Black. White.
Black. White. is a reality television show on FX. It premiered on March 8, 2006 at 10 PM Eastern. The series follows two families of three, one white, and the other black. Through make-up, the two families -- the Wurgels and the Sparks -- trade races and experience what life is like in the other family's shoes. The show is produced and created by RJ Cutler, Matt Alvarez, and Ice Cube. The show's theme song is "Race Card" performed by Cube from his upcoming album "Laugh Now, Cry Later."
The Episodes
Episode 01
Two families - one white and one black - come together under one roof in Los Angeles as they prepare to go out in the world as the other race. The Wurgels (Bruno, Carmen, and daughter Rose) are a white liberal family from California, and the Sparks (Brian, Renee, and son Nick) are a middle class black family from Georgia. Brian gains access to white culture when he lands a job as a bartender while in white make-up.
Episode 02
A bitter argument erupts between Renee and Carmen over the use of racially charged language. Rose is torn over revealing her true "color" to her new friends in the poetry group or maintaining her cover for the sake of the project.
Episode 03
The Wurgels and Sparks lock horns over language and behavior. As the friction builds between Carmen and Renee, Carmen turns to an outsider for insight into the black experience. Bruno and Carmen encounter hostility in an all-black neighborhood, and Nick's fascination with the gangster lifestyle raises concerns for Brian and Renee.
Criticism
The structure of the show is being criticized for a number of reasons:
- Both families are supposed to be representative of their respective races. Whatever the white family says or does is supposed to be the "white" way and whatever the black family says or does is supposed to be the "black" way. Furthermore, whatever each family claims about their race is taken to be true of all members of that race. This model fails to take into account differences among individuals. Whatever one family (or an individual within the family) does or says varies significantly from family to family (and from person to person). And whatever claim they make about their race is nothing more than their own opinion and not true of all (or even a majority) of the population.
- Both families must live with each other and any conflict that arises between them is automatically assumed to be on racial grounds. As with the previous criticism, this model fails to take into account differences among individuals. Not all people between racial groups or within racial groups will be able to live successfully with one another. These conflicts are caused by simple differences in lifestyle that vary from individual to individual.
- The show fails to point out the effect of extraneous factors on human behavior, such as the fact that a camera crew will sometimes follow the families around as they "experience" being a member of the other race. Being filmed tends to cause people to act differently, and so it could be with the people they encounter. This makes any judgment of those people's level of racism (or lack thereof) difficult to ascertain.
- While the show doesn't claim to be scientific, they explicitly lack control experiments. As individuals "experience" being a member of the other race, they don't first go out being a member of their original race. So if a participant is treated well or bad as a member of another race, they have no basis for comparison of what they would have experienced as a member of their original race.
- The show is edited only to show contention between the races. While there are certainly time constraints on how much can be aired per episode, the viewer doesn't see the bulk of what actually happens. For example, in the first episode when Brian is a bartender we are shown a segment of a white man making a racist rant about how the neighborhood is nice and quiet because it is majority white. We are not shown any other interaction with customers for the many hours Brian is there. There could be many more moments of non-racist customers that represent the majority of the population.
External links
 | This article about television in the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |