As I’ve said before, I am not one for beauty pageants; and I’m most certainly not a racist apologist.
I am, however, an apologist for youthful ignorance and stupidity.
As a friend of mine points out, some of us did some cringe-worthy things as teenagers, while others continue the stupidity well into adulthood.
Like all of us, Bianca Schoombee is simply the product of her upbringing and her environment.
Offensive and prejudiced tweets of hers when she was 14 years old were dug up last week, forcing her to withdraw from the Miss SA pageant.
The internet was overjoyed about it.
DISPLAY: Bianca’s 2014 tweets
I noticed some people saying that racists are unable to change.
That is a very cynical view, as all of us grow with age and experience.
That isn’t to say that she had definitely changed in the past six years.
In fact, it is unlikely that her views would’ve matured and evolved, but that is not the point I am making.
I think we missed an opportunity to educate someone who would’ve had a big platform.
Instead, her narrow childish views were used to punish her.
One Twitter user described how Bianca taunted and racially abused her and other black kids at school.
She felt that this was Bianca’s comeuppance.
And that in itself is where we come unstuck; the cycle of abuse and vengeance that keeps us trapped in an angry limbo from which we never grow.
Assuming she won the title, Bianca would’ve had to fill the shoes of Sasha-Lee Olivier, who stepped in for Zozibini Tunzi, who is now Miss Universe.
And in a world where such things matter, which they clearly do for Bianca, that fact alone would’ve been a lesson in race relations for her.