[Raph]

First off, terrific post by Pete, I love discussions like this brought to the table.

I actually agree with Pete entirely. People of color, in particular women of color face the hardest time in Big Brother - through casting, in the house and through the way in which the public perceive them.

In terms of casting, the type-casting we get is ridiculous. The amount of 'sassy'/'feisty' black women we get, to begin with, shows how casting is limiting that group of people to such a small bracket of personality. It's the same with gay people. I can't remember the last gay person who defied stereotypes of flamboyance being cast into the house. Casting in a similar way every year, is inevitably going to influence those housemates' experience in the house, as the public already assume things about housemates, on the basis of their race, gender or sexuality. I'd say the issue of casting with Asian women is even worse. Correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe Deana was the only Asian women cast over the course of BB on channel 5?

Next, we get to how they're treated in the house. Let's begin with Deana and her relationship with Conor, Ashleigh etc. They all despised her, yet could never explain why. Let's look at Hira - she had an entirely harmless VT, yet was boo'ed into the house quite badly. Or perhaps let's look at BBlock dynamics in BB9 - A ginger, an Asian woman, a Welsh woman, and two black men. The other side of the house that excluded them earlier on? Jennifer, Bex, Luke, Dale, Dennis were all white, British people. Yes Sylvia was also part of that group but then who out of them was evicted first? The woman of color. Out of Bblock who managed to win? The white woman. Yes, you could argue that it was entirely due to personality but i'm going to disagree here.

I think consciously, yes people evict people on Big Brother because they are not fond of their personality. However, it's the subconscious institutional racism that is most powerful to me, in this case. Structures of society have built a hierarchy largely divided up by gender and ethnicity. As a result, unfortunately there is a subconscious superiority associated with white people on Big Brother, allowing them to behave in the same way as people of color, with fewer negative consequences. As much as we like to say racism is a thing of the past, it's very much not so. Subconscious racism such as institutional racism is the hardest form of racism to tackle, as it's far less obvious. The fact that white males constitute of the majority of winners exemplifies that in a pretty clear way.

Anyways, to finish off, I think the Big Brother experience is considerably more difficult for people of color (particularly women, but not exclusively) as they face conscious as well as subconscious discrimination on three different levels - casting, house dynamics and public perception.