RSSJeff Probst, Welcome to the 21st Century
September 8th, 2006 | View Comments
Jeff Probst, host of CBS’s Survivor, has apparently spent most of his life living under a rock on one of those remote islands. The Washington Post reports that Probst has finally discovered the wonders of the multicultural world.
Until “Survivor” host Jeff Probst sat in on casting sessions for the CBS reality series’s new edition, in which competitors were picked and put into “tribes” based on their ethnic background, he had not realized that “Asian” includes Japanese, Koreans and Chinese and that they do not necessarily like each other as a matter of ethnic solidarity….
“When you start talking to a person from Asia, you realize — Wow! They have all different backgrounds!” gushed Probst, who described himself repeatedly as a 44-year-old white guy from Wichita.
I am flabbergasted that this is news to someone living in this day and age.
Jeff Probst might also be interested to know that:
- There have been a lot of wars on Asian soil, mostly Asians fighting other Asians.
- There are scholars who argue that “Asian” is a culturally and ethnically meaningless term. Indians, Filipinos, and Japanese are all technically Asians, but their countries of origin have drastically different histories and cultures.
- Generally speaking, second-generation immigrants (children born in the US to immigrant parents) assimilate quite fully into American culture, although they may retain some ties to their parents’ home country, e.g., speaking the language. Third-generation immigrants typically don’t speak the language of their grandparents. So someone like Survivor Becky probably has much more in common with your average upper-middle-class white American than your average South Korean.
On some level, it doesn’t surprise me that Probst is so clueless, as Survivor has quite the horrible track record when it comes to racial issues and this upcoming series probably isn’t going to improve that record. It takes a large degree of cultural obtuseness to miss the fact that we, as a society, are supposed to have progressed beyond thinking that “Battle of the Races” is novel and worthy entertainment.
Yvonne posted this on September 8th, 2006 @ 5:23pm in News/Politics, TV Shows | Permalink to "Jeff Probst, Welcome to the 21st Century"
Discussion
No Comments
There are no comments yet. Be the first to leave one!
| Trackback |
And then keep track of the discussion by subscribing to this post's RSS feed.
