Why is it not going to work? (my only hope ) It's not obvious at all is it.....


I believe that racist are no more or less likely to watch Big Bro than anyone else...Does it depend on what paper you read if you watch or not? ....Perhaps taking your argument more racists watch the show than the national average...I don't see how you can claim less racists than the national average watch...unless it suits for the sake of the argument....

Let's take 5.4 million people watchin the show.....how many of them do you think are racist......as a percentage?

What are you talking about? What form of prejudice do you think I don't accept exists?

Now this is a thread about "Any black winner ever?".

My American Idol point is that even if we grant that race was a factor in the voting, and that the "3 divas", for example, who were voted out were more talented than some who remained, all of which could well be true, prejudice didn't stop blacks from winning two years running.

The question re BB is how much of an effect does racial prejudice have? Is it enough to stop blacks from ever winning, or will it be decisive only in very close votes, or what?

But that doesn't stop prejudice preventing a third person winning.....It seems a number of people have spotted it.....


Surely the fact that it can affect votes is enough for concern don;t you think Veri.........What percentage of the viewers do you estimate are racist?

You continue to put it that way around to avoid seeing the point.

Sure, it could be that the young are more racist than the old, that women are more racist than men, that gays are more racist than straights, and hence that the BB voting population (which is skewed towards the young, female, and gay) is more racist than the general UK population; but I rather doubt it.

No Veri......I put it that way to answer your point....It's how discussion work....I am not simply accepting you are right and I am wrong....it takes more work than that I'm afraid.


So how many of Big Brother's audience, as a percentage, do you believe are racist?

That's not what I described as spin, and you're not only suggesting "an influence".

There you go again: misunderstanding and misrepresenting the point.

How much concern depends on how much influence.

Only when discussing with spinners and distortionists.

Thank you for lowering the level of the debate to that level Veri.....are you like this with everyone who disagrees with you?

Now I ask again...what percentage of the Big Brother audience do you think is racist?

[

Now I ask again...what percentage of the Big Brother audience do you think is racist?[/quote]

For Veri to reply to this question would not further any discussion. It would simply be an expression of any prejudice s/he may or may not have. This is why social sciences were invented to try to deal in facts as opposed to what people think other people thnik.

Yes it would....it would be answering the question for a start....not simply ignoring it and throwing abuse.



No it wouldn't...it would be an estimate, as a percentage, of how many racists watch Big Brother......


What percentage of the audience of Big Brother do you think are racist.....? We can leave social sciences and carry on with this internet discussion meanwhile, since what people think would be quite important in that respect......We do have some facts though....The racial makeup of the UK for example.....

Still discussions beforehand tend to inspire new research.

But yes, to ultimately solve the question above if racism exists in BB votes, one would have to do a proper study.

Tried to look for BB and racism and statistics on ac.uk sites

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/c...lectures/amos/
Single parent families and gay characters are now unremarkable on Eastenders, Hollyoaks or even Coronation Street - as is the voting public choosing Big Brother winners as diverse as a Liverpool builder, a gay airline steward, a Scottish highland and islander and a Portuguese transexual.


http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCContent/news/august02-3.asp
BIG BROTHER SPURS VIEWERS TO SEPARATE TRUTH FROM FICTION AND DISCUSS ISSUES OF ETHICS AND PRIVACY

LOL like in this thread

Anyway searched on .edu were less successful.

Limiting to UK pops up DS

How many racists do you think watch Big Brother? I have know idea btw

Also, do you think a black person winning a RTV show would prove that racism doesn't exist in this country?

Yes there are facts for the racial make up of the UK there are also facts for why black contestants have been voted out of the house, none of which could be considered as racist.


Dean - Boring.
Lee - Unbelievably boring.
Adele - Viewers didn't like her tactics.
Mel - I can't remember exactly but think it was because she was too blatantly flirty.
Amma - Cant remember much about her but might have been up against too strong an opponent.
Victor - Perceived as an arrogant bully boy.
Lisa - Could have been a winner but had the wrong kind of personality not the wrong coloured skin.

I can't remember anyone else but out of those HM's I can't see how race is an issue, unless someone is trying to make it fit a racial agenda.

i think it's "probable" that there are rascists within the BB audience...including umpteen other "ists"...
however...do you want a 'think' on the percentage of ONE particular rascist-group, or are the OTHERS included in your request?..
btw: i can do %'s...but i don't THINK that way..especially when it comes to guessing? what's on the mind of a large group of 'people' that i have'nt met and do not know.

