Guess which beauty won the Miss Zimbabwe title! It was 21-year-old Brooke Bruk-Jackson, the only white woman among the contestants.
Brooke was crowned Miss Universe Zimbabwe, and will represent the African nation at the next Miss Universe pageant. Reportedly fewer than 1% of the African nation’s population is white. Her victory has upset many residents of Zimbabwe. “All those beautiful melanated women, and you telling me the European woman won a contest for Black people?” one outraged X-user tweeted.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….
Was giving the prize to a white woman ethical?
This is a bit of a trick question. In a normal competition, the answer would be easy: if she won, she won. Beauty contests, however, are like dog shows: they are completely arbitrary and subjective contests pretending to be objective. It’s a Bizarro Wotld ethics problem: such competitions are phony (that is, unethical) anyway. They have no integrity; how can they have an ethical or unethical result?
Since any result is tainted by the inherent lie that it is based on objective criteria, isn’t this an ethics zugzwang situation? Choosing the only white woman in the competition has the appearance of bias and discrimination; so too does not choosing a competitor because she’s white, if her “objective” qualities would have made her Miss Zimbabwe if she were the “right” color.
If I were a judge, recognizing that beauty contests are absurd and that the criteria is hopelessly subjective, I would avoid choosing the only white contestant because it would raise all of these questions. If a black contestant were crowned Miss Zimbabwe, nobody would blink a metaphorical eye. Now Brooke is a target of hate mail and death threats, the pageant is under attack, the black population feels insulted, and everyone is miserable.
Good job, everybody!
Ethics Alarms 
Fewer than 1% of the population is white because Robert Mugabe, strongman, black supremacist, and master of the quip only he found funny, actively tried to run white people out of the country, same as they’re doing in South Africa now, whether born there or not. Thankfully, he’s dead and his tyranny is a thing of the past. Funny, if the Europeans started running non-whites out of the continent, saying “Europe for the Europeans” and “go back where you came from” they’d be tarred as racists. How dare anyone with a European background still be around to even compete in this competition?
Right. How’d she even make it to the finals?
Couldn’t the talented Ms. Bruk-Jackson just claim to identify as black…?
WordPress is not allowing me to log in as myself.
~Paul W. Schlecht
I’ll be chatting with my WordPress “Happiness Rep” about this today.
Give ’em hell, Jack!
~Paul W. Schlecht
I have always assumed that these contests rotate the winner’s ethnicity, race and nationality to ensure “equity”. Could it be a white woman’s turn to win the global prize and the judges were hedging their bets to have a chance at bringing home the big prize?
Who wouldn’t have seen this coming?
First, I can’t fathom why any sane white person would not anticipate the certain intense backlash if they won any sort of contest (no matter how legitimate or objective) in a country where whites compose 1 percent of the population, especially a nation with the established anti-white history of Zimbabwe, and not decide to eschew participation in the pageant. Maybe she did anticipate the backlash but discounted her apprehensions and entered to make a point about diversity and inclusion.
Interestingly, it appears that five of the seven pageant judges were black. Obviously, they felt she was the best contestant to represent the country. Several accounts of the contest praised her intelligent and articulate answers to the judges’ questions.
I have to wonder if the spirit of Cecil Rhodes, wherever he may be, is chuckling at this development.
Why did the officials even allow this White woman to enter this “pageant”? Also, I assume all the judges were black, yet they picked this White woman. Obviously the judges apparently felt she was the clear winner.
Isn’t the goal to have a colorblind world?
The judges must’ve been, it took several of them to vote her the winner, right?
Maybe she’s half black, and just got the white half of the gene pool, like my 50% Peruvian boy who has very fair skin (like me, his very white dad) and natural reddish tint in his hair?
Or his wife, who is half Mexican and whiter than he is; her grandmother used to take her with to visit friends and acquaintances who would marvel at the little white girl who spoke perfect Spanish.
I’m looking forward to the fact that when they have kids, at least one of them will be a very Hispanic looking.
If they didn’t want the white girl to win, they shouldn’t have let her enter the contest. And if they thought she’d never win, then too late I’ll offer the “wisdom” I gave my kids – it’s not whether or not it’s likely to happen, it’s if it does do you want to live with those consequences?
Not unethical in my opinion, despite uproar now. The “pain” will hopefully cause some growth. Can’t unmake the world, but can make it better with what we have.
Dark skinned cultures have a tendency to exalt light skin, blondes, etc. South America has many examples. I doubt many places other than the US want a “color-blind” world, and increasing number of US residents seem to want more emphasis on skin shade, not less. In the name of anti-racism, of course.
Yes, a bit tongue in cheek there.
I’d forgotten about the non-white cultures “exalting” the lighter skin, it was very much a part of the ex-wife’s Peruvian culture as well.
Ironic that they’re all as racist as the rest of us (i.e. they don’t like the dark ones…). More irony in the fact that lots of white people want to get a little more color. God truly has a twisted sense of humorr.
The only unethical part of the scenario is the crappy reactions of all involved.
“Objectively” speaking, there was no wrong committed – no one was robbed, raped, murdered, or lied to (unless the judges were paid off – wouldn’t it be even more interesting then).
“Historical” wrongs notwithstanding, now is not then, and if everyone is hanging on to that baggage, time to move forward. Unfortunately, hanging on to baggage, heinous as it’s origins can be, and in some cases deserving of righteous judgement, is a human specialty.
My previous comment didn’t make it for some reason. I mused about the judges that voted her the winner were likely exclusively black, right? Besides, what was the reason this White woman was permitted to enter this contest in the first place, except to deceptively portray it as colorblind. Just so long as she didn’t win,that is.
“Beauty pageants are like dog shows.” Get your profundity where you can, folks.
Everyone being miserable, in this case, seems like the absolute best possible outcome.
Didn’t this happen on the same day that a black woman was crowned Miss Ireland? Beauty knows no borders.