How much reality do we want in our reality TV?

0:00Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity from NPR. I'm B.A. Parker. Now, I've been watching a lot of competitive reality TV lately. I'm talking Survivor, Big Brother, The Traitors. And it's strangers forced to interact in bizarre situations. Whether it's functioning on an island, doing puzzles, or figuring out who in a Scottish castle is trying to murder you. You're all ordinary Americans, but there's nothing ordinary about my castle.

0:33Let's face it, most people are watching reality TV to escape, including myself. But inevitably, the shows keep pulling me back to reality. Before you leave my castle, tell us, are you a faithful, or are you a traitor? I'm just a black person who likes the show.

0:59Being black, or a person of color, or trans, on one of these shows can be tricky. There's all these underlying perceptions and implicit biases you have to navigate that have nothing to do with how you play the game. These people just want to do puzzles, and now they have to deal with microaggressions on camera. It made me think about all of the change that was promised in 2020. You might recall, we were in a moment where everyone was pretty upset, for valid reasons.

1:33Including reality TV stars of color, who were asking for better representation. Some things did change. That fall, CBS promised that at least half of every reality cast would be people of color. That next summer, Big Brother crowned its first black winner, Xavier Prather. But now that we're six years removed from that conversation, the biases are still here. If we now have the language for implicit bias, and everyone knows that they're being filmed, why is it still so much a part of reality TV?

2:11So in today's episode, what reality TV reveals about race, and how much reality do we want in our reality TV? Before 2021, Big Brother had run 22 seasons in the United States, and never crowned a black winner. Then in the first season, after the CBS pledged to diversify its contestants, Xavier Prather became the first black winner. Welcome to Code Switch, Xavier.

2:42Thank you so much for talking to me. Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. I think this is a topic of discussion. It was funny, Ron Funches, who appeared on The Traitors, just made a joke. He did a little video trying to give advice to new cast members to get members of New Funches. And one of his pieces of advice was like, hey, if you're going on the show, try your best not to be black. Former faithful Ron Funches with some expert advice for new traders coming into the game. Rule number three, if all possible, don't be black.

3:16It's a detriment in the game, unlike in real life. And it was, I was like, huh, Ron, Ron. Okay, so you were in, you were on Big Brother in 2021? Yes, so right in the wake of George Floyd and kind of a lot of the DEI initiative that had been implemented in the wake of George Floyd. Now, okay, for those who are uninitiated, can you explain the premise of Big Brother? Of Big Brother?

3:47Oof. Oh, man, how much time y'all got? So take yourself and somewhere between 15 or 17 strangers and lock you all in a house. Now, while you're in this house, each week, somebody is going to be voted out by the rest of the house guests. And so each week, you're going to be playing in these kind of Dave and Buster type of competitions to determine, you know, who gets power, who gets safety.

4:18And as you're living together in this house, you'll form alliances, you'll have different allegiances. And each week, you're literally fighting to survive. And, oh, I failed to mention. So you're gone for up to 100 days. So if you had summer plans. They're done. Not anymore. So it's a it's definitely a commitment. And, yeah, while you're in the show, your goal is literally just to last every single week until you reach those final two chairs.

4:53And at that point, you'll have a jury of your peers, which are previously evicted house guests, and they will vote for which of the two finalists gets to win the show and the large sum of money, which these days is seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

5:08OK, why did you want to be on this show again? I don't know. I feel like something might be wrong with me. That's probably the the therapeutic answer. That's probably the real answer. But now, ultimately, it was a show that I felt like my skill set would be suited for. So we mentioned or mentioned in the story that I think in 2020, CBS made this promise that like 50 percent of their reality TV contestants would be BIPOC. And the following year, you're your own big brother.

5:42Did you feel the shift to that season? Well, my season, particularly, I think the world felt the shift because they cast six black people and all six of us decided to work together and form an alliance that would go on to be what's considered arguably the best alliance of all time. Yeah. OK, so you get there. There's five other black people in the house. When does the group that y'all called the cookout emerge? So I believe we kind of formed on week one.

