The Real Miss North Carolina

by Dina Di Maio

     Rebekah Revels was recently on the Dr. Phil show.  When asked who supported her in the press, she said her hometown had.  I thought that it  was a shame she did not have more support.  I had written the following piece amidst the controversy and am publishing it now in support of Rebekah Revels. 

     I think Rebekah Revels’ case is a travesty of justice. Her dreams of possibly becoming Miss America were dashed due to contract law. The issue in the case is not the nude photos but the fact that she resigned willingly. Her case cannot be likened to Vanessa Williams’ as Revels did not pose for pornographic photos, most likely, in exchange for money. Simply, she fooled around with her boyfriend and he snapped two PG-rated photos. How many Miss Americas have had sex or fooled around with their boyfriends—or girlfriends--with no photos to document it?

     My problem with the law in this case and in many cases is that there is no humanity in it. The issue is boiled down to a written document, a resignation, when it is so much more. The world hears of the "two Miss North Carolinas" and the topless photos, but what does it really know of North Carolina or Rebekah Revels? Clearly, Revels has integrity and balls. She resigned to protect her dignity and the dignity of the Lumbee Indian population, a resignation that was an admirable act. I believe the Miss North Carolina pageant should have recognized her integrity and professionalism and chosen to do what was better for the state by disregarding Revels’ resignation.

     I have strong feelings about this case because I grew up in Robeson County. I know where Revels comes from. As an Italian American from the North who was raised Catholic, I moved with my family to Robeson County at age 11. At the time I lived there, it was one of the poorest counties in North Carolina, and in my opinion, a landscape of prejudice. Almost on a daily basis, I heard how I was an Eyetalian Yankee who worshipped statues. People did not see me as "white" and didn’t know how to classify an Italian. In high school—the same high school in which Revels teaches, Lumberton Senior High, we had black, white and Indian class officers—president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and so forth. As a "non-white," I never saw how I fit in. For myself, I survived. I never took a drug and graduated in the top ten of a class of 400. But my friends weren’t so lucky; I helplessly watched them self-destruct. Most of my friends were Lumbee Indians who got pregnant before high school graduation, smoked dope, snorted coke in the dugout during p.e. and cut themselves with razors. In ninth grade, one dropped out to model nude in a movie with some guy from Chicago. The last I heard of my best friend from high school and one of the best in my life, also Lumbee Indian, was a phone call five years ago. Laughing, she told me she had a baby senior year, got married to the father who is a drug dealer, got arrested and sat naked in the jailhouse with a sanitary napkin between her legs.

     And though I was 12, I remember the day Eddie Hatcher overtook The Robesonian newspaper office to protest treatment of Lumbee Indians. Though I think he is radical and what he did was criminal, I understood his frustrations.

     In law, one learns to recognize the issue according to the law, and that issue is at times not what would be deemed fair or right. This is one of those times. Ideally, the issue here is not breach of contract or privacy issues, but maybe defamation. The real loser in this case is, I think, the person responsible for this—the ex-boyfriend, Tosh Welch. He is a lowlife scum, truly the lowest kind of man to hurt a respectable woman out of jealousy and revenge. Making it in this world is hard enough, making it when you come from a place like Robeson County makes it all the harder. With so many odds against a person, she didn’t need his cowardly act. In an ideal world of real justice, he would be publicly humiliated and bear the brunt of this media "scandal" for trying to tarnish a good woman’s name (instead of hiding from the media as he apparently does, as I found few articles with his name in them), the pictures wouldn’t be talked about, and Revels would be Miss North Carolina, accomplishing her goals and raising the self-esteem and pride of countless Lumbee Indian girls and women who not only need it but deserve it.

     For Revels, she has handled the ordeal with grace, and she should be proud of herself. I can only imagine the snickers that go on behind her when she says "I’m Miss North Carolina." Though there is legally a new Miss North Carolina, Revels still won the title. Shame on the Miss North Carolina pageant for not having the balls to support her. Here, it had the chance to show the country a different cultural side to North Carolina, the Lumbee Indian population. It had the chance to make Lumbee Indians proud and give them a sense of belonging to something larger than Robeson County, but instead it chose what was legally right, what was justice and what was best for North Carolina, a pageant queen who had a career in pageantry in Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Dina created this site.