Race to the bottom

Yes, I'm sure there are probably more important things to write about, but this story picked up by the BBC is so bizarre that I thought it deserved a mention.

If you thought the "controversy" over the voting tactics in Big Brother 7 was bad, wait til you see what they've got coming across the pond. The creators of Survivor, the original U.S. reality TV show, are planning to divide the "tribes" for their next series... according to race.

The Beeb says:

The network [CBS] announced on Wednesday that the 20 "castaways" would be initially segregated into groups of blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos before merging later in the series.

It said the move was aimed at addressing complaints that there had not been sufficient ethnic diversity in previous series.

Now, maybe I'm being thick here, but doesn't the idea of keeping three ethnic groups separated from each other preclude the idea of "diversity" altogether? And when the three groups are finally brought together, surely it'll do nothing but highlight their differences even more? Why does race need to be the big in-joke around which the whole show is based? This is crass, lowest-common-denominator entertainment aimed at morons who are looking for nothing more than a few cheap laughs over ethnic stereotypes. And, if there's any kind of tension that occurs when the three groups are unceremoniously dumped together, it won't exactly do much to help the cause of ethnic minorities in places like North Carolina, where inter-racial dating is still virtually banned, will it.

Or maybe I'm just being overly sensitive? I don't think so, but you tell me.