Four tribes. Four separate but equal tribes.

Posted by Dan August 23rd, 2006 at 10:12am In News Reality Survivor

In days of yore, I remember thinking to myself while watching a Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Sexes: "What if they divided up the teams by race instead of gender.  They would never do that — that's kind of messed up."

And then I went on with my day.

Well, leave it to the folks at CBS to make that reverie into a reality.  That's right.  The new season of Survivor, set in the Cook Islands, will be divided into four tribes: Team White, Team Black, Team Asian and Team Latino.

Now, this all seems kind of horrible.  The thing is, I just can't really put my finger on why.  I suppose the past few decades have put such an emphasis on living in a colorblind society that the idea of explicitly segregating people based on race, even in a situation as silly as Survivor, seems abhorrent. 

I can kind of grasp a few solid reasons on why this situation is gross.  Perhaps it's the idea that this contest could be interpreted as an attempt to prove that there is one superior race. Perhaps it's the idea that this will serve as an example to the public about certain stereotypes, that is, how one race can do one thing well and another not (to be crass — Team Asian will ace all the math competitions while Team Black will fail all the swimming competitions).

Here's how Jeff Probst defended the show on The Early Show (from Reality Blurred):

The idea for this actually came from the criticism that Survivor was not ethnically diverse enough, because for whatever reason, we always have a low number of minority applicants apply to the show. So we set out and said, let’s turn this criticism into creative for the show. And I think it fits in perfectly with what Survivor does, which is, it is a social experiment, and this is adding another layer to that experiment which is taking the show to a completely different level. 

He added that the contestants themselves had "mixed" reactions when they learned of the twist. 

Fair enough to all that, I suppose.  In the end, this is just a stunt for ratings and a ploy for controversy.  I don't really think anyone who planned the show is racist.

It's just going to be awkward as all hell.