation as they should have.
This brought on an enormous applause, as deserved, as Williams had forever been debunked of her title that should have stayed with her through this long haul.
This can relate to American history very easily. Americans are stubborn and we don't often apologize for the things we cause. We never formally apologized to the community of slaves and their lineage, we never apologized to the native descendants whom we STILL force in reservations. America is not good at apologizing and we never have been. We normally just attack right back such as we caused Japanese Internment Camps, and we never apologized for that, understandably we had just underwent Pearl Harbor, but our response was heinous and we never apologized, instead we retaliated with Nagasaki.
Americans as a society don't apologize for much, or at least not the stuff we really should apologize for. If you think about it, we always apologize for the small stuff like the weather channel correcting the sunny forecast to a rainy one, but we don't apologize for the acts of violence between our citizens. Instead of apologizing we plaster the event on the news so that we bring attention to it, but never ask for forgiveness for it, AND we especially never ask for forgiveness to the minority groups such as people of color and the LGBTQ+ communities. It's really impressive that we had actually apologized to someone who is in one of those communities and is also a female as the female population is undermined as well.
This is really great and I hope to see America apologizing more in the future, I think it could solve some issues that need to be solved.
Tristin Manus 8th - I agree with you that America is not apologetic and America is hypocrites. If America would just reevaluate their whole system and start confessing that they are wrong and address issues that need to be addressed, America would be so much better honestly.
ReplyDeleteThey really did do her dirty putting out those nude pictures of her. And she still found it in her heart to resign her position as Miss America because she felt she was the one who'd disgraced the title, not the organization. They had to TALK Clinton into getting out the oval office after his scandal!
ReplyDeleteAmerica may be the melting pot of every ethnicity yet we still do these racial gestures that do no good and only cause problems.
ReplyDeleteIt took too long for America to apologize considering she was not afraid to resign her position right when it happened.
ReplyDeleteWhile this is great and all, I did hear that Williams was being a diva and expected an apology from whomever runs this competiton and vice versa. Glad she got her crown back, but there are too many interpretations to this for it to be an honest apology. Maybe they were forced to apologize, who knows.
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