Big Brother Racism Controversy: What Reality TV Says About Prejudice

July 8, 2013 Black Truth News Community News, Entertainment, Recent Posts

What’s really surprising, however, is something that’s pointed out by one of Aaryn and GinaMarie’s housemates in the clip below, from the July 7 episode, which includes the offensive statements. After 15 seasons, it’s not just viewers who could be expected to know how the show works—those who applied to be on the show have presumably seen it before and were briefed about the cameras—so it’s startling that they don’t realize that, as people who are on a TV show that involves 24/7 surveillance, they shouldn’t say such things.

And it’s not just surprising; it’s disturbing. Aaryn and GinaMarie aren’t just two women with prejudices whose minds might be changed by exposure to housemates from varying backgrounds, and they’re not just two women who said things they thought wouldn’t be heard by their targets of their hate and ignorance. Even if they momentarily forgot they were being watched, some part of both must have known that what they said would probably be heard—and, therefore, thought that nobody who mattered would care. Unlike the MasterChef contestant who tweeted racist remarks to before her appearance on the show, the Big Brother contestants knew they were exposed to a massive public audience at the time they let loose.

While the persistence of racism on and off television is the bigger problem—it would be best if there were no racists to show up on reality TV, but that’s obviously not the case—what’s going on in the Big Brother house shines a light on another layer of prejudice. Good may come of exposing the true feelings of people like Aaryn and GinaMarie, but the social forces that conspired to bring about that exposure hint at the depth of the problem. Few people could reasonably think that bigotry in all its forms is a thing of the past, but it could be easy to assume that even those who feel it know that their views should be kept private if they want to get by, that society doesn’t condone their beliefs, that there are consequences to hateful speech or behavior. Ironically, it’s a lesson that could have been learned by watching any number of reality shows—including Big Brother Season 15. But, if that show is any indication, we can’t always count on television to get the message across.