Facebook and Twitter were abuzz last night and this morning after word spread that an Indian-American won the Miss America pageant last night in Atlantic City. It was the first time anyone of Indian descent has won the American title (although many Miss Universe winners over the past years have been from India).

There were many positive comments and articles about Nina Davuluri’s background in science, her desire to be a doctor, and even about the Bollywood-fusion dance routine she performed for the talent competition. The positive vibes added to what I have considered to be the trend that America is down with the brown (at least as reflected in movies and on TV).

The trend started years ago with the success of Bend It Like Beckham which featured an Indian lead, and cascaded to a whole Thursday night lineup of NBC sitcoms with at least one main Indian character (The Office, Parks & Rec, Community, and for a season, Outsourced). Then there was the wildly popular Slumdog Millionaire, and other networks starting to create and cast Indian characters in their shows. More recently, So You Think You Can Dance started regularly featuring Bollywood routines in their competition, and Mindy Kaling, best known for her role as Kelly Kapoor in The Office, scored her own, self-titled show on FOX.

So, while I still have to jokingly clarify that I’m the “dot not feather” type of Indian (thanks, Columbus, for confusing people for centuries), it’s been a season where it’s actually fun to be brown. I feel included and positively represented in pop culture, instead of feeling left out and ostracized.

Unfortunately, today – on a day that should give us all another reason to celebrate diversity in this big melting pot of a nation – the negative, mostly racist comments that have been revealed, especially on Twitter, are stealing the spotlight. Here are a few.

While I was pretty upset after reading those tweets, I have to remind myself that those comments were made by a few individuals who, because of lack of education, experience or both, typed 140 characters worth of ignorance.

I have to remind myself that we, as a nation, have a long way to go with race relations.

I have to remind myself that, though the views of these individuals don’t represent the whole country, they were also not adopted in a vacuum. They were most likely passed down from generation to generation, or are at least accepted and perpetuated as a cultural norm in whatever part of the country they find themselves in.

So, although my first instinct is to go on Twitter and reply to and/or correct every one of those foolish statements, I choose to forgive them.

I choose to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that there aren’t any people of Indian, Middle Eastern or any type of ethnic descent for that matter, in their schools or neighborhoods to help them break the cycle of “us” vs “them.”

I will assume that they simply haven’t had the opportunity to forge relationships with “others” – that is, people who look, think, act, eat or pray differently from them.

And I hope that someday they realize that the fact that we are a nation comprised of “others” is the very thing that makes America great.

[Photo: “Miss America (Nina) and Mrs. America (Mary)” by kevin dooley is licensed under CC BY 2.0]