Can Someone Explain the Stunned Survivor Reactions to Me?

Everywhere I look, people are stunned (stunned, I tell you!) at the latest news from the upcoming season of Survivor: namely, that the constestants will be divided into four tribes based on race. A white tribe, black tride, Asian tribe, and Hispanic tribe.

To me, this sounds like a pretty interesting season. Jeff Probst said that since they have almost nothing but white people applying, they actively went out looking for minorities, and wound up with some people who didn’t know anything about the show and had never seen it before, giving it a season one-esque feel. Hey, that works for me.

Admittedly, I am just a little addicted to Survivor, so I’ll watch anything they do, but I just don’t get the controversy. From what I’m reading online, it sounds like people think this is the most shocking, outrageous thing that has ever been done in the history of mankind, let alone reality television. As a Washington Post article on the subject wrote after explaining the setup:

We’ll pause here to give you time to re-hinge your jaw.

I just don’t understand. I’m not trying to be sarcastic or anything here, I seriously don’t understand the complaints. They’ve had men versus women before. How is race vs race (vs race vs race) so much more shocking? Other reality TV shows do much more despicable things in the name of ratings.

But no, people are super-offended already, without having seen a single episode. New York City councilman John Liu announced that he was launching a campaign urging CBS to pull the show. Come on people, it’s not like they’re showing Janet Jackson’s partially exposed nipple here or anything outrage-worthy like that. The complaint here is that “it could encourage racial division and promote negative typecasts.” It’s not just Liu, he has a “coalition of officials, including the council’s black, Latino and Asian caucus.” How in the world is splitting people into tribes based on race going to promote negative typecasts?

Negative Stereotypes

Well, ok, that sounds like a challenge. What could they do…

• Have a driving competition and focus on the Asian tribe crashing into everyone else and finishing several days late
• Show the black tribe stealing everyone else’s cars before they even have a chance to get going
• Show members of the Hispanic tribe illegally join the other three tribes because their home tribe was too crappy of a place to live
• Have the white tribe dance badly
• Have a secret, hidden Jewish tribe that hangs out off-camera and controls the whole game
• Have a surprise entrance by a Muslim tribe who just blows shit up

I could see a complaint or two about that. But what the hell? Complaining about negative stereotypes just because they split the tribes up and are letting the contestants do whatever they want? I really don’t understand people sometimes.

Seriously, can anyone explain why this is so much worse than their men vs women seasons?