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

However the older people went first & so I think there’s more ageism.
The older ones virtually voted themselves ot, Harriet begged them to kick her out to prove a point, Fiona went a bit bonkers and in one of the tasks decided to have a stroll around and looked utterly ridiculous, Hugo did his speech about being someone being mean. I think Maz was becoming a threat to them

But it's about unconscious bias, how white people will place more suspicion on this.

YANBU. This is also evident in Strictly. Yes, people of colour make it to the final but there are plenty of shock dance offs when a person of colour who is a good dancer ends up in the bottom two.

We’re a majority white country. Of course the winners will mostly be white.

The programme isn't, but yes it does show unconscious bias among the contestants. However I think that's a good thing to show this up in a way that no other programme has. Are you saying it should be banned, OP @TrademarkBrooklynBeckham ?

But unconscious bias will play a part in who gets voted out. Society is racist and you cannot say that those people in the traitors are all perfect and don't come in with their own prejudices.

But isn’t this party a point of the show? To show how our minds work, pack mentality etc. It’s about our darker sides so it’s not surprising that it reveals people’s biases

Load of rubbish imo, there's a much higher percentage of whites in it to start with, so you'd expect that percentage to prevail. This series we have an Asian girl, a mixed race girl and a man of Pakistani origin still in the running.

I don’t watch “muggle” Traitors, but the Celebrity one was certainly ageist, racist and sexist. (Yes, I know Celia Imrie was a popular contestant-but she was really just a cute “isn’t she just wonderful for her age?” pet.

It's not really evidence based but neither does it necessarily show prejudice. People vote others off for all sorts of baseless reasons. Sometimes they just don't like someone (e.g. James and Matthew).

those stats actually improve my impression of it...

i've only watched seasons 1 and 4 but I think the level of "othering" at the start of each season is through the roof - if you don't fit the groups norms (which in this season is white men in their late 20s to 30s) then you are much more likely to be up for banishment or murder. so whether it's race or age or disability, I think the unconscious bias SCREAMS! it's not just about the end result it's about who is "on the list" at the time.

TBF, I think by the end of week two in both seasons people have got to know each other better and there's less of that kind of behaviour and it's much more based on real detail - which is probably why the stats don't look as bad?

Part of being a human, perhaps?

There are plenty of shock dance offs with white people too.

And the final groupings in celebrity traitors didn’t reflect racism, if I remember correctly.

I mean, I’m not arguing that there is no unconscious bias… but I’m not convinced about some of the examples given. We do tend to see what we look for, though.

The premise of unconscious bias is that you instinctively want to support/ are more likely to trust those people who you perceive as "like you" so it's not so much about being prejudiced against people who aren't like that as that being the result of you drawing towards people more like you.

I think this is the first time that I’ve watched the show and felt uncomfortable with the unconscious bias on display when it came to the decision to banish/murder contestants. I’m sure none of it is deliberate but I feel it has been a bit more on display than I remember in previous series.

I agree that any pairing who are found to know each other will be seen as suspicious and voted out (see the white couple in one of the earlier seasons where the boyfriend go so cross with people suspecting his girlfriend, and in one case flirting with her, that he blurted it out).

However, literally everyone has unconscious biases and it’s ridiculous to suggest that they aren’t a factor in the factor (I’m not saying you specifically are suggesting that). Why would the traitors be different to the rest of the world. Everyone stopped to performatively listen to Jessie lest they be accused of not listening to someone with a stutter - and then proceeded to flatly ignore every sensible thing she said. Probably because she was a young woman, with a stutter. If one of the various 30 yr old white men had made the points she made, Stephen would already be out.

If you watch the shows from other countries, you will notice it's often the young brown men banished first as ' sneaky", " too clever" " untrustworthy' etc.
Doctors, lawyers and scientists often also get banished first amd these are often people of colour.

Kaz got banished last series v early for no reason

Yes, we keep asking ourselves why Jade has been under so much suspicion, especially from ex-Met Police Amanda. Oh yeah, because shes not white.

Surprised no one has mentioned the unconscious sexism bias. The first two out weren't just people of colour, but women of colour. As a pp has said, there's a large group of interchangeable dull 20-30s white blokes and no doubt one of them will win, just like Jake last time.

The only surprise is that this group are brave enough to "kill" the disabled contestant.

I think celeb traitors is a bit different because you have existing relationships. And even when they don’t know each personally, they know of each other. So you’re acting less off unconscious judgements.
Niko went first, and while race could have been a factor, I think that mainly it was because he was a YouTuber that none of the other celebs had heard of, he wasn’t an “insider” to the group iyswim.

Agree with all of this

Ruth Codd said that when she was on they went to a lot of trouble to check that she could access tasks despite having an amputated leg. So perhaps they would have adjusted last night's task if someone less fit had still been around?

The fucking worst was S1 when a middke aged woman with a prosthetic hand got banished for not raising her glass! You could see all the prejudice then

I think the title of the thread is more accurately “people* are racist and ageist. It’s the contestants making the decisions.

Also as I have said on many threads- sorry to repeat myself- the Traitors UK has always picked at least one WoC as a Traitor until this season. This may have unwittingly put a target on every WoC.

Unconscious bias.