The Time I Judged a Black Beauty Contest

Many years ago, I visited Grand Turk, at that time not a well known tourist destination despite its fabulous reefs. There were perhaps 10 tourists on the entire island as it was July and off season. On our first day there, a woman approached me and two other tourists, a married couple, in the hotel bar and introduced herself as the Minister of Something or Other. She asked if we would be willing to judge the national beauty pageant. The Turks and Caicos is a small country, and it would be hard to find unbiased judges among the residents. We jumped at the chance.

A couple of hours later, the Minister picked us up and drove us to the prison some 5 blocks or so away from the hotel where the contest was being held. The prison yard was packed with spectators on folding chairs or standing around in front of a makeshift stage. The local TV crew was there, and we were interviewed briefly. We sat at a table up front and were supplied with all the alcoholic beverages we could tolerate.

It was when I met the winners from the two previous years that it dawned on me that the contestants were all going to be black and that I was going to be judging the beauty of black women, an exercise with which I was unfamiliar at that point in my life. The two beauty queens were light skinned with European facial features, and I surmised that the white judges from the prior years had selected the whitest looking women as the most beautiful. I feared that I might fall into the same trap and that contestants with more African features would be unfairly slighted.

To my relief, none of the contestants had much in the way of European features, so I was free of the dilemma I had imagined I would be facing. Instead, I faced the dilemma of picking the most beautiful among several lovely young ladies of a different race from my own. My fellow judge had confided that he was a tad worried that there would be trouble if we picked the wrong girl, and the crowd had been drinking for several hours and was becoming animated.

Why was judging the beauty of black women so problematic for me? Black women had always been taboo, and it was more than frowned upon where I grew up even to discuss the idea of miscegenation. Granted, a white male’s having an affair with a black female was somewhat less dicey than the other way around, but it was still out of bounds. The prevailing notion was that black women were unattractive unless they had some white genetic heritage. Only high toned black women could be admired for their beauty. Vanessa Williams or Halle Berry come to mind as examples from today of beautiful black women.

Even black women where I lived seemed to buy into the notion that their blackness made them ugly. They moved heaven and earth to “relax” and straighten their hair. They strove for the “clear” skin look, i.e. to homogenize their skin tone, and they seemed to admire the whitest looking among them.

But I soldiered on, had a few more drinks, and resolved to get past my prejudice. And, wonder of wonders, all the girls began to seem beautiful to me, African features and all. I was going to have a hard time choosing which was loveliest. I began to regret that Mrs Vache Folle was present.

Ultimately, the decision rested on the talent portion of the pageant. All but one girl was a dancing student, and they chose to dance for us in performances that were undistinguished and indistinguishable. The other girl sang beautifully and played the guitar and that cinched it for me. In the end, it was close, with all the contestants being within a few points of one another, but the singing girl won and was crowned Miss Turks and Caicos. She would go on to the Miss Universe pageant or some such thing.

Luckily for us judges, the singing girl was the crowd favorite, and great joy ensued. We were not torn apart by an angry mob after all.

Since that night, I have learned to appreciate the beauty of black women even more. I can’t imagine how I ever failed to notice them before or to think that they were ugly. Sure, there are some plug ugly black women, but that is true of any racial category.