August 23, 2006

"Survivor" with teams divided by race.

I guess they are desperate for attention. We're supposed to talk about them. Should we fall for it?

16 comments:

chuck b. said...

As long as the white people win, that's all that matters.

Laura Reynolds said...

No more degrading than dividing into male v.female or old v.young.

Anyway it'll get mixed up eventually

Beth said...

Steve, thanks for reminding me why I stopped watching the show a few years ago. This is just another in a line of stupid ideas.

Gordon Freece said...

No.

GT said...

I acutally think it's a good idea on all fronts. Marketing, obviously creates a buzz. And, believe it or not, I don't think it's going to inspire race riots either. I think the American public can handle it. Heck, it might even force Americans to talk about race rather than side step it all the time in fear of offending someone.

amba said...

Nah.

Albatross said...

Hoo-boy! What kind of competitions will they have? Basketball games? Hockey? Folklorico dancing? Math?

This looks like a train wreck in development.

RC said...

your short post that started this discussion made it's way into my last blog post...I think you make an interesting quick point.

--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com

al said...

I thought Survivor was a band?

Meade said...

White is a race? How silly.

Jeremy said...

JDM-
The article says that there will be four teams: Latinos, Asians, Whites and Blacks.

So, yeah, Native Americans are out. The biggest break then is that Survivor can't be accused of ethnic tokenism anymore.

Unknown said...

I'm tired of reality shows. The thrill is gone--the plot and all its conventions become so predictable... and the machinations of the contestants clearly reflect they are playing off them, too. So I guess that makes them semi-reality shows, or postmodern unreliable narrator shows?

The only one I watch sometimes is The Amazing Race, because you at least get to visit cities all over the globe.

Eli Blake said...

Actually, this ticks me off.

If I can quote from something I wrote yesterday on my own blog about this,

A team of white people will compete against a team of black people, a team of Hispanics and a team of Asians. Ironically, I am writing this post while I am sitting on the Hopi reservation, which is surrounded by the Navajo reservation, so it's a good bet that at least 90% of the people within 50 miles from here would be told that they couldn't be on this show at all, because of race.

This is in a word deplorable. It wasn't all that long ago when sports teams, as well as schools, workplaces and housing were segregated. In fact, it may be technically illegal, but in a lot of cases there still is de facto segregation. As recently as the 1970's there were still legally segregated instututions in some places, and there are still country clubs where even Tiger Woods would not be welcome to play golf because they would look only at the color of his skin. Because of segregation, generations of people were lynched, forced out of a job, made to go hungry, or even had their entire communities burned to the ground. Children were forced to walk past a good school near their homes in order to attend a lousy one much farther away.

To make sport of this on a show called, 'Survivor' is ironic in the extreme, as under segregation, people had to fight every day just to survive.


Sure, there have been generation gaps, and the 'war between the sexes' is as old as time itself. And these things do have their ugly side as well, as we see in, for example, age discrimination, domestic violence and divorce court.

However, segregation was used to terrorize, demean and dehumanize an entire population. Let's be honest-- young people do live with old people (and eventually become old people) and men will live with women in their lives and vice versa. However, segregation led to for example, entire communities being forced to leave their homes, and the murders of thousands of others. Even today, race is the number one motivation for hate crimes, according to FBI statistics, and the majority of those crimes involve black victims targetted by white people.

So clearly this is inappropriate. And unacceptable.

Ann Althouse said...

Richard Fagin: Actually, I quit watching "Survivor" early in Season 1. I think it's dumb.

Oscar Madison said...

A perfect post.

Unknown said...

Actually, I don't think it really matters. I did laugh at Taranto today, remarking about the objections raised by a coalition of NYC officials, the black, Latino and Asian caucus, planned to rally at City Hall on Friday.

Taranto opined:
So "the council's black, Latino and Asian caucus" is upset over a plan to divide people up by race? Talk about the pot calling the kettle African-American!

LOL, I may watch this one!