The Traitors is both racist & ageist?

[TrademarkBrooklynBeckham]

I’ve been saying this for some time, and now the Times has analyzed the data.

Are The Traitors players prejudiced? Here’s what the data says:

https://www.thetimes.com/article/20eccb12-a919-4d59-8ce5-1e9925f9e948?shareToken=3e4f0566057b480a152802f21f97c26c

Spoiler alert - all white winners and just one non white person in the finals of the UK general traitors show.

YABU - It’s an evidence based show. Nothing to see here.
YANBU - The players are displaying unconscious bias against race, sex & age

I don’t think that’s totally true. The reason Netty and Ross both got banished was nothing to do with their colour, but because of their previous meeting, and how they coped with it. They were easy targets.

Don’t be so utterly ridiculous.

Don’t be so utterly ridiculous.

Yes, I think unconscious bias. It absolutely exists in every day life.

Although I also have a (lighthearted) theory that most faithfuls that remain are fairly boring (in a nice way) and less threatening (not in an aggressive way but due to clever theories etc), so perhaps the other twist could be that white people are just more dull?!

Spoiler; Jade is non white so without either Faraz or Roxy there will still be two non white folk or am I missing something? However it does often seem to be the people of colour who go earlier, especially the intelligent ones (Faraz has held his light under a bushel until now) and the older ones. We are talking very small numbers so I don’t think you could say anything meaningful about this. There certainly isn’t anything inherently racist about the show. You could argue the other way that 3 out of the final 7 are non white which in comparison to the general population is a high representation.

I had wondered this year if the tasks rely on a good deal more physical capability. You had to be really speedy to keep a chair on last night’s challenge. They ran, it seemed, decent distances around the grounds for the fountain one the other week, someone remarking that the statues were very heavy. Some of the best past entrants are older but if they were taking place they would hold a group back/ not be able to compete. I assume they just have minimum physical requirements. But if you weren’t fast and strong last night, you wouldn’t be in contention for a shield.

Unconscious biases are exactly that: why would you expect the people on this show to be any different to the general population in this respect?

Not sure about this series but in previous seasons I did have the impression that there was bias in the direction the article implies. Society misrepresents black people as less trustworthy and it manifests in situations like this one too.

Fiona picking up those goat skulls like she was picking up seashells with the grandkids doesn’t help this perception. That task last night was definitely physically hard.

Yes it isn’t the show which is somehow racist but it could show that people have an unconscious bias, which is troubling.

For some reason this season they put in a lot of people in the same age category, particularly white men. They have all mashed into one. I thought it was me losing my mind to begin with, I kept seeing people in the first couple of weeks I’d just never seen before and I was like who the fuck is Adam/Jack/Matt etc. Then I saw some memes online and realised I wasn’t alone.

Anyway the unconscious bias is real. Had a discussion last summer about it with colleagues after a conference. We’re all academics so fairly intelligent, we all agreed it was very much an element of this show. There has been one person of colour ever to make it to the final. Oh and Wilf I think was mixed heritage. They’re almost always the first voted out. This season was particularly bad, the first few out were people of colour.

I think the age piece is different to the race piece.

In this series many of the older contestants have had significant experience in areas that in theory (although clearly not in reality) should make you better at the game and therefore I think it’s incredibly sensible to remove them and/or be suspicious of them. I think it loads the game against them but I think it’s conscious rather than unconscious bias at play.

One thing I noticed this season as well was no bigger people were in it at all, they’re all super slim. I don’t know if this is to do with issues in the past with missions and fitness levels or something. DC and I thought it with a couple of the missions- a bigger person just wouldn’t have been able to take part. The seats on the ride last night for example.

I think most people have prejudices whether or not they realise - part of growing up in society unfortunately.

I don't think it's overtly racist, however it shows the unconscious biases that are present in the external world and so in that sense it reflects wider society. It's sad but not surprising.

This is probably not news to most people who are regularly on the other end of unconscious bias I suppose.

I think this is always a feature of reality shows. Our society here is majority white, the cast represents that and brings all their racial bias with them (unconscious or otherwise).

I saw a season of The Circle where the non-white players had a majority and they formed an alliance to vote out the white players. It was striking I guess because it was unusual, perhaps an inversion of the racial discrimination those players usually experienced.

We all have unconscious bias. Some organisations will train people to be aware of it.

I'm a lecturer. Research studies show this exact bias in the student population against people of colour and older women. Yet, module evaluations are still a major metric used to judge performance and promotion.

It's an issue in wider society, nothing unique to The Traitors.

Is Roxy not mixed race? Faraaz is a young Muslim man & Jade is of Chinese heritage. So no I don’t think there is evidence of racism. However the older people went first & so I think there’s more ageism. Ross wasn’t voted because of his skin colour (I don’t believe so anyway) but because the other contestant kept saying they knew each other & he was trying to play it down.

I thought this time , series 4, there was a clear pattern of them voting my out lots of the non-white players. The contestants didn’t seem as friendly as the other seasons.

That’s not really how unconscious bias works, you can’t just declare it doesn’t exist because two non-white people are still there. I say this as a non-woke mixed person, it was so obvious, it was one by one.

Jade is mixed race and I think Roxy is too. Faraaz isn’t white. Half the contestants left are not white.

But netty and ross went because of netty been mad and making them stand out and ross paniced because he didnt want ellie thinking he was with this girl who mounted him. But it looked awful. Judy seemed like she could have been the secret traitor she acted odd but i think that was about roxy. She was trying so hard not to let slip about her child that she just looked sus. There is 3 POC left even if one is murdered thats 2 left for the final roundtable and james is going to be banished

The whole show is about playing the game and not getting voted out or killed, it isn`t a popularity contest.

Its not ridiculous.
Society is racist and ageist.
Traitors is made up with people from society.
Not everyone is racist and ageist. But almost all of us have unconscious bias. It would be impossible to be brought up in this world and not.