Parading the race card

After getting myself worked up by the nauseating and predictable nonsense from Fraser on how the Causasians with their superior intellect would reign supreme in this contest, I decided that I was going to cheer on the African Americans.

But would they bring home the bacon?

Whoops - I believe I committed the cardinal sin by being sucked into this game by making a choice along racial lines and not on other variables.

As soon as the show got under way I knew I was riding a long shot - in racing terminology - a risky bet as there was no known form. And with two of the five contestants making up the African American team being New Yorkers and another being a blues musician from the south, I knew that surviving in a remote jungle was a big ask for this motley crew.

Yes - you guessed it - the team started disastrously as they had no idea how to light a fire to boil the contaminated water for consumption.

When they lined up to hear their first competition event, against the other three racial groupings, my heart missed a beat: to erect a boat, row out to gather a burning torch and return to the shore to shape a puzzle before raising a flag.

The apparent words of Fraser, in his Today Tonight interview, “the blacks are good on the flat ground but are hopeless in the water”, (or words to that effect) started to look fairly spot on when all the other teams were half way through the water retrieval task and they hadn’t even assembled their boat.

The first three teams to complete the contest were guaranteed immunity from evicting a member from the competition, with the last team - the African Americans in this instance - having to make the difficult decision to vote a team member off that evening.

Round one to Fraser - although the Caucasian team came in a distant third to the Latino and Asian-Americans.

Week 2 and I had this sinking feeling that my team, who couldn’t even light a fire, might struggle again. In the lead up to the contest the strong Latino contestants decided they were going to pull the game so they could rid themselves of their weakest link; a lazy, overweight member who said he identified more as a heavy rock person than as a Latino.

When the contest finished, going under and over a series of water traps, the Latino plan succeeded and they came in at the rear of the field. It was evident to everyone watching TV that they were making little effort to be competitive.

However, when the camera zoomed onto the third placed African Americans crossing the line I felt deflated when I saw them giving high fives. They were so jubilant in celebration that one would have been forgiven for thinking they had scored a touch down to win the American Gridiron Super Bowl in the final seconds of the game.