Recently, ABC announced it was canceling Welcome to the Neighborhood, a highly publicized reality show revolving around a close-knit, conservative Republican cul-de-sac in Austin, Texas, where white families decide which of seven different families, one African American, one Hispanic, one Korean American, one Wiccan, one White homosexual couple (with an adopted African American baby), one White couple covered in tattoos and piercings, and another White family where the mother is employed as a stripper, are allowed to move in to the 3,300 square foot home on their block. No, I'm not making this up. Obviously the producers of this show never heard of housing discrimination laws.

Designed to be a mid-summer replacement for Desperate Housewives, ABC seems to have desired a mix between busybody suburban intrigue and identity politics reality television. Honestly, I'm going to scour the ‘Net until I locate an episode or two of this travesty against humanity. Ever since Kevin Powell telecast his African American Studies-influenced belief that "Black people can't be racist!" to that poor little White girl on the very first season of MTV's The Real World, the easiest and most effective manner to boost reality television ratings has been through racial conflict. Omarosa Manigualt Stallworth became a household name on The Apprentice through Mark Burnett's manipulation of her every waking moment into the most sinister Black villain since Denzel Washington in Training Day. Sly Stallone's The Contender briefly flirted with middleweight boxer Ishe Smith as tall, dark, and psychotic. And the litany of Negroes without sanity that have muddled through close-quarters interaction with our Girls Gone Wild mainstream White Americana on MTV's The Real World continues to blossom, even after the sad passing of show creator Mary-Ellis Bunim. Just ask Karamo.

Hell, I did. Angel and I met him briefly at a panel discussion on reality show treatment of homosexuality a few months back; I was mainly struck by the illogical star power and minor celebrity anyone who has been on television exudes to people who have not had to ignore cameras while performing basic hygiene rituals. Karamo was a regular Black man. Nothing more. I did not agree with his perceptions on Real World race relations, but was pleasantly surprised by his openness on the subject. Honestly, we disagreed on one major premise: my belief that the producers of reality shows like the pioneering Real World mine racial conflict for ratings success, yet strongly encourage the participants (through skillful post-production editing) to "solve" their racial conflicts in ways that encourage the usually sheltered, usually suburban, usually White protagonists to embrace ideals of tolerance and open-mindedness. Essentially, the minorities are allowed on reality TV shows as villainous race foils, all in an effort to evolve average White folk into Better People.

How often is the personal growth of one individual White person the major plotline of a reality television season? Easily the most extreme example of this production choice was The Real World: New Orleans, when Julie Stoffer, a lifelong Mormon and student at Brigham Young University, joined at age twenty-one the ninth season of seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting real. (Damn, I really can't believe I just wrote that from memory. Sad.) Most episodes revolved around her Bambi-eyed outlook on the fast-paced world around her, where homosexuals lived just down the hall from her room, and racial interaction assistance abounded. She was once admonished on-camera by mixed-race cast member Melissa Howard and African American cast member David Broom on the negative connotations of the pejorative 'colored' as acceptable terminology for African Americans. During the Clinton Administration. Seriously. Julie, as bubbly, semi-attractive (by majority standards), holier-than-thou Abercrombie girl, swam in oceans of air time that season as she discovered American diversity for the first time, for someone else's viewing pleasure.

Definitely not mine; my demographic does not overlap with the suburban, White, middle-class, 18-25 MTV target audience enough to prevent such callous misuse of race color for White benefit. Countless times in that season, Melissa or David or Danny, the openly gay cast member, sat with Julie for some heart-to-heart with string quartet accompaniment, where they tried to indoctrinate her past her homespun, Utah-chiseled perspectives of devout spirituality and judgmental ethno-narcissism into the situational immorality of drunken MTV feelgood over-exuberance. New Orleans presented the perfect backdrop for Julie's conversion from 1950's stalwart conservatism to 1990's capricious liberalism; hedonism sweats, dances, moves, and simply plays better on television because it appears fun. At least it did when David Broom played into every hypersexed Mandingo stereotype imaginable with all of his omnipresent, interchangeable females running around. After David, Black male sexuality in reality television was as absentee as public outrage against Mexican President Vicente Fox and the new Memin Penguin stamps. Open dialogue is always preferable to closed door silence on racial issues, but dialogue does not end discrimination anymore than public speeches cease private prejudices.

