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| Karlie Hay (center) was crowned Miss Teen USA 2016 on Saturday. |
Miss Teen USA winner Karlie Hay will be allowed to keep her crown after tweets that included racist language were discovered on her private Twitter account.
Hay, 18, from Tomball, Texas, won the Miss Teen USA competition Saturday night prompting an outcry online regarding the tweets, some of which allegedly included the n-word. Following the uproar, Hay made her Twitter account private, preventing unapproved users from seeing her archive. Meanwhile, screengrabs of the tweets with her photo and handle spread across the Web. Hay responded to the controversy through her Instagram account and in a series of tweets from her new handle @RealMissTXQueen writing, “I admit that I have used language publicly in the past which I am not proud of and that there is no excuse for. Through hard work, education and thanks in large part to the sisterhood that I have come to know through pageants, I am proud to say that I am today a better person.”
Several years ago, I had many personal struggles and found myself in a place that is not representative of who I am as a person...
The Miss Universe Organization, which oversees the Miss Teen USA pageant, issued a statement distancing itself from the racist language attributed to Hay, saying it “is unacceptable at any age and in no way reflects the values of The Miss Universe Organization.” However, the organization does not plan to revoke Hay’s crown, writing that they “are committed to supporting her continued growth.”
But the Internet has refused to back down. Critics are claiming that the tweets on Hay’s account are evidence of systemic racism in the pageant world. Model and social media personality Chrissy Teigen mocked a photo of the top five Miss Teen USA finalists — all of them white and blond.
The finalists included Hay, Miss South Carolina Marley Stokes, Miss North Carolina Emily Wakeman, Miss Alabama Erin Snow, and Miss Nevada Carissa Morrow.
Kamie Crawford, a TV host and 2010 Miss Teen USA winner, also took issue with the tweets.
I can take the #missteenusa top 5 being an all white, all blonde top 5. What I can't take is - why didn't the winner clean up her page?
The Miss Universe Organization is owned by WME-IMG who purchased it from Donald Trump in September after NBC and Univision refused to broadcast the competition citing concerns over Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants.
Source: The Boston Globe, 8/2/2016