Big Brother

This season on CBS's hit reality show, Big Brother, racial controversy arose mainly around one female contestant, Aaryn. This 22 year old Texan is the quintessential "girl next door" - an attractive, sassy blonde - who can't seem to understand that she isn't the queen of the house. A group of mainly white contestants, along with a few token minorities constitute the cast of Big Brother. In such a situation it was easy for Aaryn to recruit individuals to help perpetuate the hegemonic imbalance that the CBS recruiters ultimately imposed. "Big Brother" America is always watching, and the contestants are being broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week on a live feed streaming on the internet for fans to check up on them. Aaryn was caught telling her Asian housemate to "go make some rice" and warning her friend about talking in the dark about their African American housemate, because they "might not be able to see that bitch." In the context of purposefully and personally bashing another contestant of another race as a means to excel in the competition, Aaryn and those who joined in the negativity perpetuated the essentialist categories of race in order to "reproduce structures of domination" as proposed by Omi and Winant on page 71 in their 1994 paper. In a later interview, Aaryn excuses her own actions by dismissing the existence of racism in her words or beliefs, saying that she “loved everyone in there(the Big Brother house).” Though she may be fond of those she offended, her words and actions were, by Omi and Winant’s definition, racist. Does a friendship or fondness between individuals belonging to different races permit them to ignore overt racism in comments they may make in jest? Why do we see those in the majority justify racist actions through love or friendship?