Racism continues to plague reality TV

The current season of Real Housewives of Orange County took a dark turn in recent episodes after the show’s only non-white cast member became the target of one of the most obvious pile-ons we’ve seen in Bravo history. And if you’ve got even the slightest familiarity with just how much bullying goes on in these shows and just how dark they can get, that’s saying something. 

Katie Ginella, who was born in South Korea but raised in Georgia after being adopted by a Catholic family, entered the show last season. After a tumultuous debut, she now has show fans sounding the alarm over bullying on reality TV. 

Part of the reason she had a tumultuous debut season was due to the fact that she made the mistake of coming in hot, a mistake many newbies have made. Think Brit Eady, who was desperate for a Kenya Moore takedown which you can read more about here. Katie started off her time on the show adamant about a rumour that Heather Dubrow, a fairly well-respected and very wealthy cast member had called the paparazzi on herself to stage a loving photo of her and her husband amid media stories of her husband, Terry Dubrow from Botched, being unfaithful. 

Alleging that someone called the paparazzi on themselves sure sounds frivolous, but its a pretty serious claim to make in the world of reality TV. And coming for one of the most well-respected cast members seemed to have set the tone for the rest of Katie’s time on the show.

This season, she got off to a rocky start after it was revealed that she recorded Shannon Beador having a meltdown last season and showed it to her arch nemesis, Alexis Bellino, whose partner Shannon was in litigation. This decimated any chance of Katie and Shannon having a friendship. And one by one, with Heather still not being entirely over Katie’s behaviour last season, the other women started to distance themselves from her. 

The biggest divide between Katie and the group came this season, when it was revealed that Katie had spoken to a blogger and said that Gretchen Rossi told her she felt she had been drugged after a night of partying with Tamra Judge nearly 20 years ago, when she was first on the show. This was a very serious allegation to make against Tamra, so fans are theorizing that Gretchen is trying to cover her own ass by making it look like Katie lied. But, there is camera footage of Gretchen saying that she did in fact go to the hospital the morning after that night on this season of the show. 

Katie, desperate to clear her name, turns to her friend, Jen Pedranti, to have her story verified because she was there the night Gretchen allegedly said this. But Jen refused to have her back and left her out in the cold to fend for herself against an increasing number of white women, desperate to ice her out. 

Katie pieces together that the women are obviously in cahoots and lying for each other in order to make Katie look like she’s being deceitful. But not before Emily hires a lie detector company as an activity for her Persian New Year party. During the test, the women take the opportunity to clear up some of the things they wanted to set the record straight on. 

Heather was vindicated from the rumour she called the paparazzi on herself, and Gretchen even passed when asked about the night of partying with Tamra Judge. Out of all the women, the only person to fail the test was Katie. After taking the test, the examiner, also a white woman, whispered under her breath, "She's so full of sh-t,” which was the message she essentially relayed to the rest of the women while reading each the polygraph results in front of the group.

After it came out that Katie “lied”, she was voluntold to leave the event. Outside, she spoke to producers, adamant that she didn’t lie. A few days later, she met with Jen Pedranti and brought with her a folder of information on the man and woman who had conducted the test, highlighting that the nature of their business is primarily for entertainment. I, myself have seen the guy that conducted this lie detector test on quite a few reality shows before. The group, sans Katie, has moved on and all the women, even Gretchen and Tamra, are now working through their issues. To add insult to injury, at the end of the last episode, they said: “The gang’s all back together!”

So what does all of this have to do with racism? It’s that it follows a very specific and calculated formula of isolation that we’ve seen marginalized women endure in these spaces. And it’s an indication that the team in charge of casting doesn’t do their due diligence to protect these tokenized, diverse women they keep bringing in from the inevitable racism and microaggressions they will face. 

We saw it with Eboni K. Williams, who became the first Black cast member on Real Housewives of New York. During her season, she had to sit through conversations with Ramona Singer, who insisted that the examples and statistics Eboni was citing about the experience Black women had in hospitals during childbirth were made up. We saw LuAnn kick Eboni out of her home after a heated conversation about education and class, with LuAnn eventually saying Eboni was “angry”, which, as we know is one of the most dangerous ways you can describe a Black woman. It’s all very similar to the way Katie was ousted from Emily’s house. We also heard the microaggressions when Eboni brought the group for a night out in Harlem.

