The right-wing’s hostility to her winning is rooted in an extreme view that we are in a clash of civilizations pitting Christianity against Islam.

This is nonsense.

But, having an Arab-American-Muslim woman win amounts in their view to cultural treason. “How dare they choose the Enemy Other! We are at war! Death to all Muslims,” they want to scream.

So, they grasp at straws to paint her as an “Islamo-fascist” or a “terrorist.”

But, at a deeper level it suggests a fear of miscegenation. They are aghast at the very idea that a white American male could find such a woman attractive as a sexual partner, or, even a marital partner.

This sexual fear is at the root of white supremacy. White males could (and did) rape African American women at will. But, an African American male was always a danger to rape a white woman.

In this case, they do not want to physically rape Rima Fakih. But, they do want to rape her emotionally, psychologically, and culturally.

At bottom, they want to deny her her humanity.

During the Bosnian war, the Bosniac (Muslim) residents of Sarajevo held beauty contests. It was their way of affirming they were alive and their refusal to perish. If you read some accounts, it was also their way of reminding themselves of what they were fighting for. The beauty pageants were just a symbol of their right to exist as they pleased.

It was a symbol of defiance to the Bosnian Serbs who sought to exterminate them physically, eradicate their culture, and render them invisible to the outside world.

And, the Bosnian Serbs deliberately employed the rape of Bosniac women and girls as a tactic of their genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The Western media covered these beauty pageants–and the message was delivered: we are still alive and we refuse to perish.

http://www.missblackamerica.com/Index2b.html

What you mentioned is also true in India (where skin-whitening products sell like hotcakes) and Mexico, among other places.

The increasing prestige of the “beauty of color” is indeed a blow to compulsory whiteness and another sign of the changing demographics among the global elite. I can see how this would be a troubling reminder to supremacists that the “white pass”, which is the racial entitlement to privilege, has expired in America.

However, if we are to embrace true feminine beauty and not stereotypes, we must recognize that true beauty is a state of mind, not a state of body. I am not denying the cultural and social significance of physical beauty.

However, it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with attitude: both of the admirer and the admired.