We can't continue as Americans to arrogantly persist with the belief that by and large, we are decent people. We're not. Americans are selfish, manipulative, hedonistic, vice-addicted capitalists who derive profits and suffering from even the most holy, sacrosanct, and/ or mundane situations. Honestly, that's what makes reality television so appealing - the perverse American voyeur bred in all of us from our judgmental Mayflower origins loves to watch others dismember themselves and their reputations for his and his family's enjoyment. The reality of reality television exposes John Q. Public's unabashed desire for sacrificing his fellow Everyman to a warped third-person cannibalistic bloodsport Murderball where no one gets away clean and everyone walks away upset. Our modern day Purityrannicals deplore sex and violence in entertainment media without end, shout an ever deafening crescendo of holier-than-thou Parents Television Council hyperbole that drowns an entire nation of formerly free thinking individuals within conservative Christianity's muddy waters. Hell, even that capricious Clayface chameleon Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) cashed in her free choice credibility to appease the Orwellian Right. Memo to the junior Senator - no video game ever enticed me to have sex or shoot someone. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one of the most technically detailed and patently fun video games ever made, is a hotbed of -ism imagery, resplendent with racial epithets, pimping, drive-bys, police brutality, terrorism, and other random criminal behavior. So is every major city in the United States! Try cleaning up the real urban blight before you FCC the fake one.

To escape, in perfect Peyton Place fashion, we pay away our shame to cable companies willing to supply starving immoral America with our popularity phantasmagoria, celeb-reality TV. To appease the salacious-starved masses, network executives greenlight shows dependent upon race conflict to provide ratings success. Given this backdrop, I'm not surprised that ABC planted its summer hopes upon Welcome to the Neighborhood: it's good business to lampoon the different and pink and yellow and brown and black for White audiences. The sad thing is that it works, on all of us. If Corporate America's water coolers could talk during the first season of The Apprentice, they would have related mainstream America's utter disgust for Omarosa; President Bush could have reverse-Jessica Lynched her into Iraq just to have another reason to invade. Omarosa Manigualt Stallworth, the perfect Black weapon of mass distraction, a bold, brazen Black woman blessed with too much sense and sensibility, refused to Stepin Fetchit for her White coworkers, and in doing so metamorphosed The Apprentice into the nation's number one minstrel show. It'd be tragic if it wasn't so pathetic.

But before someone asks me for a solution to the meat grinder of modern media output, here's my suggestion. Allow the most radical group of minority media commentators and pundits to produce their own reality show, given one unique and non-negotiable premise - the emotional and intellectual health, safety, and purity of White participants will not be preserved by anyone involved. No, I'm not looking for a season of Dave Chappelle's "The Mad Real World" produced by Ego Trip; I want a Real World where the next half naked barely legal American Eagle billboard who cries her eyes out about making jokes about Black people isn't given a calming piano interlude and a "hey, it's okay" group therapy session. Someone can just curse that little White girl out. I want a reality show where a obvious sorority distrust of a mild mannered hardworking sista is called racism, on camera, by the men who have nothing to gain. I want a reality show where the buxom, loud, boisterous, bottle blond with a penchant for starting public altercations when drunk can't escape responsibility for racial epithet usage through pyrotechnic crying over past sexual assault. I want a reality show where people work a manufacturing job for twelve hours a day, or come home from work smelling like French fries, low quality meat product, grease, and baby vomit. I want a reality show where a person with piercings and purple hair with hot pink highlights isn't a pariah. I want a reality show where the piss-drunk, blonde Muscle & Fitness squarejaw walking around threatening people with butcher's knives spends a night in jail for attempted assualt before his Jungle Fever episodes. I want a reality show where people can discuss current events without blind Britney Spears "The President is always right!" apathy. I want a reality show where feminism isn't reduced to wearing low-cut matching t-shirts eight sizes too small or street-level panty peep shows for twenty dollars American. I want a reality show where people pay their own fucking bills!

Anything that could toss the reality back into reality television would be welcome, thank you. America needs television it can relate to that doesn't play upon its worst instincts of race and sex oppression and exploitation to hold public interest. That way, when issues of individual difference emerge, people can work stuff out on equal footing, and editors won't need to massage footage into the Better People scenario. It's not impossible; CBS' landmark The Amazing Race provides fun episodes based upon themes everyone can relate to: competition, the wonders of exotic locales, and the frustration of modern travel. Plus, even when participants expose the 'ugly American' syndrome on camera (usually the privileged White chicks who get to African and Asian countries and complain about the language barrier or the local cuisine or the unabashed poverty ("It's so dirty here, why don't they just stop breeding?" - Christie) no one tries to propagandize racist liberal 'tolerance' to anyone. It just exists, and viewers can make their own conclusions.

So perhaps we should all become a little more mindful of the personal choice we still possess. Reality tv doesn't have to suck so badly; we can insist on shows that don't insult vast stretches of the American population to provide drama. Hell, given the choice, The Amazing Race is always preferable to anyone's Survivor, Apprentice, or Real World, for one major reason - it's the only reality show where Black people can win in the end. It's about time!