Despite a night of firsts, a tired theme emerged following Davuluri's victory: Racists took to Twitter to lambaste the pageant for picking an Indian-American. They were none too kind to Davuluri herself, either, with one particularly uninformed tweeter calling her a Muslim.
Something similar happened when Rima Fakih was crowned Miss USA in 2010. Fakih is of Lebanese descent, and many were quick to try to link her to the militant group Hezbollah.