6:16And it's funny because like in so early. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was it was very early on. And it's funny because like the way it kind of happened also just reminds me of like, you know, black people like like to some degree. It first started off with like some of, you know, some of that. A nod. You know what I'm saying? A little. We good. We good. And then, you know, at times when we were all able to get together, we noticed like, hey, if we all work together, we can really do something. And then I named it the cookout. So do we agree that this is going to be called the cookout?

6:46Is that what we're doing? Uh-huh. All right. I like that. I like that. That's for the culture. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The cookout. Mm-hmm. And yeah, we ended up all six of us making it to the final six of the game, which had never been done before in Big Brother history. Never has an alliance remained fully intact throughout the game. Usually somebody turns on somebody or somebody gets cut earlier.

7:09Why was the cookout important to you? The cookout was important to us because we had seen in previous seasons of Big Brother, a lot of black players and generally players of color really struggle to find success in the game. No black person had ever won, and that was something that we wanted to really band together to try to change that. We wanted to see someone who looked like us step up and be able to crown themselves the winner. And that was really important to us just because we were like, we want little black boys or black girls who are fans of Big Brother to feel like, hey, here's somebody who I can relate to.

7:49Because up until then, they hadn't seen anybody who looks like them find success in this game. And to me, that can be disheartening. You know, representation is important. So one of the things we're talking about on the show, on this episode, is implicit and racial bias. And I was curious if you felt like you experienced that in the Big Brother house. So I think my season is probably one of the more unique seasons in, I would say, the history of reality competition series, especially on like CBS.

8:21I think at times prior to that initiative, the DEI initiative, there would be gross disproportionality on like the diversity of cast. So, you know, you might have a cast of people of 16 to 20 and only have two black people. But, you know, I think that can make the rest of the cast feel less nervous or more, in a sense, it can kind of enable them to, you know, use their implicit bias or, you know, be more comfortable doing microaggressions because they're going to get less pushback because there's less people there who would be able to identify that type of behavior.

8:57Whereas on my season, we weren't that concerned about it because, one, I do think the majority of my cast were allies to communities outside of their own. And so that's where I think we were really, really fortunate. So I think my experience on reality TV, I would honestly say is probably more of an outlier than that of what members of the black community or participants of color have had to experience, you know, both in the past and even more recently.

9:27Because I've seen recent seasons of reality competition shows where you can tell the black players or players of color have had to deal with unconscious bias and even some microaggressions. And that's been, that's unfortunate to see because I, on my season, my experience wasn't quite that. But again, I had a very lovely cast and then I also had five other people. But that's where it's like in making more, when you have more diverse cast, to me, the opportunities for people to kind of show that implicit bias, it's somewhat dissipated because they don't feel as empowered to do so.

10:06Wait, so does your season feel like an overcorrection or just right?

10:11I would say it was a response. I don't know that I would use the word overcorrection. I would say it was a response to kind of what was happening in society. You know, the game of Big Brother is very much at times a microcosm of society. And at that point in society, again, we were in the wake of George Floyd. Race is very much a hot topic in the country. And so I think CBS wanted to show that they're willing to do, to really, you know, put the money where their mouth is when it came to this initiative.

10:44And so they were like, yes, we're going to cast a very diverse cast. And you're going to see six black players on this Big Brother season, which to my knowledge had never been done before. And I don't know that it's happened since. I feel like they saw the six and what was going on and they were like, let's dial it down a bit. I think it was one of those situations that was like, all right, y'all did it. Let's maybe switch these numbers up a little bit. But yeah, since our season, I don't know that there's been six black people cast on this season.

11:16I don't know before our season that six black people had been cast on the season before. So, yeah, again, my season was very unique. So the summer after you won was the summer that Taylor Hale was on the show. Now, Taylor is the first black woman who ended up winning Big Brother. And at the time, you wrote like a pretty damning post on, at the time, Twitter about the mistreatment that she was experiencing, where you wrote, quote, members of the black community, especially black women and other people of color,

11:49stand no chance in the Big Brother house due to perpetuation of microaggressions and unconscious biases, which plague our society, end quote. What made you write that?

