The next season of Survivor will be a social experiment involving race and ethnicity. The 4 starting tribes will be segregated racially/ethnically: whites vs. blacks vs. Asians vs. Hispanics. They claim this is a response to complaints that the show isn’t ethnically diverse enough, which in turn they blame on low numbers of minority applicants. [1]
Now, there’s something that Variety reported that most other news outlets (like Reuters, where so many places get their news) aren’t including. [2] Show runners Mark Burnett and Jeff Probst believe that, judging from past seasons, the tribes won’t stay together for very long. The most successful contestants will integrate with other races.
They also believe that the nature of the situation will cause contestants to ignore race. I mean, survival is at stake, right? Resources are scarce. You don’t know who you can trust. In some situations, you have to get by on your wits. In many others, might makes right. It’s an unfamilar environment, and a lot times, you’re just plain scared. All the while, the people in charge refuse to interfere unless someone needs medical attention, or they have some sadistic game they want to play.
If only there was some place, some sort of social institution that had similar conditions, which might give us some clue as to how this might turn out. But clearly none exists. Except, maybe… Nawww, that’d be an unfair comparison. Right? I mean…
Prison?
Of course! Now there’s a textbook example of how adversity destroys race lines! Walk into any prison today, and you’ll see race isn’t an issue. It’s a fucking rainbow coalition in there! Everyone working together to overcome adversity, completely color blind. It’s friggin’ inspirational, is what it is.
But some people aren’t so happy about this. The Hispanics seem to be the most outspoken against it. [3] Those upset seem to fall into two camps. The first is concerned that the burden of representing an ethnicity is unfairly placed on the 5 Hispanic contestants. Ok, that’s reasonable, the producers could easily game the system to make an ethnicity look good or bad, by casting more or less capable contestants. [4] Perhaps they’re concerned Mark Burnett took a pickup truck down to Home Depot and said (in Spanish), “The first 5 to hop in the back get $20 an hour!” Done and done.
The second camp is pissed that the bookies have set the odds at 3:1 against them. [gambling911.com [5]] My guess is that the bookies did some research and found out Burnett did not do casting at Home Depot, ’cause that tribe would kick everyone’s ass. And they’d all stick together, mainly due to the language barrier.
Still others have pointed out that, all of a sudden, the word “tribe” is starting to sound racially insensitive. This might explain why there’s no American Indian tribe: too obvious.
Well, I’m certainly curious as to how this will turn out. [6] To be honest, I think a really interesting experiment would be to start the teams out desegregated. Say, 5 teams of 5 (add in Middle Easterners), where each team has one person of each ethnicity. When the new tribes were formed, would they remain desegregated? I posit this: the producers were too chicken to find out.
[1] I’m not sure if they complainers are saying the Survivor casts’ ethnic makeup isn’t representative of society at large, or they just don’t know what “minority” means. For better or worse, the US is about 80% white, so for a cast of 20 you’d expect 16 whites and 4 non-whites. I’m not being racist, just crazy awesome at math.
[2] Which is why you should get all your news from The Crack Team.
[3] Unfortunately, I only have the media as a source.
[4] And I can almost guarantee that’s the first thing certain members of the losing race/ethnicity will claim.
[5] Motto: “Help, I can’t stop gambling!”
[6] Almost enough to finally watch an episode of Survivor.