There seems to be a tendency to treat equality and diversity as mutually exclusive concepts. I’ll say that it’s not really an appropriate comparison when you bring busing in the education context into this. Greater racial diversity in schools is a benefit, but the main reason is the difference in school quality and available educational opportunities. Prior to desegregation, schools in many areas were based on a “free choice” scenario. However,
“many Southern districts replaced freedom-of-choice with geographically based schooling plans; but because residential segregation was widespread, this had little effect [on desegregation], either. In 1971, the Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education approved busing as a remedy to segregation; three years later, though, in the case of Milliken v. Bradley (1974), it set aside a lower court order that had required the busing of students between districts, instead of merely within a district. Milliken basically ended the Supreme Court’s major involvement in school desegregation; however, up through the 1990s many federal trial courts remained involved in school desegregation cases, many of which had begun in the ‘50s and ‘60s. American public school systems, especially in large metropolitan areas, to a large extent are still de facto segregated.”
It’s a remedy to attempt to eliminate the functional separate-but-inequal education mentality that exists functionally in many areas, if not legally.
Now, participating in one pageant or another doesn’t deprive you of an equal education. Not everyone gets to participate. Therefore, there isn’t an uneven distribution of a fundamental resource.
Now, as to the existence of a Miss Black America, it was of course because the Miss America Pageant did not allow ethnic minorities to compete. And now, even though they can, there was no black Miss America until 1984.
Once they were allowed to compete in the first pageant, it doesn’t mean that they had a remotely fair chance of succeeding. Further, just because they were finally allowed to compete, doesn’t mean that they should then stop having a pageant which had come to mean something to them culturally. Consider this reaction:
“once a Black newspaper asked “Why should there be a Miss Black America Pageant since the Miss America Pageant now accepts Black women?” The response was: “You wouldn’t suggest closing your Black newspaper simply because a major white daily published a story about a Black, would you?””
Finally, because we are talking about women that are meant to be public representatives, it is as important that minority woman have someone that they can look up to, as the image of what a woman is, particularly what a beautiful woman is, and overwhelmingly what a successful woman is has been white. Therefore, there is still an important social value to continuing the pageant despite an ability to participate now in what was formerly, actually, the thing you were wondering about – the “Miss White America.”
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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