Parading the race card

Just when you think it’s safe to relax and put your weary feet up to watch a bit of reality TV, devoid of any stresses of racially offensive imagery, along comes Survivor - Cook Island (Channel 9), with the well-publicised episodes designed entirely around race.

If ever I saw a show that could give credence to Social Darwinism “survival of the fittest” racist doctrine, then this one fits the bill to a T. Wikipedia describes the term “survival of the fittest” as a phrase which is shorthand for a concept relating the competition for survival or predominance.

Originally applied by Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology of 1864, Spencer drew parallels between his ideas of economics and Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution, by what Darwin termed natural selection.

Now take the following quote made by the world’s most recognisable and marketable face on the planet: Tiger Woods.

"Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps."

Tiger’s colourful, witty quote, which only a man of his worldly stature could get away with, got me thinking about the concept of pitting race against race to come up with the ultimate winner.

Natural selection - perhaps not!

Seeing that Tiger is currently the undisputed ruler of the roost in the once exclusive sporting domain of the white man, does that mean he has predominance over all white golfers - natural selection - or is he just an exception to the rule. Well if he is an exception to the rule am I to believe that Vejay Singh (Fiji Indian) and Michael Campbell (New Zealand Maori), collectively multiple winners of golfing Majors, are also different.

Or perhaps these elite wealthy black golfers have rebutted the aged old myth: “Only whites have the intelligence and patience to master the game with the little white ball”, once and for all.

Natural selection of a coloured variety - hmm … possibly.

So why do TV executives feel it necessary to go down the path of parading the race card to sell a show? If they can’t forecast or influence the outcome - of a multiple series of one-hour shows - why would they want to risk their hard earned reputation, in that competitive industry, in pursuit of the all-mighty US dollar?

More on that later.

However, if the producers of this show had asked me for my perspective on whether they should run this controversial program, I would have told them to forget it. Besides, I don’t believe placing complete novices in an alien environment (city slickers in the jungle without life necessities) proves anything about their ability, as a discrete race of people, to master the multiplicity of extreme survival tasks.

Further I would have told them that on any given day, in the heat of battle, any race can master another. Now I won’t begin to do a Nostradamus (1503-1566) and forecast into the future on the dominance or otherwise of a particular race, but I believe if you work hard enough at any discipline (education, sport, politics or religion) you can reach the summit.

For instance, let's look at the ultimate sporting contest: boxing. Who would have thought it possible for the four heavy weight divisions to be held concurrently by non-black boxers: WBA (Nikolay Valuey), IBF (Wladimir Klitschko), WBO (Sergei Liakhovich) and WBC (Oleg Maskaev) - all of Russian descent?

Back to Survivor - Cook Island.

Confused and dazed as I was with all this build-up to the first episode I thought of checking out a rival TV show instead, but curiosity got the better of me and on the night I finally succumbed to the pull of the advertising executives’ persuasive pitch.

The Survivor official website announced to all Australians:

You've heard all about it, now it's time to experience the season that has outraged critics in the US. This time, alliances are forged, not in friendship, but by race. Twenty new contestants will be divided into four teams of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Caucasian and Latino.

Host Jeff Probst returns for the 13th season of the hit reality series, taking the castaways to the exotic Aitutaki Island, an atoll located in the Cook Islands, which was discovered by explorer Captain James Cook.

Probst wanted the viewers to know that the idea was dreamed up as a result of complaints that the show was “too white”, and says that he and Survivor executive producer Mark Burnett felt the program had become “a boring, bland, whining white show”.

Not to be outdone by Channel 9, rival station Channel 7, on Today Tonight, screened interviews, on the night of the first episode (October 4), with several social commentators, including the controversial Andrew Fraser.

Associate Professor Andrew Fraser, of Macquaire University, made what some have called racist claims in the Sydney Morning Herald last year (July 26, 2005) to the effect that African migration to Australia increased crime rates and he believed HSC results pointed to a rising ruling class of Asians.

He wanted Australia to withdraw from refugee conventions to avoid becoming "a colony of the Third World".

After getting myself worked up by the nauseating and predictable nonsense from Fraser on how the Causasians with their superior intellect would reign supreme in this contest, I decided that I was going to cheer on the African Americans.

But would they bring home the bacon?

Whoops - I believe I committed the cardinal sin by being sucked into this game by making a choice along racial lines and not on other variables.

As soon as the show got under way I knew I was riding a long shot - in racing terminology - a risky bet as there was no known form. And with two of the five contestants making up the African American team being New Yorkers and another being a blues musician from the south, I knew that surviving in a remote jungle was a big ask for this motley crew.

Yes - you guessed it - the team started disastrously as they had no idea how to light a fire to boil the contaminated water for consumption.

When they lined up to hear their first competition event, against the other three racial groupings, my heart missed a beat: to erect a boat, row out to gather a burning torch and return to the shore to shape a puzzle before raising a flag.

The apparent words of Fraser, in his Today Tonight interview, “the blacks are good on the flat ground but are hopeless in the water”, (or words to that effect) started to look fairly spot on when all the other teams were half way through the water retrieval task and they hadn’t even assembled their boat.

The first three teams to complete the contest were guaranteed immunity from evicting a member from the competition, with the last team - the African Americans in this instance - having to make the difficult decision to vote a team member off that evening.

Round one to Fraser - although the Caucasian team came in a distant third to the Latino and Asian-Americans.

Week 2 and I had this sinking feeling that my team, who couldn’t even light a fire, might struggle again. In the lead up to the contest the strong Latino contestants decided they were going to pull the game so they could rid themselves of their weakest link; a lazy, overweight member who said he identified more as a heavy rock person than as a Latino.

When the contest finished, going under and over a series of water traps, the Latino plan succeeded and they came in at the rear of the field. It was evident to everyone watching TV that they were making little effort to be competitive.

However, when the camera zoomed onto the third placed African Americans crossing the line I felt deflated when I saw them giving high fives. They were so jubilant in celebration that one would have been forgiven for thinking they had scored a touch down to win the American Gridiron Super Bowl in the final seconds of the game.

Sadly, all and sundry could tell that they would have lost again if the Latino team hadn’t pulled the game.

So what did this show achieved in just two episodes?

That the blacks, as Fraser called them, would be the team least likely to win the competition. But who really cares what he thinks? Regrettably many racially intolerant Australians would feel their long held bigoted views had been vindicated.

Was the outcome predictable - I guess so if the selection process allowed for an unbalanced representation of participants in a demanding contest.

And what did happen with the rest of the show.

As predicted the race groupings lasted just two episodes before the teams were amalgamated as a result of an avalanche of protest in the United States.

To play the race card too often is fraught with danger - so let that be a lesson Mr. Howard - public opinion has a habit of changing.