Illegal television Show Killed
"Welcome to the Neighborhood" was supposed to illustrate how three white-bread, Christian, Austin families can eventually settle for the stripe of diversity of their choice as a neighbor. In order to do that the show forced a rainbow coalition of minorities and marginalized groups to humiliate themselves.
Some commentators on this anomaly of reality television saw "Neighborhood" as a worthy social experiment where people were forced to handle their stereotypes and preconceived prejudices. Granted, documenting any kind of community outreach of this kind would be interesting - if not very useful in real-world applications in community development.
However, the producers of "Neighborhood" forgot about the Fair Housing Act that in very plain language prohibits this kind of discrimination. And don't for a second think it's not discrimination just because a non-white or marginalized resident is going to occupy the house. The neighborhood is acting as the real estate agent in this reality show: through this process they are expressly choosing the least-offensive family for the home.
The question that bugs me still is this: if the show were to air (and by some chance be a smash hit) would hit have any capacity for changing the way people think about cultural and racial segregation in their neighborhoods? Or would it have further deepened these divisions? There's no way to know now. The corporate leadership at Disney/ABC apparently would rather burn heaps of money than face any kind of public humiliation about discrimination.
Read the National Fair Housing Alliance's Call to Action on this subject and a synopsis of the story from Newsday.
