Is that even kosher?

I re-watched the first two episodes of this season’s Survivor last night with a friend and I couldn’t think about anything but how fantastic this season is so far. It immensely helped that I watched it with a friend who I could talk about “diversity” stuff with as well. Before the season started, people seemed to have such a difficult time with the concept of having racially divided tribes on the show. I can understand their concern with segregated groups: reinforcing stereotypes, pitting racial groups against each other, and placing the burden of representation on the five who make up the group. I can definitely understand all of the concern.

However, all this has made it clear what I’ve been feeling lately. I’m increasingly more and more tired of people’s inability in general to talk about race because of all the baggage that comes with “going there.” Case in point, I was talking to some friends about the purpose of diversity training for students. The friend who came over to watch Survivor with me had recently conducted a diversity “training” (I hate the word training by the way because it’s as if the trainer is an expert of some sort, which is often entirely NOT true because trainers sometimes have some of the worst issues with diversity!). She was sharing how some of the white students reacted and how she felt about the students reactions. She explained that she was a bit disappointed with the result because the group was far too large – 100 – for one person to conduct a session on her own. I sympathized with her because I’ve been stuck in that situation as well.

The other friends who were in the conversation asked why some of the white students had such a hard time with the training and why did the training focus on race. After all they asked, if you focus on race, aren’t you essentially saying that racism is far worse than say homophobia, sexism, etc.? I explained that race is merely an entry point to talking about these other things; you have to start the conversation somehow and somewhere. Race is often a good place to start because people have strong feelings about it. One of the friends said something to the effect of: why would you want to offend (white) people by talking about things like white privilege? What is the point of singling them out of everyone experiences and is affected by stereotypes and discrimination of sort? I think this question reflects how people often feel about talking about diversity issues in general. They are reluctant to talk because it seems un-PC and they are afraid of offending others. While I am sensitive of not offending others in conversation (there is indeed a time and a place to talk about everything), the conversation needs to start somehow somewhere. Never talking about doesn’t make the difficult issues just go away.

On the first episode of Survivor, this tension was captured in the first ten minute sequence. As the host was yelling at the survivors to quickly gather their belongings in 5 minutes and get over board on their rafts, 5 seconds blurbs from survivors revealed the ambivalence that they were feeling about this “social experiment.” One woman from the white/Caucasian tribe said: “tribes divided by race… is that… even… kosher??” Her face scrunched up as she said kosher.

We see this extreme reluctance to talk about race over and over again on television. Issues arise as fodder for sit-coms, script devices to cause tension as viewers search for entertainment. The Latina with the heavy accent that housekeeps for the rich woman in the gay circle of friends becomes a way for us to understand how to talk about these seemingly un-kosher issues. Passive jokes, conversations about things not explicitly about race and discrimination, and the “I get along with everybody so I don’t need to talk about any of this stuff” delusion. We learn that jokes are ok, that as long as our friends have filled affirmative action quotas (yeah I have all kinds of friends…), and that our comments are not offensive. Political correctness has been twisted around from encouragement to be mindful of the words used in conversation to peer pressured silencing and policing that has creating a general inability to talk about anything. These days, you have to be really brave to seriously bring up race in a conversation. Or if you do, it’s mostly taken as offensive stuff. This is the confusion I think people have with the often interchanged phrase “That’s racial!” versus “That’s racism!”

Returning to Survivor, I intend to watch each and every episode this season. Truthfully, I am not concerned with how this “social experiment” will turn out. I just really want to watch the Asian tribe. *SPOILER ALERT* So far, they have done extremely well, winning both challenges, and they seem as if they are the most cohesive of all the groups while the African American team has been dealing with chauvinism and the Latino team has been dealing with cultural authenticity issues. Yule, a Korean male in the tribe, has been sent to Exile Island and easily located the immunity compass. The Asian group is also sorting out the meaning of being the Asian group; they seem mindful of the pressures of representing their “race” well. Side note: it’s curious all the groups of color have expressed this pressure to represent their groups well except for the white group. Bravo to the producers for capturing this angle.

I will be rooting for the Asian tribe not because I’m ethnocentric as some of my good friends think I am (it’s okay, I know some of you think I’m hyper-sensitive and very pro-Asian). I’ll be rooting for them because this is one of the first times Americans will have a chance to see a group of Asian being real and not acting out a role, working together and getting along together, articulating the problems with the Asian/Asian American category, and being successful by using teamwork and their minds and muscle. Of course I’m full of pride and anticipation. I’ve never grown up with multidimensional and rich representations of Asian Americans that I can truly identify with or feel that their characters tell stories that I’m seeing around me. I wish I could tell them that they don’t have to be anything other than who they are; that they don’t have to work at representing all Asians, but instead work on showing as many sides to their personalities as possible and how their Asian heritage is a crucial part of who they are, even if it means that they have a hard time identifying as Asian American. So far they’re already doing a great job. I predict that this season will be the best one yet and hopefully will make it a little more “kosher” to talk about race.