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Survivor 4's Sean and the Race Cardby David Bloomberg -- 07/10/2002
View Printable version of this article Since this past Thursday when Sean was voted out, RealityNewsOnline has received several comments revolving around the race issue (both as it has been handled on the show and on RNO). Rather than address these individually, I thought it would be better to put it all out in the open (although I can only hope this goes better than it went for the Survivor players when they decided to bring everything out in the open in Thursday’s episode). I should note that several of these comments listed below came from the same few people, but they were echoed by others. I have picked the best statement of each of the issues to use here: Were we rooting for Sean to get booted? Having read the articles pertaining to the episode in question, it almost seems like you guys were rooting for Sean to get booted, and Vee to follow suit immediately.Well, I won’t speak for anybody else, but I’ve been rooting for Sean to get booted for quite some time now. And, even without speaking for anybody else, you can check out their articles and pretty much get the same feeling (for example, see Ken Kellam’s article). Why? Because he has acted like a lazy, complaining, hypocritical, whining child. He refused to do work back in the old Maraamu days and voted out anybody who dared to suggest it. He complained about the work ethic of the new Rotu tribe. He compared any amount of work to slavery, even though the white folks all around him were doing at least 100% more than he was. And then he had the nerve to compound the problem by complaining that Neleh wasn’t doing any work! All in all, I simply did not find him to be a likeable fellow. Was it because he’s black? Everyone who's written an article on this thing has made Sean and Vee the bad guys because they're black.Hmmm. How can I say this politely? Here we go: WRONG! You have made a huge leap in logic. Yes, I wanted Sean to be voted off, but it had nothing to do with the color of his skin. It was solely his personality and the way he played the game that did it. I wanted Rob voted off too. Why? Because he was lazy and a jerk, also. Early on, I was much more “biased” against Paschal than anybody, because of what I had found about him in the press. But my opinion of him changed as I watched him on the show. Just as my opinion of Paschal went up, my opinion of Sean went down. It has nothing to do with race or politics or anything else like that – it has to do with personalities and game play. Race as an alliance issue. Sean and Vee are made to look bad because people assume that they are together just because of the color of their skin, when on the other hand you have the true alliance of Paschal and Neleh who made it very plain that they will not be voting each other off. No one is hissing and booing at them for how they've played, and if it had not been for the "fireside chat" Kathy still would have been in the dark about Paschal and Neleh, even though she claims that it was "obvious." I feel like a double standard is being levied in how these two groups of people were labeled.Sean and Vee are not made to look bad. They (especially Sean) make themselves look bad when they deny the obvious. They claim they are not together and try to charge racism to anybody who says they are. This is utter baloney. They have recently said they did not make race an issue. More baloney. In the very first episode, Sean went on about how he was from Harlem and was going to “represent.” In the second episode Sean talked about how he and Vee have a common bond of their skin color and their culture. Etc. Sean and Vee hooked themselves together, made an issue of their shared race and culture, and then complained when people viewed them as an allied pair. This is utter hypocrisy. Regarding Paschal and Neleh, it was indeed obvious. Kathy knew they wouldn’t vote each other off, even if they hadn’t specifically said so publicly prior to the fireside chat. Hell, Kathy obviously knew this back before the final Maraamu vote, when she wondered whether it would be her or Gina who went. And, believe me, there are plenty of people who are “hissing and booing” at Paschal and Neleh – more specifically, at Neleh. While I don’t personally think she deserves it (as I explained here), there have been plenty of people (including some on this very website) who have said she has just skated along under Paschal’s protection, and that she doesn’t really deserve to be there. There is no double-standard being applied here. If Paschal and Neleh denied their alliance in the way Sean and Vee have, I would have been the first to point out how ridiculous this was. But they didn’t. Sean and Vee did. There you have it. The “culture” issue. Kathy mentions that African-Americans, "as a culture, like to stick together." That is so stereotypical, yeah, like I know Sydney Poitier personally because I am black. I am displeased with such a stereotypical remark.Well, frankly I don’t think that’s even close to what she was saying. She was indicating not that all African-Americans know each other, but that they share a culture. Whether she was wrong or right, as noted above, it was Sean himself who first brought up the shared culture issue. So why not criticize him? Minorities on Survivor I wish all minorities would stop applying to this game for they will never win.Again, I have to disagree. First, what do you mean by “minority”? Richard is gay and Ethan is a Jewish vegetarian. Both of those are in the minority! Okay, okay, I know what you mean. But I still disagree. I have yet to see race play a role in the voting off of anybody. Unfortunately, however, Mark Burnett has – by choice or chance – managed to cast and/or edit almost every black male as lazy. Don’t blame us, the reviewers, for who happens to be on the show. Instead, minorities who can show themselves to be good role models should apply (which is supposedly what Sean set out to do – though I am unclear on how he was supposed to show that while simultaneously being so damned lazy). Remember, a black man won one of Burnett’s other reality TV shows, Combat Missions. Conclusion So, overall, what do we have? To me, it seems like some people have made a leap of illogic here. They are correct in noting that many of us dislike Sean. They are correct that Sean is an African-American. The leap comes in assuming that these two facts are somehow connected. They are not. We don’t dislike Sean because he is black. We dislike him because of how he behaves. He could be black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, or a one-eyed-one-horned-flying-purple-people-eater for all I care. David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline, and can be reached at david.bloomberg@pobox.com. Be sure to sign up for our e-mail update so you can stay informed about new articles on the site and be registered for giveaways and special offers! You can find all of our articles about this show at the Survivor: Marquesas Page, and take a look at our sections on Reality TV Interviews and Combat Missions. You can even buy reality show stuff at our Reality TV Store! For even more news about reality TV, be sure to check out RealityTVFans.com, SirLinksALot and the Manly Man! View Printable version of this article |
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