Reality TV and Black Women Don’t Mix

I have never been a fan of reality TV.  Actually, it makes my skin itch.  My mother swears by it.  She watches Survivor, The Biggest Loser, and various others I can’t recall by name.  These are much milder than the raunchy Real Housewives and Basketball Wives shows.

In most cases, reality TV is nothing more than a financial incentive to embarrass yourself, your family name, and anyone fitting your same/similar demographic. 

I remember hearing about Basketball Wives when that show premiered.  My own thoughts?  Nothing good can come of it.  Same has been true for all of the varying Real Housewives of Orange County/Atalanta/New Jersey.

And I especially believe that it paints black women in typical stereotypical fashion.  This traces back to Omarosa on The Apprentice and continues on.

The Root has an interesting article arguing the pitfalls and value of some of these depictions.  Those of us who are not fans are dismissed as having an “attitude that comes from a kind of middle-class, bourgeoisie ideology.”

From ”The Real Housewives of Atlanta” to ”What Chilli Wants,” these days, reality TV is fixated on black women. But only when we act the fool.

Remember the ”real” housewife named Sheree? Whose only claim to fame is that she was once married to a professional football player? Remember how she yanked housewife Kim’s blond wig and called her white trash outside of a fashionable Atlanta restaurant? (Kim, the sole Caucasian Atlanta ”housewife” whose married lover’s checks allows her to pay $3,000 on a regular basis to get the fat rolled from her thighs.)

Across the reality-television spectrum, there have always been women like Sheree and her ”friends” on Bravo TV’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta: catty, materialistic, self-absorbed. But are television executives really only interested in black women when we’re acting a fool? And more importantly, are we really only interested in seeing ourselves portrayed in this light?

Apparently so: Last month, VH1 dominated the list of top 25 cable shows in black households for reality original programming, returning with the all new Basketball Wives ranked at No. 5. (Like Housewives and Tiny & Toya, the show features ex-girlfriends and wives trying to make names for themselves on the heels of relationships with famous men.) What Chili Wants followed in popularity at No. 7, and Brandy & Ray J came in at No. 11. Executives say that their channel has had a 9 percent increase in black women prime-time viewers ages 18-49 in this past year alone with the success of their reality shows.  Read the full article.

What say you?  Just fun or stereotypical garbage?

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