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

Not read the whole thread but I’d love a series of all 55 (give or take) year old middle class woman

Stop talking about 😂😂😂 that’ll fix it, I’ve heard that pretending something isn’t happening usually sorts it out

I think this is exactly it 😂

No, not to pretend discrimination doesn't exist. I wouldn't be so ignorant to suggest that and doubt that's what Morgan meant. These reality programmes get the same criticism because imo people are looking for it.

Its impossible to stop unconscious bias, unless we bring up all children in a homogeneous environment. It certainly needs to be addressed and maybe a bit more encouragement to listen to others. As said above, once people get through the first few rounds the bias disappears as people get to know each other. But all races are ' racist' to some extent, and all people have unconscious bias.
Im not sure about the 'stop talking about it' thing. One one hand, ignoring a problem doesnt solve it, but then otoh if you look at politics, the Labour Party spend a huge amount of time talking about equality and diversity yet they have elected white middle class man after white middle class man as leaders. I think out of the major parties only them and Reform have not had a female leader. There is very clear unconscious bias at play amongst Labour members, who would baulk at being called sexist or racist. Whereas the Tories, who largely have no truck with 'dei' elected a female leader nearly 50 years ago and have had an Indian descent leader and a Black female leader. If I was a woman or POC and was politically ambitious, I wouldn't be looking at Labour.

I would love to go on the traitors, but as an overweight 63 yo, I know I would be a hindrance in the really physical challenges and so would likely be voted out in the first episode. Would I say this is ageist? No, because in a game where your ability to make money relies on your being able to keep up with your team you get rid of the least able to achieve that. This is a knock out game, why would you keep anyone in who is a threat or is weak, either physically or mentally?

The initial selection of players is more diverse than the make-up of the whole UK, like a lot of programmes that have more of a London cohort. And now half the contestants left are non-white.

Some seasons have more puzzles. This season not so much. Though frankly I am crap at those too!

I am not sure I agree with the comments about Jessie.

It is easy as a viewer to say "Oh Jessie has it spot on, why don't they listen to her?" But I think the thing that would make me take her less seriously is nothing to do with the stammer. It was the tremendous over-acting / over-reacting to everything. It was particularly noticeable when they played a clip of her time in the castle. She seems to be always screaming, gasping or falling to the floor in astonishment or overwhelm. I would find that tiresome. Maybe that is my unconscious bias towards demonstrative people!

Perhaps white people can be more 'dull' because they are more comfortable.

As a group, they might be less likely to have historically existed in situations of threat where their nervous systems need to be more highly activated... someone will come back and say not all white people, and of course some working class white people and white women often have not had an easy history. Privilege is complicated like that. But these things are literally in our epigenome over centuries of difference in treatment, and the statistical likelihood of whether our group's reception in the world was positive or negative is written in our bodies and later constructs our cultural norms.

I agree that xenophobia is a part of our hominid nature, that our survival in the past relied upon protecting our gene pool against the other apes next door. But the issue is that we are using race as if it is an inevitable signaller of such difference. It isnt- I would say skin colour is being used as a proxy for assumptions about culture and religion and class and gender.

Also absolutely fascinating about how gay men are encoded culturally. Sarcastic, humorous, iconoclastic, given licence to be 'flamboyant' as long as society's norms don't feel threatened. The tactic of "calling out what you are in a humorous way, so boldly that people think you are joking" is literally the survival tactic against actually being beaten, imprisoned and killed, that is the roots of camp through centuries. All of us, straight and gay, fall automatically into our roles in this cultural play. Alan Carr was saying in actual words "I am a traitor" along with the body language and laughter that allowed everyone else to put it down to comedy. Innuendo and subtext, saying "I love a warm hand on my entrance" or "all those who love not tobacco and boys are fools" and being taken as funny - gay men have done this forever, deliberately making themselves underestimated so they could live authentically.

We talk about this a lot at the dinner table in our house. We have noticed over the years that people of colour, and often particularly black contestants, are voted off shows very early. There is absolutely unconscious bias. In fact when watching the opening episode of Traitors 4 my DS said straight away that Ross will go out early.

The bit I don’t necessarily agree with is ageism in The Traitors. I think that the older contestants are often the most perceptive ( they watch and listen as opposed to shout their mouths off) and therefore become a threat to the traitors and so are murdered or come across as knowing too much and so are seen as suspicious to the younger faithful.

Why? I'd hate that. Or if they were all 25 year old middle class men, or 35 year old working class women - or all the same of any age, class or sex.

I think having more older people would help. There was a huge cohort of 30 something men this time in particular. Probably down to who they get applying who are probably nearly all white and young.

I think it would be fascinating as a one off 🤣
would never happen

At the risk of being lynched, I get very confused by the unconscious bias talk, I noticed it, and I have pointed out to DH, who thought I was talking rubbish.

However, my question is, not that is exists but can be done about it?

Discussing it now, we have the benefit of hindsight and can see it, however it is clearly not obvious at the time given the fact that it isn't just white people who are voting off the people of colour, they're also being voted by other people of colour. Its a gameshow where you have nothing to go on and have to look at everyone else's quirks, behaviours and biases. If someone is a bit different to you, or portrays a behaviour you're not familiar with, isn't it more likely that you're going to vote them off?

If the bias is unconscious, therefore we are not aware of it at the time it's happening, is there anything that can be done about it?

Following all the discussion from this season, I know now, that if I went on the show, I'd be so conscious of unconscious bias that I would purposely not vote any person of colour so I couldn't be accused of racism or UB. I'm sure I'm not the only white person who would think like this.

That would force a change in any unconscious bias (that I'm not currently aware of) to conscious bias in favour of people of colour, is that any better?

It would absolutely defeat the object the game, but is there another solution?

I’ve noticed the same on the Sewing Bee and Bake Off too🤔

So many people on this thread equate unconscious bias with race but it is so much more.

It's also bias for/against others based on height, weight, age, sex, education or lack of, accent, job, sexuality, political views, appearance, clothes etc etc etc.
Literally anything can mark someone else as 'other'.

IMO it is impossible to remove unconscious bias from the human psyche.

So people are voting off the competition in....competitions? Crikey, what a surprise!

No. Three of the four finalists in the celeb version were non-white

Throughout every series I've watched it is behaviour that is picked up and wrestled with, with the odd 'job' given as reasons. Which is why people keep their jobs a secret.

As an aside, does unconscious bias work in other animals? My Jack Russell Terrier always gives other JRT's a friendly greeting and is definitely drawn to other terrier types when playing in the park.

He also dislikes more cockerpoos than any other breed. Not all, but he is definitely more salty with them than other breeds.

Tbh I kind of through that was the point. To make people more aware of unconscious biased. But limited to race.
If you're a white player on the show and you're only suspicious of none white players, people will notice even if you don't notice this yourself and will make people question themselves. Same if you're only suspicious of males, southerners, fat/thin people, bearded people, disabled people etc.

The fact that this year we have 2 white traitors left, one has never has only been voted for maybe once, where as Jade has been suspected every single week... I think contestants will really be looking at why they didn't suspect her

Judging someone on their behaviour is just bias, although I could be unconscious as well I think. But the whole thing about unconscious bias is that you wouldn't necessarily realise you're doing it.
Eg you might unconsciously be drawn to voting off overweight people because your unconscious bias tells you they are lazy and therefore don't deserve to be there.

That's an example BTW, not my unconscious bias !!

Why does everything have to come down to race and age just when people of these demographics don’t win?

The sample size is so minute that I don't think we can draw any meaningful conclusions about the presence or absence of bias.