Racial Competition As "Social Experiment" on CBS' Survivor
Having just read about Social Darwinism and the quote by Charles Darwin suggesting competition between human racial groups, I was pretty surprised by this item:
LOS ANGELES -- Get ready for a segregated "Survivor." Race will matter on the upcoming season of the CBS show as contestants will be divided into four tribes by ethnicity. That means blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians in separate groups.
The announcement was made on CBS' Early Show. Host Jeff Probst says the idea "actually came from the criticism that 'Survivor' was not ethnically diverse enough." He says the twist fits in perfectly with what "Survivor" does, saying the show is "a social experiment. And this is adding another layer to that experiment."
A follow up article in the Post is here:
When the stunning news broke early yesterday that CBS would divide contestants on the next "Survivor" into four tribes based on race, we anxiously watched the traditional unveiling of the contestants on the network's "Early Show" because we had money riding on how fast "Survivor" host Jeff Probst would work the phrase "social experiment" into the interview.
posted by Lawrence Selden @ 1:12 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
What would Darwin think?
Let's go to just the first chapter of one of his own writings to find out:
-----------------------------
It has
been asserted that the ear of man alone possesses a lobule; but "a
rudiment of it is found in the gorilla";*(4) and, as I hear from Prof. Preyer, it is not rarely absent in the negro.
[...]
But in man, the Quadrumana, and most other mammals, it [a nictitating membrane, or third eyelid] exists, as is admitted by all anatomists, as a mere rudiment, called the semilunar fold.* [snip]
This rudiment apparently is somewhat larger in Negroes and Australians than in Europeans, see Carl Vogt, Lectures on Man, Eng. translat., p. 129.
[...]
But the sense
of smell is of extremely slight service, if any, even to the dark
coloured races of men, in whom it is much more highly developed than
in the white and civilised races.*
[...]
Dr. W. Ogle has made some curious observations on the
connection between the power of smell and the colouring matter of
the mucous membrane of the olfactory region as well as of the skin
of the body. I have, therefore, spoken in the text of the
dark-coloured races having a finer sense of smell than the white
races. See his paper, Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, London, vol.
liii., 1870, p. 276.
------------------------------
Doesn't look like Chucky thought much of brown people.
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