Parading the race card

However, if the producers of this show had asked me for my perspective on whether they should run this controversial program, I would have told them to forget it. Besides, I don’t believe placing complete novices in an alien environment (city slickers in the jungle without life necessities) proves anything about their ability, as a discrete race of people, to master the multiplicity of extreme survival tasks.

Further I would have told them that on any given day, in the heat of battle, any race can master another. Now I won’t begin to do a Nostradamus (1503-1566) and forecast into the future on the dominance or otherwise of a particular race, but I believe if you work hard enough at any discipline (education, sport, politics or religion) you can reach the summit.

For instance, let's look at the ultimate sporting contest: boxing. Who would have thought it possible for the four heavy weight divisions to be held concurrently by non-black boxers: WBA (Nikolay Valuey), IBF (Wladimir Klitschko), WBO (Sergei Liakhovich) and WBC (Oleg Maskaev) - all of Russian descent?

Back to Survivor - Cook Island.

Confused and dazed as I was with all this build-up to the first episode I thought of checking out a rival TV show instead, but curiosity got the better of me and on the night I finally succumbed to the pull of the advertising executives’ persuasive pitch.

The Survivor official website announced to all Australians:

You've heard all about it, now it's time to experience the season that has outraged critics in the US. This time, alliances are forged, not in friendship, but by race. Twenty new contestants will be divided into four teams of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Caucasian and Latino.

Host Jeff Probst returns for the 13th season of the hit reality series, taking the castaways to the exotic Aitutaki Island, an atoll located in the Cook Islands, which was discovered by explorer Captain James Cook.

Probst wanted the viewers to know that the idea was dreamed up as a result of complaints that the show was “too white”, and says that he and Survivor executive producer Mark Burnett felt the program had become “a boring, bland, whining white show”.

Not to be outdone by Channel 9, rival station Channel 7, on Today Tonight, screened interviews, on the night of the first episode (October 4), with several social commentators, including the controversial Andrew Fraser.

Associate Professor Andrew Fraser, of Macquaire University, made what some have called racist claims in the Sydney Morning Herald last year (July 26, 2005) to the effect that African migration to Australia increased crime rates and he believed HSC results pointed to a rising ruling class of Asians.

He wanted Australia to withdraw from refugee conventions to avoid becoming "a colony of the Third World".