WHEN Miss New York, Nina Davuluri, danced her Bollywood fusion across my television screen, I smiled. This is the United States of America, I thought. Here is this gorgeous woman, born and raised in America – a New Yorker at that – paying homage to her culture as an Indian-American. Isn’t that the beauty of the United States, built up of so many different people? Is that not symbolic of the “salad bowl” so many of the elementary school teachers in the US teach in social studies?
But when she won the Miss America pageant last Sunday night, the backlash was immediate.