Discrimination is one of the most important social issues today. It has affected millions of people and is one of the deepest social problems in history. The history of what we call racism is the discrimination of other people’s colors and religion. This worldwide issue has caused countless problems.
Off the top of your head, how many T.V. shows can you think of that have mostly black people? Netflix is facing an online backlash after showing its first trailer of Dear White People. The trailer shows a black person at a white school urging “white people” to stop wearing blackface costumes. One of the comments on this was, “As much as I’d love to believe that we are ‘post-racial’ - an idea that really gained traction after the election …show more content…
These issues are not just limited to Big Brother. Both Survivor and Real World also seem to cast their seasons with a checklist that allows only one black man, and one black woman. Do networks fear that the showing of too many black members run the risk of stopping their series, of turning these general audience programs into “black shows? And what if the existence of more than one person of color on a show causes them to group together? How will this play out and come across and will it intensify the already simmering racial tensions that get played out in these on-air games?
As Martin Luther King Junior once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character”. According to CNN, 49% of people say racism is a big problem; 33% of people said it was somewhat of a problem.
Part of the appeal of reality TV has always been the mixing up of different people, different sexes, races, backgrounds and throwing them altogether to see what comes out of it. This is the basic idea behind a lot of shows, like Wife Swap. But if these shows are supposed to be something of a social experiment. An experiment that is controlled isn’t an experiment at all. And when it’s this excluding to so many people, it actually becomes something else:
Off the top of your head, how many T.V. shows can you think of that have mostly black people? Netflix is facing an online backlash after showing its first trailer of Dear White People. The trailer shows a black person at a white school urging “white people” to stop wearing blackface costumes. One of the comments on this was, “As much as I’d love to believe that we are ‘post-racial’ - an idea that really gained traction after the election …show more content…
These issues are not just limited to Big Brother. Both Survivor and Real World also seem to cast their seasons with a checklist that allows only one black man, and one black woman. Do networks fear that the showing of too many black members run the risk of stopping their series, of turning these general audience programs into “black shows? And what if the existence of more than one person of color on a show causes them to group together? How will this play out and come across and will it intensify the already simmering racial tensions that get played out in these on-air games?
As Martin Luther King Junior once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character”. According to CNN, 49% of people say racism is a big problem; 33% of people said it was somewhat of a problem.
Part of the appeal of reality TV has always been the mixing up of different people, different sexes, races, backgrounds and throwing them altogether to see what comes out of it. This is the basic idea behind a lot of shows, like Wife Swap. But if these shows are supposed to be something of a social experiment. An experiment that is controlled isn’t an experiment at all. And when it’s this excluding to so many people, it actually becomes something else: