As the new season of American Idol gets into the top 24, I want to take a minute to share a trend I've observed. In the past seasons of American Idol, as well as in other talent shows, as well as Kid Nation, I've noticed something about many of the contestants. When they show the contestants parents/family/friends, so often the parents appear to be one black and one white or some other racial mix. Just a few examples: Diana DeGarmo, American Idol season 3 finalist, Italian and Mexican Justin Guarini, American Idol season 1 finalist, African, Irish, and Italian. Camile Velasco, American Idol season 3 finalist, Filipina, Irish, and Spanish. Corey Clark, AI season 2 finalist, Hungarian/Irish/Native American/etc. mother, black and Native American father Jordin Sparks, AI season 7 winner, white mother, black father Sanjaya Malakar, AI season 7 finalist, Italian American mother, Indian father Alex from Kid Nation, appears to have white father, Asian mother Gianna from Kid Nation, appears to have white mother, black father Zach from Kid Nation, appears to have mixed parents Morgan from Kid Nation, appears to have mixed parents I can imagine a lot of reasons this might be the case…. 1) The country in general is becoming more mixed. I just read an article on this. No longer can people fit into 3 or 4 boxes (white, black, Hispanic, other). More children are being born to parents of different races, so naturally we're going to see more of that on TV. 2) I heard a comedian joke that, when people of different races or ethnicities have children, the children are always beautiful. According to UrbanDictionary.com "Usually a multiracial person is either really good-looking, or really not." Beautiful people tend to get on TV more than uglies. 3) Black and white parents that are upper-middle class are probably well-educated (ignorance breeds racism) and value education and diversity. Having parents that are supportive (emotionally and financially) of dancing/singing lessons, private school, driving you around to auditions, etc. is a big plus toward making it on one of these shows. What do you think?
After I posted that on my MySpace blog, Veronika made a comment. Here it is:
You have some interesting thoughts here, I'd love to see if there have been any studies done on the prevalence of multi-ethnic relationships and class/income/education levels. It is very interesting just how mixed our society has become.
On the other hand sometimes I'm really surprised at how little we integrate ourselves. I've seen many people who have an ethnically diverse crowd of friends follow their family lines of marrying within their race/color. Not that they intentionally chose someone of the same ethnicity, that's just who they tend to date. Do you have any thoughts on this?
Then I responded:
Hmm. Well, I've been meaning to post something about this link, and now seems the right time.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
It's the site for a study on "Implicit Association" and they have several tests you can take online. The idea is that everyone has certain biases and attitudes about skin color, sex, and other attributes, that may or may not be conscious. Oprah talked about this test on one of her shows. I consider myself an open-minded, non-racist, non-prejudiced person. For the most part at least. But I scored a "moderate automatic preference for White people compared to Black people." It's pretty scary--take it, you'll see. We don't realize how much we are influenced by the media and the people around us.
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