Survival of the Fittest

Well, here it is ladies and gentlemen. We've finally arrived at the bottom. Remember Jerry Springer? Remember "Who Wants to Marry a Millinoaire?" Remember everything on MTV right now? Well here is our clear winner. The most embarrassing program on television.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of pitting four teams against each other based on ethnicity. I know that the producers of this show thought long and hard about this. They knew this would be controversial. They knew it would get them ratings. However, they're forgetting something in the mix. While controversial, Race and America don't mix.

For centuries, black people have had to combat the attempts at proving their inferiority in every area - mental, emotional, and physical. Do you know about the scientific proofs that black people are genetically incapable of flying planes, understanding complex mathematical and scientific concepts, or just simply reading? African-Americans have had to work uphill just to be considered human (see 3/5 law in your U.S. History class).

Also, for decades now, we as a human race have been trying to dispell the myth about race and how it came about that we've been boxed into categories like Caucasian, Negroid, Mongoloid, etc. Despite differences in culture, we really are all the same, with the same basic mental potentials and resources. Yet racism still exists. Asian people are brainier, Blacks play sports better, Whites have all the privilege, and Latinos should be thrown out of the country - according to generalized sterotypes if you've read the newspaper in the last couple of years.

That's why this show has the potential to spark more than debate. It has the potential to spark fights.

I pray that as a nation, we'll get through this series with no major scrapes or cuts. But, man does this have a fistfight written all over it. You know, when Rocky Balboa beats up black guys in the ring, we cheer because it's fictional, knowing we've never seen that in real life. But this is not fiction. These are real people, playing a real game, with real consequences to deal with. Don't you know the whole country at the end of this is going to say - The greatest race is . . . ! They won!

Maybe, I'm getting worked up over nothing. You know how anxious us blacks are.

- Funkyman