12:02So I'm the first black woman in Big Brother history. Whether or not I want it or whether or not I like it, that title is going to mean something to people who look like us. And to me, being in that position, to remain silent felt like I would be doing my community a disservice.

12:28Yeah, in that moment, I just felt compelled to speak. I wanted to speak up and let it be known that, like, hey, we see what's going on. It's not lost on us. It's not something that I'm allowed to just kind of be swept under the rug. So I would say when it comes to, you know, black people competing on these reality competition shows, I would say for the most part, it's not going to be that much different than kind of what our experience has been in society. It's going to be somewhat of an uphill battle.

13:01You know, there are going to be some things that put you at a bit of a disadvantage due to you just existing as you do. But to those players where, you know, they feel like they're going to be fighting with one arm behind their back, I would just kind of say this is nothing new. Coming up, what happens when you're not in the cookout? Who's still getting kicked off at the beginning on Traders? It's so. It's always the black person.

13:32It's new ones. It is. It's like a horror movie, right? That's coming up. Stay with us. My conversation with Xavier Prather, the first black winner of Big Brother, got me thinking about safety in numbers. Most contestants of color don't have that. I wanted to know why, if everyone knows they're being filmed, there's still so much implicit bias showing up on reality TV.

14:02So I reached out to Danielle Lindemann, who's written about how reality TV is like a funhouse mirror reflecting back the reality we're all living.

14:14I'm a professor of sociology at Lehigh University and author of the book True Story, What Reality TV Says About Us. Danielle has spent years taking reality TV seriously, which as someone who watches too much of it, I found validating. I mean, reality TV, don't get me wrong, reality TV is deeply problematic, right? I often say I'm an evangelist for reality TV, but just in the sense that I think it's worthy of study. I think it's something that we need to pay attention to because a majority of American adults are consuming it.

14:48And when something is this much of a cultural juggernaut, you kind of have to pay attention to what is this teaching us. But at the same time, I'm not an evangelist in the sense that I think everyone would. There are shows that I find too problematic to watch, right? Like, what?

15:03Cops. Oh, that's real. Yeah. Understood. That's a little. Enough said. A little much. Right. But I mean, I think other people will draw the line of watching no reality TV, right? Or people who say they don't watch, but they do because they watch Top Chef, but they don't see it as a reality TV show. So, certainly, as I write my book, right, there are these stereotypes, and not just racial stereotypes, but certainly racial stereotypes that have, you know, persisted within American culture, you know, for hundreds of years and are kind of pooling in the well of reality TV, right?

15:34Like, the angry black man stereotype, the, like, angry black woman kind of sapphire, the Jezebel, right? Like, we see those. I guess in that regard, when you're showing a bias on TV like that, it's only useful if you learn from it, right? But it kind of feels like every season can feel like, um, what do they say, like, you know, first time of insanity, you try to do the same thing. Over and over. Over and over. Yeah, expecting a different result, right? Yeah. I, yeah, no, I feel that, especially with this season of The Traitors, because there's been so much.

16:10I don't know if you're watching The Traitors. Yes, talk to me about it. Oh, you are watching. Okay. So, there's been so much discourse about how they keep banishing people of color, especially women of color, early, like, just early in the seasons. And it's interesting, because in my experience, the people who go on these shows are nerds of the shows. At this point in 2026, like, they've read up on the shows. So, you'd think they would be aware of the discourse, right, about how harmful it is. Yes. Right, that they're, like, kicking off, like, women of color, like, first, you know?

16:41But then this season, in the first, I think, among the first five or six people banished and murdered, three of them? Like, one's a black man and two are black women. Right? And so, they're like, oh, she, like, she touched my arm. Clearly a traitor. Right, right. Or there's just something about her. Just something, right? Can't name it. Just something? Something I can't trust, right? And so, but that's, you know, that's a tough environment, because they're always just, like, looking for anything, right?

