Waiting for Miss America

Abstract

I remember well sitting in a barbershop in the not so once-upon-a-time-long-ago past right after the yearly telecast of the Miss America contest. Most of the patrons, who were black and male, decided that they would not let so insignificant a matter as not having watched the program prevent them from discussing it endlessly. In fact, not having seen the show or having any real idea of what the Miss America contest was about seemed to have fueled their imaginations and loosened their tongues in such a way that, in retrospect, any knowledge of the true proceedings of beauty contests may have been found inhibitive. Most of the men spoke of “white bitches parading their asses across the stage” with much the same expression of mixed desire, wonder, and rage that often characterized the way I heard a good many black men talk about white women in my childhood. As the talk eventually died down, one of the patrons, a black man with a derby and a gold tooth and who looked for all the world like a cross between Lester Young and Stymie from the “Our Gang” comedies, said with a great deal of finality: “You know, there are three things in life you can bet your house on: Death, taxes, and that Miss America will always be white.” Now that we have a Miss America who is black or who, at least, can pass for a fairly pronounced quadroon, I supposed that the chiliastic inevitability of taxes and death might be called into question.

“I’m as good as any woman in your town.”

—Bessie Smith’s “Young Woman’s Blues”

Reprinted with permission from The Antioch Review, 42, no. 3 (Summer 1984).