"Survivor: Cook Islands" stirred controversy this summer when it was announced that the 20 contestants would be divided into four teams based on race: African-Americans, Latinos, Caucasians and Asians. The season premiere aired on Thursday, September 14. Three Hofstra faculty members and one administrator watched the first episode and offer their opinions on the direction of television's most popular reality program.

Mark Burnett, the executive producer of "Survivor," wants us to believe that the latest edition of the CBS program is an "interesting social experiment." In reality, this season's "Survivor" is an exercise in managing program elements, like editing, to create a narrative designed to attract viewers and then position them into a particular reading of the program. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this season’s debut was how deftly Burnett controls the contestants/actors so that their words and images shape his narrative goals. Take, for example, how the various tribes describe themselves. One member of the Asian-American tribe calls his group "little people" capable of "flying under the radar." A female expresses her concern that her tribe, "represent, our people, the African-American culture" in a positive light. Yet the program producer made sure to include comments such as the group referring to their shelter as "low-income housing."

The chicken stealing incident by one member of the European-American group helped shape the contours of racial conflict. Host Jeff Probst was quick to remind the players (and the audience) who the chicken thief was further stirring the pot of racial tension. Members of the African-American group chose to send Jonathan, fowl foul-player, to exile island. The move did not provide the African-American contingent any strategic advantage, but it did advance Burnett’s narrative.

Burnett and CBS are betting racial conflict will equal ratings gold. They are not playing the race card, they are playing the entire deck. "Survivor" has been in a slump. In its 2001 season debut (aided by the Super Bowl as lead-in), "Survivor" drew over 45 million viewers. By 2003, episodes averaged between 19 and 20 million audience members. Last season, Survivor averaged only 16.8 million viewers.

Burnett, also the executive producer of The Apprentice, certainly knows the television business. He and CBS have managed to create tremendous pre-program buzz and post-program analysis for this season. However, the British born Burnett's understanding of American culture is quite another story. As reported by a number of television critics, he stated, "America has a history of bad things happening to certain races... Where I grew up [England], nobody really cared about these sort of things." Perhaps because Mr. Burnett is flush from the millions of dollars he has made in American television, he has rendered himself isolated from recent events in his English birthplace. The real lesson of "Survivor" is that race does and should matter.

If tonight's episode is any indication, I suspect the show will make some interesting statements about the limits of racial solidarity in a competitive and ultimately individualistic social environment. It was clear right away that members of the Asian, Latino, and African American tribes had an awareness of themselves as representatives of their respective races or ethnicities that was lacking among members of the white tribe. This awareness was most obvious among the African Americans, who joined hands and chanted "represent" soon after they landed on the island. Despite their show of solidarity, however, the African American tribe lost the very first competition and members were forced to conspire against one another as they decided who would be first to leave the island.

Interestingly, gender was the deciding factor in that decision, as the three women in the tribe voted as a bloc to remove one of the men. It will be interesting to see how the tension between cooperation and competition is worked out in future episodes, and how relationships among members of the various tribes are affected by gender as well as race.

I enjoyed watching Survivor Cook Islands. As a sociologist, I couldn’t help but be flattered when the host presented the show as a social experiment. It's clear that the producers want to put a gloss of academic legitimacy on a plot idea that flies in the face of the norm of racial integration (as one contestant asked "Is that Kosher?"). Strictly speaking, the show is not a social experiment let alone social reality. Whereas an experimental design has a control group lacking the characteristic that the researcher believes will alter the outcome, every team in the first episode is an experimental group. Having some of the teams consist of members affiliating with different "races" would provide a comparative basis for assessing whether or not shared racial identity affects group performance. The show is certainly not reality in that every "race" was given the same opportunity to succeed. Actual sociological experiments where the only difference between test subjects is their physical appearance show that equally qualified members of racial minority groups are less likely than their white counterparts to be offered jobs, housing, and loans. Unfortunately, that’s reality.

Despite being neither an experiment nor reality, I do think that the episode offers a microcosm of changing ideas and practices in our society. For one, there was a lot of confusion about race and ethnicity. Some of the contestants used race and ethnicity interchangeably while others emphasized the ethnic diversity within their teams. This confusion can also be seen at the national level with Congress separating and adding new racial categories to the Census. The shifting and contested meaning of race reflects a growing rejection of the idea that genetic differences between groups of people like those on the show translate into different group-level abilities and behaviors. As the myth of biological race is discarded, race, by default, gets redefined in terms of cultural practices. The show’s narrator questioned whether shared culture would be a source of cohesion within the team. Ironically, it may well be ethnic diversity within the teams ultimately produces tensions, as seen with Cowboy's negative comments about his more Americanized "Asian" team-mates.

While head-to-head competition may bring greater use of negative stereotypes of the other "races" to heighten team unity, this type of behavior was not present in the footage that managed to avoid the editing room floor. Instead, members of minority group teams referenced negative stereotypes against their race as motivation for performing well. That the "Caucasian" team was the only team not to express such concerns is consistent with findings from the General Social Survey that images of Whites are generally more positive compared to other racial groups. That the "Caucasian" group members insisted that race did not matter is also consistent with sociological research. Denying the significance of race to their own lives allows Whites to ignore the social advantages that they receive from racial discrimination. Moreover, this society's institutions are fundamentally derived from English Protestant American culture. As a result, European Americans assimilated and socialized into WASP culture often assume that the way they do things is universal and somehow not ethnic. Overall, the episode managed to adeptly sidestep the reinforcement of stereotypes. Fortuitously, the first person to engage in criminal behavior in the real world by stealing a chicken was on the "Caucasian" team. Knowing the extent of racial profiling of African Americans in law enforcement, I couldn’t help but laugh when the thief felt shocked and aggrieved when he was exiled by the African American team.

My favorite aspect of the episode was that it highlighted how differences in age, class, and gender created tensions within the teams. These instances of tension sensitize viewers to the reality that not everyone of the same "race" thinks alike, acts alike, or gets along with one another. So I'd say Survivor's off to a good start this season. Hopefully, it will avoid the temptation to secure ratings by fanning the flames of racial hostility.