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Does BBAU have a problem with POC?

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Always Watching

Good grief, must everything be about racism? We just had a season where Jackson, in the very first challenge, pick two people of color to fight for their games. And it's not like people of color don't win Big Brother. In the US, we had Josh Martinez, a Hispanic, win. Last I checked, Hispanics are people of color now, right? People of color are any people that aren't white, right?

By the way, encouraging racism is the lowest form of journalism. Maybe you should learn that lesson first.
 

Good grief, must everything be about racism? We just had a season where Jackson, in the very first challenge, pick two people of color to fight for their games. And it's not like people of color don't win Big Brother. In the US, we had Josh Martinez, a Hispanic, win. Last I checked, Hispanics are people of color now, right? People of color are any people that aren't white, right?

By the way, encouraging racism is the lowest form of journalism. Maybe you should learn that lesson first.

I agree with you. None of these vote outs had anything to with their race and were more due to Laura's personality, Allan being a strategic threat and Soobong showing off too much too early and being perceived as a physical threat.
 
Absolutely. And I hadn't even seen the episodes myself.

I know we're all supposed to be "woke" now, but Big Brother has never strictly been about race.
 
It's unfortunate how all of this played out but on first impressions, Laura wasn't meshing with everyone. She had the least amount of connections to keep her safe. Allan was uncovered as a fake and soobong went in doing one finger pull ups...I mean. They aren't helping their case. Is there subconscious racism? Who knows. But I don't blame the casting for that, for once I think they have a close representation of the country. Maybe it's good we see this happen so we can learn.
 
Without weighing into this too much, I do want to drop some figures...

Looking at the historical context of POC in Big Brother Australia, I don't want to list names (this information is readily available online if you search for it) but out of approximately 222 HMs between seasons 1-12, I counted only 9% of total contestants were POC.

Of those HMs, 45% never made it past the second eviction. Only about five of them made it to halfway, the status of one is currently unknown, and three made it to finale week.

That is all.
 
It's not about being woke.

I've been DM'ed like crazy today by people getting very, very angry and defensive that there couldn't possible be racism in the Big Brother house, let alone Australia. The site might have been DDoS'ed tonight by these kinds of people.

They are wrong, of course. But the tricky part is they can't see past their own biases. Everyone has racial biases, it's like a primitive hardwired thing and it's very, very hard to get people to evaluate themselves on this. It's unpleasant to review your behaviour and find that you might have acted wrong.

When people excuse away the situation saying Laura didn't fit in, Allan was annoying, Soobong was a threat, that's just taking the mental easy road because you don't have to think about the fact that you may have biases.

But Kieren was just as annoying as Allan, the muscular white guys and Talia are just the same physical threat as Soboong and Laura was basically iced out because she wanted to talk about her heritage (based on her interview with Huff Post). I could argue that Xavier hasn't "fit in" in the house, he doesn't seem to be interacting with anyone.

It's the racial biases that target the people of colour and hold them to different standards compared to the white housemates. It's why they were the first three evicted for exhibiting the same behaviours than other white housemates are doing.

must everything be about racism?

This is by far the laziest excuse. It's even lazier than the mental easy road above because you're essentially sweeping everything under the rug. With this excuse you don't even have to acknowledge racism as a concept, you are saying it's trivial and not worth talking about. It's erasing all the hardship that people of colour have to go through.

I'm still trying to figure out why Australians in particular get so defensive when there is the suggestion of racism happening. Fairfax did an article on this just recently:


I think with Big Brother people are getting so worked up because the house is a concentrated sample of Australian society and they don't want to admit that Australia really is a pretty racist place.
 
Racism is always such a contentious subject to bring up, as I feel like some people become instantly defensive at the mere suggestion that racial biases can impact the outcomes of some social situations.i think situations like this is where distinctions need to be made between deliberate racism and cognitive biases, as I think that people who react negatively to these discussions often interpret accusations of the latter as being accusations of the former.

Do I think that all/most of the white housemates got together and said ‘There are ethnic minorities in this house. Let’s team up and get them.’? No. However, do I think a person’s racial (and by extension, cultural background) impact the way in which they relate to others, and the way in which others perceive them? Yes. And in a game like Big Brother, this is crucially important.