Over on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Garcelle Beauvais, who, for a while appeared to be enjoying her time on the show, ended up stepping away after being labelled a “mean girl” by Kyle Richards, and “uninteresting” by Erika Jayne at the last reunion where she, like Katie, was the target of an apparent pile-on. And again, much like in Katie’s situation with her perceived friend, Jen, Garcelle turned to her friend Sutton, but Sutton didn’t stick up for her in the least. 

In 2021, Lean In released findings from a study that looked at the experience Black women were having at work, finding that there is “no single story”. And while it’s obvious the “work” they’re referring to are likely office jobs in corporate America, there is something to be said about the similarities in the experiences all Black women have, whether their office is in a downtown high-rise or a reality TV setting. 

“Black women are facing disproportionately high barriers in the workplace. They are heavily impacted by bias in hiring and promotions. They experience more microaggressions than other groups of women, and are three to four times as likely as white women to be subjected to disrespectful and ‘othering’ comments and behavior. They are also less likely to report that their managers check in on their well-being,” the study’s findings read.

Every last component of this can be applied in a reality TV setting. And despite Katie not being Black, she is the sole non-white cast member of an otherwise all white show. That comes with implications.

One microaggression Katie’s cast mates are having a hard time understanding is when Gina asked if Katie’s clothes were made by an Asian designer. Katie made it a point prior to filming that she’d be using her time on the show to highlight Asian designers. When Gina posed the question to Katie about whether the designer was Asian, it came off as offensive because of the tone in which she said it, which was mockingly. Gina admitted to saying it, but rather than acknowledge how it may have been offensive, lambasted Katie for sharing that information with other people in an attempt to make her look bad, when that wasn’t necessarily Katie’s intent at all. She was just rubbed the wrong way by Gina’s remark. 

This is how women of colour are expected to put their own feelings and reception to something offensive to the side as to not run the risk of ruining someone else’s reputation, when the onus should be on the person who said it to take accountability instead.

As much as I am referring exclusively to shows on the Bravo network, these experiences happen across reality TV, dating as far back as Dance Moms. Nia, the only Black child in Abby Lee Miller’s famed dance school was once assigned a jazz routine entitled, and I sh-t you not, “They Call Me Laquifa”, where her costume included an afro and animal-print clothing. 

Currently, I’m watching the latest season of MTV’s Jersey Shore, and Pauly D’s longtime girlfriend, Nikki, was the sole Black contestant on Double Shot at Love. Against a cast of mostly European women, Nikki butted heads with so many of her counterparts, largely due to cultural differences, but also due to flat out ignorance and microaggressions she faced on a daily basis. 

In a clip covering an argument Nikki was involved in, the mere title is problematic. It reads: “Suzi stands up to Nikki”. But at its core, that wording insinuates that Nikki is the aggressor, but Suzi made the first dig. Honesty, or at the very least, neutrality, is key. And it is absent. And that is part of the reason racism and microaggressions thrive so much in these spaces.

It’s not uncommon for people to identify with what we’re most familiar with, with what shares the most likeness with us, with what we see ourselves in. That’s why it’s also fair to highlight that this goes the other way, too. Several years ago, when Kim Zolciak was the lone white cast member on Real Housewives of Atlanta, she was often the target of insensitive humour and remarks about white people. Even in a cast of all-Black women over on Real Housewives of Potomac, colourism has reared its ugly head with half the group being fair-skinned and half the group being dark-skinned. 

All of this drives the point home even further. In order to not continue putting women like Katie, Eboni, Garcelle, Nikki, Kim and so many others in spaces and groups that could be detrimental to their mental health, the casting scales need a lot more balancing. And in cases where the scales are not balanced, conversations with cast members about how to film and coexist without the threats of racism and microaggressions need to be had. It’s on the producers to ensure this happens - because the case has certainly been made.