There’s a lot on this morning’s New York Times front page. Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Pope Francis, China, the West Bank. But my eye is drawn to a headline that reads: “Driven From a Crown at Home, She tried in Nigeria. And won.”

It’s the story of Chidimma Adetshina, a 23 year old woman, born in South Africa to a Nigerian father and to a South African mother who apparently has one parent from Mozambique. She was raised in South Africa and has lived there her entire life.

She entered the annual beauty contest and advanced to the finals. But controversy stalked her. You may not know it, but South Africans recognize her last name as Nigerian. Could “a Nigerian” represent South Africa in the pageant? And what about her mother’s Mozambique heritage; how did she get to South Africa after all? The South African government decided to start an investigation.

That was the last straw, and Chidimma pulled out of the contest. But then, as they say, another country was heard from, and Chidimma was invited to join the contest for Miss Nigeria, which she won, although she had never been to Nigeria, except for a visit when she was three months old.

Yes, there were questions raised in Nigeria, but they apparently had no effect on the vote at the contest. And the South African title went to a White woman, who is hard of hearing and had a cochlear transplant.

Although it is not something I know anything about, there seems to be quite an economic and social rivalry between the two countries, and this is just one example of how it can play out.

Tempest in a teapot? Perhaps. But it reminded me of an article I read just yesterday in Tablet, a conservative oriented Jewish centered e-magazine with articles too long to read unless you are in a doctor’s waiting room. That’s where I was yesterday.

The article was by Marc Weitzmann, a French journalist who writes about things Jewish and who gave a presentation for the Haberman Institute a few years ago. It was focused on a new book by Olivier Roy, who he identified as a French sociologist. The book is titled The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms. [a typical French title, which I don’t understand].

I will not try to discuss everything said in this too long article about a book with an impenetrable title. Let’s just say it’s about the clash of cultures, and the adoption of one culture’s identifying elements by another, a topic that often comes up. White rappers. Christian seders. You know what I mean.

The article goes into a large discussion of who gets credit for hummus. At one point, someone in Lebanon railed against those who think hummus is an Israeli food. It’s not Israeli, he maintained, it’s Lebanese. Not so fast, said a Syrian. What do you mean, it’s Lebanese? It’s Syrian.

The gist of the article, of course, is that no one really knows. And, as they might say, hummus is just the tip of the iceberg.

The article or the book (unclear to me which) or both goes on to talk about nationalism and national rivalries, saying that they are not only political, but they are cultural. And that while globalism, in some minds, was the perfect way to create a universal culture, taking the best from each and melding them together, for others, it was a way to steal one’s culture, one’s identity, and for some, as they also say, “them’s fightin words”. And, says Weitzmann/Roy, the loss of cultural distinction may lead to violent reactions, just as loss of political identity might.

Back to Miss South Africa. A sentence in the Times article interested me, a quote from a South African essayist, Sisonke Msimang. She describes Adetshina as being an example of post-apartheid young Africans whose identities defy borders. She decried the lack of open or cosmopolitan viewpoints in South Africa, and prejudice against north African cultures.

It is all pretty much the same thing, isn’t it? As Pete Seeger (famously but not originally) said: Which side are you on?

Apparently,  you can not be on both.