Because those descriptions you gave are subjective opinions. They aren't definitive.
I always see posts saying "Oh they deserve to get stick because they are terrible people"

Justifying a hatred or dislike of a housemate by using subjective perceptions makes little sense,..because it can't.

A racist is going to have a negative view anyway.

You aren't going to get a racist saying,.."You know what,...although I can't stand black people, that one has a nice personality, so I'm going to make an exception and support them because they are sooo nice".

If you want facts or evidence about why racists would be watching Big Brother, then just look into stats and probabilty theory.
Not that facts and evidence should be necessary. After all it's not a case of trying to gather evidence to win an argument, it should be about trying to get people to look at things from another angle. Not say.."Maybe you're wrong....end of discussion"

What we do know about racism, is that it attracts people with very strong superficial views of people just by using very selective information about those people. It deals in stereotypes, and finds it easy to bring out the instinctive hate within people.

Why is this relevant you may ask?

What we do know about Big Brother, is that it attracts people with very strong superficial views of people just by using very selective information about those people. It deals in stereotypes, and finds it easy to bring out the instinctive hate within people.


I know it's come back to racism again, and although I agree that probabilty says that some racists must watch Big Brother,..yes must watch Big Brother,....I think that prejudice is a word I'd use instead.

Prejudice is a word that can be used that doesn't necessarily carry the same weight as racism.

It's all very well saying that a certain housemate is a bad person so they deserved to get disliked,...but that takes us back to the very first post in this thread,...Why?

Because it's the very nature of racism, or prejudice if you like, that makes people have a negative view of a given person in the first place.

I have seen other people get away with similar sorts of behaviour who were white,..but when they are black, they are seen in a much less favourable light than their lighter coloured counterparts.

You can throw racism out of the window for all I care,..but I definitely believe that prejudice is evident. And I do believe that skin colour comes into it.
You could say that pure out and out racists are a minority,..but I believe that people with prejudice can hold a prejudice against skin colour without even being concsious of it as a selective criteria. And I think although out and out racists may, or may not be, a tiny minority,..I believe the amount of people who hold a prejudice based on skin colour, knowingly or unknowingly, account for a much higher number that can make a significant difference.

As I have said before,..once you bring gender into it, things look much clearer. when you consider not just black people, but more specifically black females, you don't even need to look further than the stats given to you by Big Brother to observe a pattern.
Black Females really do have their work cut out for them on Big Brother.
As soon as they are up for eviction...they are just voted out as soon as they are up for the vote.
I'm not even sure if there's one exception to this rule (maybe Mel from BB1?).
And it's not just that they get evicted straight away, they often get evicted out with a very high majority of the vote, and quite often they tend to be hate figures as well.

I'm not saying that this is definitely 100% down to the voters. Maybe the prejudice comes down to the prejudice that exists where the TV imges are generatated from. The editors, producers, etc. they may have an image they want to portray, and it comes out in the edits. Either deilberately, or subconciously.
But the voter does seem to hate all too readily.

You're ignoring all the points that people have made and insisting on the same simplistic model you tried before. Since I don't agree with the way you convert the percentage of racists among viewers into votes, why should I play that game at all? It's especially pointless since none of us have the data that would let us come up with a good estimate.

However, we might try testing your theory that the BB voters have the same prejudice profile as the general population by applying it to this forum. Do you think there's the same proportion of racists here as in the general population? If not, why do you allow that the forum can be different but not that the BB voters could be?

Yapp, in a light hearted way, thanks an answer not going down that skin colour called race issue.

Nevertheless if you go anal on this .. you can't prove it.

And you forgot Jon who was shafted ... Jon was very poular with the more intelligent people while the more simple characters went with Cameron...

Jon was even so popular that they sent him back into that fishmongers paradise ...

Jon even got pissed to no end ... he would have won if they would have let him ...

You've caricatured it to make it sound ridiculous, but prejudice isn't always uniform. For instance, someone who is prejudiced against homosexuals might nonetheless enjoy a show that has a gay presenter and might find that presenter very funny. Or someone with a noticeable prejudice against blacks might nonetheless like some forms of black music.

You still need some data, for instance about the prevalence of racism, how it varies with factors such as age (and also the demographics of BB voters). That's not so easy to come by. For example, the social attutides survey asks people whether they regard themselves as prejudiced, which has obvious problems.