17:11Looking for anything to show that someone's untrustworthy. And so, you add that to, like, people being seen through the lens of racial bias, and you get what happens on this show, right? Which is, like, people of color are getting sent off much earlier. But the wild thing is they keep doing it, even though it's something that they're aware of. So, I think I'm saying I kind of agree with you at a certain point. Are people actually learning? I think some people are learning. I mean, are they? Like, in a lot of ways, it seems like people are being rewarded for leaning in on implicit bias.

17:45Right? And I think that's true. But that surprises me, because there's so much discourse about it online. Yeah. And it's people, and that's, you know, like, sort of, like, bringing that into, like, the common conversation. I think that's a positive thing that that's being brought into the common conversation. But, again, these shows are extensions of the real world. And so, you can diversify. You can consciously not, like, try to cast to slot people into stereotypes. You cannot, like, race bait the people on your shows.

18:16But at the end of the day, right, like, these racial biases and inequalities that exist in everyday life are going to filter into the world of this show. It doesn't matter if you're on an island or, you know, at the round table. Oh, that's so interesting, because I've also watched a little bit of Big Brother this summer. There were two black female contestants named Lala and Taylor. And whenever they weren't in a room, you could hear them talking about them. It's like, I can't stand them. I don't know. I don't like them. And they're like, well, what? Like, what do you mean by that?

18:46I don't like Lala at all. I hate that she walks around the place with a bikini and high heels. Or, like, one guy was like, well, we'll keep them until jury, because we need somebody to cook and clean. If it is, I hope Taylor and Lala are still here so they can clean the house. Oh, my gosh. Yes! What? And the season ended recently, and when asked about that, the guy was like, no, it's all love. I didn't mean anything by that. But I think because we are living in the midst of, like, a peak anti-DEI backlash,

19:20I wonder if you think that reality TV has changed at all since 2020. Has reality TV changed at all since 2020? That's interesting. I mean, we are in a peak DEI backlash, but I don't know. I don't know that—that's a really good question. I still feel like reality TV has become sort of more transparent, increasingly more transparent, about the biases that are lurking under the surface of these shows.

19:53And maybe that's just because, in general, there's this trend in reality TV where the fourth wall is really coming down more and more. If you watch a show like, you know, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, the whole show is about the making of the show, basically, right? I think there is—I'm just, like, there is a level of self-awareness that I think 2020 kind of allowed. And since we're six years out, I don't know, I guess I feel like some of the things we could have learned have slowly dissipated.

20:29Yeah. Well, I think that's true in life, for sure. Yeah. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about was the alliance that happened in the 2021 season of Big Brother. So there were six Black contestants on the show, and they decided that since a Black person had never won, they were like, okay, we're going to form an alliance, and we're not going to vote each other out. And because of that, they ended up with the first Black winner of Big Brother. In, like, two decades or something, right? In, like, two decades. Yeah, finally. The show's been on since I was 12.

21:01But then the very next year, like, some of the white people came together and were like, we're going to create our own cookout. Oh, man. Right? But it was like, no, see, like, they didn't understand, like, what, no, the Black people were, like, responding to a very, like, systemic problem that's within the competition that they are trying to, like, go into community with each other to resolve. You're just doing it for giggles, and you want to win. I mean, they want to win, but there's, like, a bigger problem at stake.

21:32Like, and I feel like there was this, like, conflict that even now is still just not being, like, things are in conflict with each other because of that. It was like, every year there's, like, white people want to do their own cookout. I was like, no, that's, like, a very different. It's a different thing. Yes. Different problem. But they're framing it as kind of the same. And I think, I do, but I do think, right, that that's something that we see in our broader culture. Even just, like, thinking about, are you aware of, like, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and that whole ad?

22:05What was her ad? So it was basically, she was, like, her ad, she's running for office, and she says, you know, I am going to get clamped down on welfare fraud or whatever. And the example of the person that she uses in the, like, anti-welfare video is a white male. That's why I launched a welfare-to-work requirement. Almost there. And so the MAGA people were upset that she used a white male instead of a woman of color.

