Race marketing

As you've probably noticed, there's a lot of heat over CBS agreeing to divide "Survivor" teams according to race. The latest to chime in is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which for once had the institutional good sense to call this a very bad idea, "playing up identity-politics divisions in a crude and potentially rancorous way." This week, GM decided to pull its advertising from the show, and while that quickly made news because everybody assumed it was connected to the format change, GM said the decision came before the automaker was even aware of the race games. Whatever. The network is not about to take its cue from editorial writers - and yet it's hard to believe that advertisers won't be mulling this one over during the long weekend.

Surely Mr. Burnett and his colleagues realized that their new effort at "diversity" would not pass without controversy. They probably welcomed it, for the show's ratings are in need of a boost. And, like it or not, the ploy will probably work. You don't have to survey every American family, or even every Nielsen family, to find out that people like watching people who look like themselves on TV. Many "Survivor" watchers may well find themselves cheering on "their team." Mr. Burnett suggests that his program is simply presenting life as it really is: "Even though people may work together, they do tend in their private lives to divide along social and ethnic lines."

Perhaps. But acknowledging that reality doesn't mean we have to support it. As Jacques DeGraff, a black minister at Canaan Baptist Church in New York City, told USA Today: "To promote this even as a game or sport is to encourage a dark side in our American psyche. At some point, somebody's got to say, 'That's not really a good idea. That's not how we want to make money.'"