That cuts both ways though. The ones who seem convinced that racial prejudice is an important factor in BB votes might also want to look at some things from a different angle.

I don't think we do know that, actually. There is a general tendency for people to develop beliefs from a small amount of data and for those beliefs to be resistant to argument. (See books such as How We Believe What Isn't So.) We don't know that BB viewers are worse than the general population in that respect. We might try to go by what we see in internet forums, but the people who spend time there may not be representative of BB viewers or voters.

That's a good and valid point, but in this article you're also getting close to saying that other factors (such as housemate personality and behaviour) can be discounted or reinterpreted as evidence of racial prejudice, and I don't think they should be (certainly not completely).

There are also cases with male vs female HMs and so on. But sometimes people make such claims about HMs who are not so similar in other respects that race (or sex or whatever) stands out as the most likely explanation. (For example, the Bez - Victor comparision made somewhere above.)

That too is a good and valid point. And I agree that it can maje a significant difference. There's a possibility that Denise Lewis might have won Strictly Come Dancing if she hadn't been black, for example

Female HMs in general seem to have to walk a very fine line; I am far form convinced that race is the most significant factor in these cases.

In the American Idol controversy (see some of my messages above), there was a fairly good prima facie case that there was a racial factor in the popular votes, because some more talented singers were coming in last. But even then there was a competing explanation (that people were voting for the ones they liked rather than the ones they though were more talented) (and yes I remember the point that likability can be influenced by prejudice); and a black singer still managed to win.

It doesn't seem to me that racial prejudice is a strong enough factor in UK BB voting that a black HM could not win.

Indeed white and black are not in the colours of the rainbow.The best way of explaining this would be to explain what a dye is.A dye is a substance that absorbs certain colours of the visible spectrum.There will be certain colours that the dye doesnt absorb and will therefore reflect these colours.This is why objects appear a certain colour,due to the dye reflecting that particular colour.
White will reflect all colour of the visible spectrum-white light is a mixture of all colours of the spectrum/rainbow.
This is why cricketers wear white,it reflects all the visible spectrum and therefore the heat energy that they would otherwise absorb.
Conversely,black objects absorb all colours of the visible spectrum.This is why you get hot on a summers day if you wear black as all colours of the spectrum are absorbed/heat energy from the electromagnetic spectrum.No colours are reflected.If you think of a Black Hole in space-no light escapes from these areas,hence the blackness.
So in the definition of colours in the purest sense,black and white are not colours.

Note also that the eye will only perceive images if light is reflecting from it.If no light bounces off the object then you will not see it.You may be aware of a black object,such as a black car parked in a field,Although the black car does not reflect light,you are able to see it due to the contrast between the black car and the green fields.

You continue to refuse to answer the question........What percentage of the Big Brother audience do you think is racist Veri?

Incidentaly...the only thing I'm ignoring is your insults...you however are ignoring this easy question for some reason.....

That's fine....You don;t have to know anyone.....jus estimate a percentage......

ok!...i may be able to guess a percentage, but a percentage of who??..
do you want a % on rascism towards ONE race, or do you want a % on rascism towards/including OTHER races (viceversa)?

Every race will do....we know that the country is composed of 92% white compared to 8% of all the remaining races combined....So if you give us a total amount we can work out the rest.....Unless you are now saying that certain races are more racist than others.....which seems to go against the fairness you were calling for...

Tried to look for BB and racism and statistics on ac.uk sites

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/.../lectures/amos/
Single parent families and gay characters are now unremarkable on Eastenders, Hollyoaks or even Coronation Street - as is the voting public choosing Big Brother winners as diverse as a Liverpool builder, a gay airline steward, a Scottish highland and islander and a Portuguese transexual.


http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCContent/news/august02-3.asp
BIG BROTHER SPURS VIEWERS TO SEPARATE TRUTH FROM FICTION AND DISCUSS ISSUES OF ETHICS AND PRIVACYThanks for these refs.
Of course I don't think that research is the only way to look at matters but it can get rather boring when people think that their own ideas based on nothing at all are a very substantial contribution.
We have this tendency from Blair and Amos (in your ref.) uses it as well. "I believe..." Well I believe the moon is made of green cheese but it doesn't make it true.
Personally I think there must be something resembling a racial component in voting but don't think questions like - what do you think is the percentage of racists - add much. It reminds me of stalinism - t hey used to believe there was a percentage of baddies in every institution and walk of life.