I have made it a point to avoid writing about racism so far simply because of how little of it I have experienced. And when people have been culturally insensitive, they haven’t intended to be so.

Reading tabloids and celebrity gossip gives me second hand embarrassment. So, I was blissfully unaware of the Miss America pageant. When the headlines screamed that the Miss America 2014 was of Indian descent, I was mildly amused, and perhaps even a little pleased.

I was delighted when I realized that Nina Davuluri’s roots were Dravidian in nature. The Indian subcontinent is racist in the sense that fairer skin tones are perceived as more beautiful than darker skin tones. Not to say that people with darker skin tones haven’t been successful as models in India, but I doubt she would have done well if she were competing for the title of “Miss India.”

I was glad that she was considered beautiful enough to have won, despite what the Indian subcontinent might have thought. But then I logged onto Twitter, and my instantaneous reaction was, “#MajorFacepalm.”

I hope the racist tweets came from less than 0.1% of the American population and that only an insignificant minority shares their opinion.

It is alarming to view such ignorance. Was it naïve of me to have thought racism in the U.S. was almost dead?

“So miss america is a terrorist,” tweeted Nick Pizzo (@Pizzo_nick) on Sept. 15 at 9:58 p.m., soon after the winner was announced. The bad grammar in his tweet terrorized me.

As far as I know, there has been no terrorist attack on the U.S. carried out by Indians. Some people assumed she was Arab and implied she was a terrorist. I have a mind-blowing fact for those who do consider Arab synonymous with terrorists: being Arab does not make you a terrorist.

What do Steve Jobs, Shakira and that guy from “Prison Break,” Wentworth Miller, have in common? They all have Arab roots. Several people who have Arab origins have contributed so much to the American society, and yet I hear them being correlated purely to terrorism several times. I can’t even begin to imagine how daunting it must be to be of Arab origin in the U.S.

I’m horrified by the racism that flooded social media.

And to even larger portion of the people from the U.S. that stood up to these bullies, thank you.