This Miss Hampton controversy has gotten entirely out of hand. But, being a news-chaser myself, I’m hooked.
Here’s the question: What is the big deal about having a white girl win the Miss Hampton beauty contest? After all, there is precedent for this type of non-white representation of a historically Black institution. For example, take Joshua Packwood who in 2008 became the first white Valedictorian of Morehouse College, a well-known and well-respected HBCU.
No one made a stink about THAT. People let that slide. In fact, the event was lauded as an achievement in the long struggle for multi-culturalism and equality. Oh, how the tables had turned, they said! A white boy, a minority among his university peers, had earned the highest academic honor his alma mater had to offer. He rose above the fray. An Obama in reverse!
And yet, here we are, a full year later, reacting in the exact OPPOSITE fashion towards Nikole Churchill, the white girl from Hawaii who managed to be crowned Miss Hampton University in the school’s annual beauty pageant.
Putting my opinion of beauty pageants in general aside, why has there been such an intense visceral reaction, specifically from women, about this? Word on the street is, it’s a slap in the face of all of her Black pageant-mates, each of whom also exhibited beauty, poise and intelligence. Moreover, (and here’s the pesky seed of controversy) they’re all BLACK! At a BLACK institution! Go figure. It seems that in this gnarly world of HBCU amateur beauty pageantry, being Black is an ultimate pre-requisite to winning the … plastic tiara.
Sure, there are no real rules prohibiting Ms. Churchill from entering but the prevailing opinion seems to be that letting her run is just so the Pageant board can appear welcoming of their non-Black fellow students. As one observer who attended a different HBCU said, “They should have just picked the girl they believed to be #2. Because SHE was Black.”
Hmm. This seems chock full of nuts, don’t it?
The biggest difference between the victories of Joshua Packwood at Morehouse and Nikole Churchill at Hampton, the two “subjugated minorities” on their respective campuses, seems to be the fact that Packwood’s success was based on empirical, objective data. It was his GPA, purely, that earned him the honor of becoming valedictorian. For Churchill, it was the subjective opinion of a panel of judges, that apparently ultimately decided she was the “fairest of them all.” Pun TOTALLY intended.
So what do you think? Is it racist to feel a white girl shouldn’t win a beauty pageant at an HBCU simply because she isn’t Black? In that case, should HBCU’s be admitting non-Black students at all? Where do we draw the line here?
Also, why the hell are colleges and universities even HOSTING these events? This is high-school-grade one-upmanship at its finest. These HBCUs began as institutions meant to uplift and empower African-Americans with a quality education, as many of the most astute BP members pointed out. So why are events such as these so huge? How do they become so politically charged? Why don’t HBCUs feel empowered and PROUD that the quality of the education they provide has attracted people from every walk of life, every race? That somehow, over the course of time, these historically Black institutions are no longer relegated to the fringe of prestigious American education; that they are now counted among the most competitive institutions in our nation and that they produce some of the most sought-after talent. Shouldn’t they be cheering and jumping for joy that they have become the beacons of diversity and opportunity that they originally sought to be?
The race card, while often played brilliantly and with good reason, in this case seems to fall short. This whole Miss Hampton controversy really reverses the camera lens and focuses it right back onto the community of nay-sayers who have to confront their OWN racial biases.
Just because you have been historically subjugated and now attend a historically Black college or university that celebrates your particular history, does not entitle you to REPEAT said history.
Just sayin’.
So to answer the above posed question: Is it racist to hate on the white Miss Hampton? It sure as hell is.
at 12:37 pm
Why exactly do white people go to HBCUs?
at 8:49 am
While I don’t condone any kind of racism or exclusion, we cannot deny the degredation of black people by whites that prompted us to create environments of inclusion for ourselves. When white America wouldn’t educate us, we educated ourselves. When they wouldn’t sell to us we built our own stores. When they worked our ancestors to kill their spirits they created songs to lift them up. When their beauty magazines didn’t think black was beautiful we created our own publishing giants. When broadcasting companies didn’t have programming representative of us we started our own networks.
