By Wayman Newton ’07
Reviewer

Like any good reality show, FX’s new hit show, Black White, takes people who are hell-bent on making each other’s lives miserable, moves them into a really plush house, and creates unrealistic social situations for the sole purpose of creating drama for our weekly amusement. While the show is missing the token gay guy and the naïve white girl from the Midwest, the reason behind Black White prevents it from being your typical run-of-the-mill reality show.

Billed as the first reality documentary, Black White attempts to provide viewers with an intimate first-hand account of how race impacts daily life in America. Through the use of advanced Hollywood make-up artistry, black and white families trade races. Family members are made up each day as someone of the other race and they experience the day as that person.  For the white family this means attending services at a black church and joining a black poetry group; for the black family this means visiting an all-white, working-class bar in Southern California and attending an all-white etiquette class with kids from the O.C.

While I question the effectiveness of using reality TV as a vehicle to address pressing social issues, I give the show a standing ovation for its attempt to do

something that has not been done since All in the Family — honestly and fairly displaying Americans’ ignorance of race’s social significance.

As much as race divides us as a nation, it unites us all in our ignorance of it. For the past three weeks, Black White has captured this reality by showing just how ignorant Americans really are about race and its social significance. While much of this ignorance is due to the pervasive anti-social intellectualism that is endemic to our preoccupation with individualism, some of the ignorance can be attributed to a tragic mistake made at the close of the civil rights movement — adopting colorblindness as the social vehicle for addressing race in America.

Black White should be seen for what it really is — an hour long infomercial on how colorblindness has failed American society. Coupling an unyielding reliance on doing whatever is possible to ignore race with a ’60s paradigm for understanding racism, colorblindness is partly to blame for the stagnation of race relations in American society. Black White captures this by showing the gridlock that is created when people try to ignore race and when they think of racism solely in terms of violent images from the civil rights movement. The drama that ensues between the two families paints a vivid picture of how ignoring race or failing to understand the nuances of racism will inevitably lead to racial friction.

While Black White will not solve our nation’s race problem, it does provide us with a template for understanding how we can improve in this effort. Hopefully, this message won’t get lost in all the drama.