Miss America Contest Proves Diverse

Miss Alaska Peggy Willman is an Inupiaq Eskimo. Miss South Dakota Vanessa Shortbull is a Lakota Sioux. Miss Delaware Shoha Kirti Parekh is of Indian descent. Six contestants are black, and for the first time, the pageant has an African-American host _ comedian Wayne Brady.

Showing that, as ever, the Miss America pageant is thirty years behind, and they've finally caught up with 1972. Though Wayne Brady is funny.