Against this backdrop, the online fury sparked by an Instagram Live video featuring Miss USA will be all the more galling to the event's organisers.
The video shows Sarah Rose Summers, 24, speaking with Miss Colombia and Miss Australia apparently making light of the fact that H’Hen Nie, Miss Vietnam, cannot speak English.
“She’s so cute and she pretends to know so much English and then you ask her a question after having a whole conversation with her and she goes ...”, said Ms Summers, before miming someone smiling and nodding.
In an aside on Nat Rern, Miss Cambodia, Ms Summers said that it must be isolating and confusing not to be able to communicate, before adding “poor Cambodia.”
The online backlash was swift and damning, particularly after influential fashion industry Instagram account, Diet Prada, reported the comments as “normalised xenophobia.”