Take Allan as an example. The common justification for him being a target was that he was viewed as a strategic threat due to being smart and sneaky. Now, it just so happens that character traits such as ‘being smart and sneaky’ are traits which people of East Asian backgrounds are often stereotyped as possessing. I’m sure we have all heard of the smart, sneaky Asian stereotype. This then begs the question as to how much of the way in which Allan was perceived was influenced by his race? Now, I’m not saying he didn’t behave in ways which demonstrated intellect or sneakiness, but rather that the ability of the other housemates to perceive him as a smart and sneaky player can be enhanced by the fact that he was displaying character traits which are commonly associated with his race. Consequently, If Allan had been a white Australian of European descent, then we wouldn’t have to battle against any perceptions people may have about people of East Asian backgrounds. Therefore, if he played a similar game as a white Euro-Australian to that which he played as a Chinese-Australian, then he would have found it easier to avoid being pegged as too strategic, smart or sneaky, as he wouldn’t be conforming to a set of stereotypes which others often believed regarding people of his racial and cultural background.
 
Some of this is a rollover from the controversy on the US version. All I can really tell from the edit (which shows us very little) is that Allan and Soo-Bong were shown as bad game players. We hardly learnt anything about Laura except she was apparently a quieter type.

The format is a problem in that you don't really get to know these people that well. SooBong could have been entertaining, but as a player he was shown as clueless. They didn't like Kieran playing hard so maybe Allan should have learnt from that. I think more boring players could have gone, at least over Allan, but SooBong looked a one-trick pony. Whether the limitations are only due to the casting or due to the producers demanding certain storylines is unknown.
 
Some of this is a rollover from the controversy on the US version. All I can really tell from the edit (which shows us very little) is that Allan and Soo-Bong were shown as bad game players. We hardly learnt anything about Laura except she was apparently a quieter type.

The format is a problem in that you don't really get to know these people that well. SooBong could have been entertaining, but as a player he was shown as clueless. They didn't like Kieran playing hard so maybe Allan should have learnt from that. I think more boring players could have gone, at least over Allan, but SooBong looked a one-trick pony. Whether the limitations are only due to the casting or due to the producers demanding certain storylines is unknown.


I don’t believe it’s a format issue and neither is this runoff from the US. It’s an issue with society in general... I don’t think you realize just how entrenched racial bias is in our society.
 
Lazy excuse. We can do better.
Housemates are always going to gang up on those they perceive as either weak, annoying or threats. Laura for me was more a personality issue than race, could easily see why some would be turned off by her. Allan was clever and sly, housemates quickly picked up on that and realized he was playing the game HARD so voted him off. Had he been white he likely would've been put up as well, housemates would be well aware of the Tim playbook and simply wouldnt put up with it. Soobong you could make a case of there potentially being a racial element to his eviction. Was he really a threat? Or was it a case of being too quirky and different and having the housemates all gang up on him?
A solution would be to cast an even more diverse bunch of housemates but this would likely affect ratings and producers would never have the balls to do it. So we're stuck with a mostly white cast which means they'll likely gang up on POC when they see fit as is human nature
 
Allan was annoying and pathetic, Laura seemed arrogant and passive aggressive, and Soobong was a showoff and a huge threat.

Regardless of their race, they would still have been voted out. And Laura was a bit of a racist herself. If a pro white person is racist, then a "pro black feminist" will be a racist and a misandrist as well. So good riddance.

And if Australia is so racist, then Layla would not have come second in BB12, Priya 2014 wouldn't come 4th and have a mass following, and Trevor wouldn't have won in 2004. Come now.

About this year, they should've included more POC then? 90% of these housemates are white. Where are the Indians, Lebos and Latinos? Fuck, they're mostly Anglo-Celtic. No Slavs, Italians and Greeks (think Zoe is Greek though?). I was eager to see a hot wog/Mediterranean guy in the likes of Dino and Travis 2014 tbh. Lmao. But all we got is blonde haired surfer dudes. *yawn*

P.S. I want Angela to win. I don't care about her race. She is one fun and bubbly girl. 🤩
 
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