All of these were not created to exclude whites or non-blacks. They were created out of necessity for the welfare, viabilty, advancement and even celebration of black people. We embrace non-blacks that have come to truly love and adore our culture, music and history. We welcome those individuals that want to share in our legacy, our history and help tell our stories to the masses. We don’t want to exclude anyone but we don’t want to be taken over either. The real sentiment is this, whites have plenty of mainstream places where they are celebrated, welcomed and revered. Blacks were force to created those same environments. enviroments that are for us, by us and about us. And what we are saying to whites are, come on in and enjoy the celebration but understand we are celebrating us.
You don’t find other races and cultures being invaded and robbed like blacks. Asians and Latinos don’t carry the same burdends of race that blacks do. They don’t know what’s it like to be considered inhuman. We had to fight to prove that we were just that. The thought of that seems perpsoterous today but that is a gross reality of slavery. Dogs were valuedore than we were. So to understand this is to understand the importance of why we now celebrate us. If we don’t, no one else will. To all the white emcees, gospel singers, hairdressers, etc, etc, etc, that live and breathe inside black culture we see you, we welcome you and celebrate you.
This issue has been both the curse and legacy of a racially divided United States of America. We are rarely included and when we are, we have to be exceptional to be so. Yet average white Americans excel all the time, i.e, George Bush. I’m not hating on “W” because initially I supported him. Don’t get me wrong, excellence should always supercede mediocrity regardless of color. However the reality is that this nation is not 100% percent unequivocally based on merit. The deeply rooted fears, hate and lies of racism have yet to be buried and replaced by love, respect and truth. Until this happens there will always need to arena for blacks to celebrate ourselves, our heroes, our achievements and our accomplishments. The same holds true for other races as well. It’s just that other races typically don’t experience the disparaging effects of racism as blacks do. We are excited to have any persons join in our celebration of ourselves, heritage and culture. That’s part of what makes this country great.
But let’s not put this all off on white Americans. We have a lot of prejudice within the black community. Fairer skinned blacks have been favored predominently throughout our own history and by our own people. And while this does stem from the legacy of slavery, we continue to perpetuate the notion even to this day. So until EVERYONE begins to ignore the color lines of race there will always be divisions among our United States of America.
I truly believe the bigger issue here with the white beauty queen, verses the white validictorian, is the subjectiveness of the pageant. Scholastic merit cannot be refuted. It’s black and white, pun intended. Beauty is subjective and given the history of what America views as beautiful, it’s definitely not representative of our nation’s diversity. Crowning a white beauty queen at an HBCU begs the question, did she truly win or was it something else? Did the judges want her to feel embraced by the university or have those old mainstream streotypes of American beauty come back to rear their ugly head and in the hands of our own? That would be disgraceful.
at 5:51 am
why is it the black folk are all for equal right until it isn’t in our favor? lol at least when white folk are racist they’re bold about it… if they didn’t want her to win why was she allowed to 1: attend a hbcu and 2: be allowed to run? oh oh oh, because the blacks were gonna shut her down? smh, when it’s an all white group of competiors and the black person wins (obama) we rejoice, praise GOD and count it on joy… but when it’s the other way around we get upset? lol
america the beautiful. some things shouldn’t even be important; this is one of them.
at 10:02 am
when things are created for us and by us it is meant to empower US. Not the white person who can easily get more than you because of his or her skin. Why should they have the best of both worlds when we have to create our own in most instances? Is it racist to hate on her? No she should be somewhere else. I get tired of white people thinkin they are moses.
at 2:42 am
Honestly, I don’t like the idea of a white contestant winning this kind of pageant but on the flip side if she won fair and square that the way it is. I know this is really black of me to say but white folks always have their hands in everything. Black folks are to touchy on things like this because we need to be able to embrace and identity ourselves in the world. We are still planting our feet in the ground but the thing is that we need to reach out on deeper levels than pageants. And when it comes to black beauty, this is not a measurement of our worth but on the same note this kind of situation sure tell a bigger story of what beauty is in the U.S. Black beauty is not represented enough and I believe that this pageant should be a platform for black beauty. The black woman is not in high regard enough in beauty or stature. These little things because bigger ones. I know people love to blur the racial line but the line is a lot thicker than believed to be. I believe first blacks need to progress before any racial line will be blurred. Some would argue that this is progress, not in my opinion this is simple a whisper saying “the black woman will never rise before a white one”. I’m sure the young lady never thought that this would be such an issue or if she did, I don’t believe she considered all factors. Just my thoughts, I don’t know ask Jesus about it.