My God I can't believe such dumbasses exist! Well... actually I can.
I wasn't working today so I watched the season premiere of The Tyra Banks Show. Tyra Banks or "Pretty Oprah" as I like to call her. All the insanity and lack of common sense but with a thousand times the sex appeal. Anyway her topic was which racial groups had it the worst. Her racial spectrum consisted of a Black woman , a Latina, an Asian woman, a Muslim woman and a Caucasian female. Well she was white. Caucasian includes all people of European descent including the "Latin" ones, Arabs, Persians and Eurasians although I might actually be missing some groups. So right away "dumb ass" but I forgive her because the term is so widely missused in the news.
She spent her whole show avoiding and down playing the non-racial reasons people judged someone of a different race to be something otherwise considered stereotypical. A Latina said that the black woman must have been "ghetto" when confronted she said she didn't make her description just because she was black it was because she thought she was dressed and coiffed and done up as you expect from a poor person. Tyra avoided this altogether and the black woman answered her parents both made over $70k a year (send that kind of racism my way) so she wasn't "ghetto trash".
They put the five women behind a glass divider and had a survey group answer questions based on the five women. They asked leading questions like "Which one of these women do you think is a terrorist?" Anyone who knows how to do a good survey knows that leading questions will spoil your data even the person asking the question can spoil it. A good looking woman asking a group of straight men about a new motorcycle put out by her company is likely to get false results in favor of the companies motorcycle just because straight men will more than likely lie to get in her good graces and would want to maintain the macho image associated with motorcycles in the first place whether they like them or not. During the episode one woman pointed out that the editing of the survey footage didn't accurately portray her comments. That got ignored as well.
That aside the worst thing about it was that it's a show about racism in North America and she didn't include aboriginal people in the mix. That's the ultimate "dumbassery" (yes that's my new word). You could tell that she was looking to make it seem that black people had it the worst. Nothing in the episode showed black people to have it worse than the other minorities. They only had the word of the deceptive survey taker who used leading questions. Most of the things said seemed to show black people were doing fairly well these days. Do I think that's the case? I don't know. Most black people I've met have been better off than me.
In all fairness I never watched the end of the show so maybe at the end she redeemed herself. I don't know. Actually if someone watched it and is reading this and knows how it ends let me know. I like Pretty Oprah and don't want to see genuine discussions on racism be tainted by things like this.
She spent her whole show avoiding and down playing the non-racial reasons people judged someone of a different race to be something otherwise considered stereotypical. A Latina said that the black woman must have been "ghetto" when confronted she said she didn't make her description just because she was black it was because she thought she was dressed and coiffed and done up as you expect from a poor person. Tyra avoided this altogether and the black woman answered her parents both made over $70k a year (send that kind of racism my way) so she wasn't "ghetto trash".
They put the five women behind a glass divider and had a survey group answer questions based on the five women. They asked leading questions like "Which one of these women do you think is a terrorist?" Anyone who knows how to do a good survey knows that leading questions will spoil your data even the person asking the question can spoil it. A good looking woman asking a group of straight men about a new motorcycle put out by her company is likely to get false results in favor of the companies motorcycle just because straight men will more than likely lie to get in her good graces and would want to maintain the macho image associated with motorcycles in the first place whether they like them or not. During the episode one woman pointed out that the editing of the survey footage didn't accurately portray her comments. That got ignored as well.
That aside the worst thing about it was that it's a show about racism in North America and she didn't include aboriginal people in the mix. That's the ultimate "dumbassery" (yes that's my new word). You could tell that she was looking to make it seem that black people had it the worst. Nothing in the episode showed black people to have it worse than the other minorities. They only had the word of the deceptive survey taker who used leading questions. Most of the things said seemed to show black people were doing fairly well these days. Do I think that's the case? I don't know. Most black people I've met have been better off than me.
In all fairness I never watched the end of the show so maybe at the end she redeemed herself. I don't know. Actually if someone watched it and is reading this and knows how it ends let me know. I like Pretty Oprah and don't want to see genuine discussions on racism be tainted by things like this.
posted by Urban Shaman at 4:34 PM
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