“What if this morning, I told you that your childhood fantasy was being whitewashed?” Melissa Harris-Perry asked viewers of her MSNBC show on Sunday. She was, of course, referring to the lawsuit filed last week against ABC’s reality-television show, The Bachelor, for lack of diversity in its leading roles.
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Her take on the situation: “I think there’s very little evidence that the producers have any more than average racial bias. My hunch is that they believe an African-American bachelor would lead viewers to change the channel. And like it or not, prime-time network TV is driven by ratings and what executives think will bring raising. Now, my biggest problem with The Bachelor is not the race thing; it’s the ‘My bikini, not my wit and intellect, will earn me an engagement ring, you know, to a stranger’ thing.”
Watch a clip here:
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