The Survivor Racial Experiment: Is America Ready?

Reality television makes me sick.

I mean it; I become physically ill. I get rickets and bedsores. 

American Idol, America's Next Top Model, absolutely and categorically anything shown on MTV—the entertainment offered by these "programs" is only slight less grating and awful than drilling a hole through my head with an electric screwdriver.
And wait till you see Fox's newest offering, "People Drilling Holes Through Their Heads With Electric Screwdrivers." Appropriately enough, it's debuting right after American Idol.

One night, though, I was sitting on my couch, fishing through the cushions for the channel changer, when an ad came on for the mother of all reality shows that caught my attention. Survivor—the original reality powerhouse—was going racial this season.

In recent years, the show's become less popular, perhaps due to the public gradually realizing that in terms of entertainment, Survivor's on the short bus with Married With Children and Celebrity Boxing. It could also be that after watching a group of people vie for money on an island for the tenth time, people have started tiring if the whole idea, especially with new brainless reality shows pouring out of the woodwork. However, by dividing the teams into race, the producers hit on America’s biggest exposed nerve—prejudice - and you can bet they’re cashing in. 

Instantly, a slowly dying and forgotten show was back in the spotlight, and one of CBS’s most talked about “new” programs for the fall season. People were intrigued, passionate, and above all interested in how tribes divided into race would fare against each other. If the show is rated highly, and it will be, you can bet we’ll see the other networks rev their racial engines similarly as quickly as they can.