How pageants today are creating a new world | Guest Opinion

I scrolled down my timeline in mid-December in awe. Five of the major pageant titles had been won by black women, including Miss America, Miss Universe, and Miss World.

I looked over at my daughter playing and cooing in her playpen and let a warm smile settle on my face. It wasn’t lost on me how important this was, how much it would change the lives of every little black girl looking up at their TV screens searching for themselves in every face. Five Cinderellas whose glass slippers just happened to be one size fits all.

It’s no secret the dark history of black people's relationship with America. Since the end of slavery we’ve looked up at, climbed, and demolished the invisible walls built between us and the American Dream.

One of those walls just happened to be the starvation of black representation in the media. Our first private victory was won in 1956 when the incomparable Nat King Cole blessed the airwaves with his network television show. Another battle won when Jennifer Hosten won Miss World in 1970 — the first black woman to ever do it. However, it would be an uphill battle from that point on.

Despite the long way still left to go, the leaps that have been made for inclusion in media, television and pageantry since then have been phenomenal.

I thought back to my very first pageant. It was 2004 and I was 17. Like many girls, I struggled with my own insecurities and fears. Dying to find my place in the world and show everyone exactly who I was. Participating in the Miss Juneteenth Pageant in Pasco was a warm bright yellow light in a childhood filled with many grey areas. At the time, I researched countless black Miss America winners, which there were only a handful of, including Vanessa Williams and Erika Dunlap. Out of the sea of Caucasian Misses, we were a small stroke of a paintbrush on a mural.

Now, sitting with my beautiful black daughter, I’m beaming at the thought that for the first time, inclusion isn’t an issue at all. For here we stand, in all of our shades of brown as blinding as the sun.

The issues that America has with race, inclusion and representation are deep rooted, and dripping in oppression. To say that pageants could be the Band-Aid that fixed it all would be misguided and irresponsible.

However it would be a dishonor to the small, crowned inner child that lives within me to not acknowledge that, in Donald Trump's America, we stood witness to not one, but five titled queens in melanated skin for the first time in history.

I hold my 8-month-old who now loves her plastic tiaras more than ever, and realize in that moment we didn’t need to do any searching to find ourselves on a screen. We represent Miss America, Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA bright and in loving color.

This story was originally published February 4, 2020 at 12:28 PM with the headline "How pageants today are creating a new world | Guest Opinion."