Believe it or not there are actually times that, as a black man, I don’t complain about the lack of diversity in certain situations, and quite frankly applaud it when blacks don’t participate. On the new season of the television series Survivor, the new batch of sixteen contestants are going to form four teams along racial lines. Four Asians will form one team, four African-Americans will form another team, four Hispanics will form a third team, and four whites will form the fourth team. The producers of the program claim they were responding to criticism that there wasn’t enough diversity – that is, blacks — on previous renditions. This development apparently has a lot of critics crying race baiting, stereotyping and segregationism…

…I SO DON’T CARE!!!

Let me put this in its proper perspective: Even under the best of circumstances THIS IS GARBAGE TV!!! Is anyone really surprised that a program that bases its entire existence on voyeurism, hedonistic and medieval morality and bad behavior behaves badly? That Survivor took this long to play the race card, considering the dearth of African-American viewers, is the real surprise. What is really bewildering is why the lack of black contestants is even an issue at all right now in light of the fact that the program has produced a black winner in the past. If you want to take issue with the program then that is a more worthy reason.

As it is, I could care less about what Survivor does. If it wants to split players based on sexual preference, go ahead. If it wants to separate players based on religion, go ahead. If it wants to distinguish players based on political affiliation, be my guest. The show in any incarnation is trash and I don’t care what the fuck trash does. Anybody stupid enough to go on the program and debase themselves in front of the whole world is not worthy of my or your brain matter under any circumstance. I look at Survivor like I look at the mafia; I don’t think anybody is ready to organize a civil rights march with Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan through Little Italy because there aren’t enough blacks in it. And I’m fairly certain Jesse Jackson is not going to file a lawsuit because blacks are underrepresented in pornography. If African Americans didn’t go on Survivor at all it wouldn’t be soon enough.

There is way too much real racism and separatist behavior going on in the world to worry about than to be concerned with any made-up, insignificant racist façade. A really honest and serious discussion about race wouldn’t include Survivor. If it did, then an objective observer would have looked at the equal parts make-up of the contestants, put two and two together, and figured out on his own that this wasn’t by mere happenstance (no numerical random model could possibly come up with this kind of equal parts race make-up; statistically it is virtually impossible). A really honest and serious discussion about race would include the tendency by people to be drawn to what they are familiar and comfortable with. Whether you like it or not, whether you acknowledge it or not, people are drawn to the people whom they are culturally and socially comfortable with. As long as it doesn’t happen in the work place or economically or politically then there is nothing wrong with it and certainly nothing exclusionary about it.

Not too long ago a very close long time friend of mine complimented me on the diversity of my social set. And I am very proud of the rainbow of colors that make up the people I call friends and acquaintances. As much as I appreciated my friend’s kind observation, even I have to admit that the largest section of friends I have always has been, continues to be and will always be black. I have a wide array of interests and as a result no one group or race of people can satisfy my need for companionship when exercising those interests (As an example, I love international soccer, but nobody black that I know enjoys European and South American soccer on the level that I do. The only friends I have who are as enthusiastic about soccer as I am are white and Hispanic). But I am drawn to the black community despite the fact that I was raised in the suburbs and a lot of my core values do not coincide with theirs. The only people who can understand what it is that I have to go through as a black man in this society are other blacks, and even though I spent a good portion of my formative years away from the black community it is there that I find (1) a culture and social structure that I enjoy, and (2) a support structure that saw me through the toughest times in my life. Under no circumstances am I going to apologize for that, and I certainly don’t expect anybody else from any other race or nationality to apologize for it, either.

We all choose our individual friends based on common individual interests but we choose the crowd we run with based on what everybody in the group has in common. Without making a value judgment one way or the other, a majority of the time race is the one common denominator.

I would bet a dime against a dollar that those sixteen contestants on Survivor, none of whom knew each other before becoming contestants, would have congregated towards each other based on race even if the producers had left it up to them who would be their teammates. No amount of political correctness is going to change that. When they aren’t competing against each other I’m sure there will be plenty of commingling, though. I have no doubts that there will be some white or Asian hottie who will get the hots for the cute black or Hispanic guy and look to take a bite out of the forbidden fruit (and in the process send her father into a lather).

I was one of the few people who didn’t have a problem with there never being a black friend on Friends. Despite the progress society has made in terms of race most social sets don’t have individuals of a different race in them and they aren’t looking to include any. That is a fact of life and Friends accurately reflected that (besides, if we wanted to see black Friends we had Girlfriends and Living Single to watch, so it’s not like we weren’t getting served). If you want television to accurately portray inclusiveness and diversity then I suggest you start with insisting they show more interracial couplings because, despite the fact that that is a race subject that everyone avoids, there is far more of that than there is of mixed race social sets.

daveydoug