22:39Why can't a white man be on welfare? Well, they were upset. And, you know, they saw it as an example of, quote, unquote, anti-white racism, right? Not that anti-white racism is even a thing. But sort of conceptually understanding those two things as somehow being equal to the point where you're upset that it's a white man in the ad. But, you know, maybe kind of a loose connection to what happened on Big Brother where you're like, oh, they banded together. And so we're the same. We're going to do the same thing without understanding how those two things are fundamentally, structurally different.

23:09So maybe in that regard, reality TV is speaking to the realities that we're enduring. I would argue that, right, like the discourses around these shows bring issues into public consciousness that might not otherwise have been brought into public consciousness. I think reality TV has so much potential because it is mass consumed. So many people are watching. And under the surface, right, like these really, really interesting things and these debates are being generated that can really teach us about ourselves.

23:43I mean, OK, you end your book by saying that you hope that reality TV can help us to learn from our society's bad behavior and may be course correct. But that requires a level of self-awareness that I think a lot of people lack, which makes me wonder, are we actually learning bad things from reality TV? Like, is seeing all this bad behavior on TV normalizing that behavior in real life? I mean, there's some evidence that heavy watches of reality TV, for instance, think, feel like real life situations are infused with more conflict than they actually are.

24:21And I personally can totally relate to that because if I'm heavy into a trader's watch and I go to like a faculty meeting, I'm like, OK, we're at the tribal council. You know, I have this, right, like a sense of, OK, this is going to be more conflict driven than in fact it actually is. Everyone thinks they can read facial cues all of a sudden. Yeah, I mean, so at the end of the day, of course, so many people are consuming it. It's clearly going to impact the way that we think and move in the world and possibly negatively if we're watching these stereotype filled conflict driven shows.

24:53I think that is absolutely one part of it. But I think that's the part that people most often see. But then there's another part of it I think that maybe is more overlooked where people are kind of positioning themselves as social critics. And, you know, having these deep conversations like on the sister wife read it where they're talking about patriarchy. Right. Or, you know, the summer house read it where they're talking about, you know, Sierra's double consciousness of being a black woman on reality TV. So sort of having these debates that maybe maybe would not otherwise have been had so publicly.

25:24I teach a class on like the sociology of reality TV and I ask my students at the end of the semester, knowing what you know now, right, about how problematic this genre is, are you still going to watch? And most of them say, yeah, that they're going to keep watching. Right. But they're going to maybe take a more critical eye to it. Right. And so, I mean, the thing is, also, it's here. It doesn't seem like it's going anywhere anytime soon. So wait, so if we just we we just pretend that we're anthropologists while we're watching these shows, there is an opportunity to not be as consumed, but more so a little a little more removed from what we're experiencing.

26:07I think there's that opportunity, but I'm not telling you how to engage with the show in any way. Right. I mean, what to do.

26:18Reality shows are not as bad as they were like even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. I think people are more aware of the stereotyping now. They're having more conversations. I mean, but then at the end of the day, right, like who's still getting kicked off at the beginning on Traders? It's so. So it's the black person. It's new ones. I mean, it's like a horror movie, right? Like, oh, my God, it is like a horror movie. The black person goes first. Yeah. And the fact that they keep doing it, even though they know that that's a problem on the show.

26:52They're like, they'll do it. But like, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I'm sorry if I'm wrong. I'm sorry if I'm wrong. But like, yeah, like you looked at me weird. There was just something about you. Oh, my God.

27:06Danielle, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It was really fun.

27:14And that's our show. You can follow us on Instagram at NPR Code Switch. This episode was produced by Xavier Lopez. It was edited by Jasmine Romero and Courtney Stein. Our engineer was Kweisi Lee. And a big shout out to the rest of the Code Switch massive. Christina Kala, Jess Kung, Leah Dinella, Dalia Mortada, Gene Demby, Barton Girdwood, Leolanda Sanguini, and Maya Dangerfield. I'm B.A. Parker. Hydrate.