Big Brother Racism Controversy: What Reality TV Says About Prejudice

Those extreme viewers have known something disturbing was going on at the Big Brother house for a while, something TV-only fans learned about last night. The live-feed cameras had caught several so-called “Houseguests” making racist and otherwise offensive remarks about their housemates. On the Sunday, July 7, episode, some of those moments were shown to the television audience. And, because audience votes can affect the outcome of the season, those clips may change the way the show shakes out. In the wake of the network’s decision to air the offensive moments, commentators have expressed relief that CBS has decided not to hide the facts from more casual viewers, some suggesting that the decision was due to outside pressure. (The network had already issued a statement, available at Deadline, distancing itself from Houseguests’ views.)

The effects of the live-feed remarks are already clear for two of the Houseguests. Last week, TMZ reported that GinaMarie Zimmerman had lost her job with East Coast USA Pageant, Inc., because she could no longer serve as a role model for pageant contestants, and that Aaryn Gries had been dropped by her modeling agency, Zephyr Talent. Aaryn and GinaMarie are still sequestered on Big Brother, so they don’t yet know what’s happened to their day jobs. (Remarks about Hitler’s public-speaking skills made by Spence Clawsen have also caught the attention of viewers, but not to the same extent as Aaryn’s and GinaMarie’s.)

It’s not actually that surprising that two contestants on Big Brother could have racist views. The show has seen its share of bigotry in past seasons, and reality-television as a genre has a long history of putting prejudiced contestants alongside the people they hate, fear or just don’t know. (And that’s not even including the several instances when it’s been the show, rather than the contestant, accused of bigotry.) Sometimes there’s an effort to make something good come of the clash. MTV’s The Real World, for example, has had at least some success at getting participants, many of whom have had little exposure to people from different backgrounds prior to coming on the show, to accept that being different isn’t bad. The show’s ninth season even had an episode called “Race Matters,” in which audiences saw the benefits to the housemates of open-mindedness.

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