She won the Miss Black pageant at her school, but some say she isn’t ‘black enough’

Rachael Malonson is a 22-year-old biracial woman at the University of Texas. She studies journalism, and decided to enter the Kappa Alpha Psi Miss Black pageant, which is open to all black women, this year.

There were eight total contestants in the competition, which involved five hours of dancing, singing, posing, answering questions and more on Sunday, according to USA Today. Malonson was crowned the winner, but a happy announcement soon turned into a debate online.

The issue? Some people said Malonson, who has a black father and a white mother, didn’t look black enough.

The conversation online centered around colorism, a prejudice based on skin tone that is different from racism. Colorism in America has its roots in slavery, when white slave-owners tended to allow slaves with lighter skin tones work in the house, while those with darker skin tones had to work the worse jobs in the fields.

“Colorism lives on. Today, African-American entertainers and actors are far more likely to have light coloring than dark complexions. With the exception of an occasional dark-skinned exotic, most Black models can easily pass the ‘paper bag’ test, and many have racially ambiguous coloring and features,” Leland Ware wrote in a paper dissecting the history of colorism. “African-American news anchors and reporters rarely have dark complexions. Female entertainers, in particular, tend to have light skin and hair that is dyed blonde and made longer with hair extensions.”

Malonson told the Dallas Morning News this isn’t the first time she’s had to deal with this criticism. When she was younger, she said people asked her if she was Hispanic so often she started to think that she was, she told the Daily Texan. But she gained confidence by asserting herself as a biracial woman, and she’s not going to let the critics ruin her win.

“For me, I’ve always had to battle ‘I’m not black enough,” Malonson said. “But to not just place, but win the title is truly rewarding.”

Malonson also expressed gratitude to those supporting her online, though she told the Dallas Morning News she had to delete her Twitter app during the barrage of negative comments. She said she wants to “teach people that not every black person [and] not every mixed person looks the same way.”

This story was originally published May 5, 2017 at 5:31 AM with the headline "She won the Miss Black pageant at her school, but some say she isn’t ‘black enough’."