As Seen on M-TV

Dear BFDiary,

I'm not sure if anyone even watches MTV's "Real World" anymore but I must admit that after all these years, I still make time for at least the first few episodes every season. This time around the cast is shaking things up in New Orleans (there are no scenes of the wreckage that's still there which I'm unsure is a good or bad thing). Of course there are a couple black kids on the cast, and even an Arab-American woman from Dearborn (right next door to Detroit, but they also leave this tidbit out).

So the first black guy we meet, Eric, is gorgeous and pretty "normal" for all intensive purposes. His eyes are so captivating they make you wanna slap your mama.

There's white girls from Mississippi who only date black guys, hockey players from Wisconsin, and, wait for it...wait for it....your token black gay guy. Now, Preston doesn't exactly cause drama, but he does don blond wigs from time to time.

What's wrong with this picture? Aside from getting into any type of biblical debacle I'm thinking about what element Preston adds to the winning Real World formula? Of course, the point of the show is to bring the drama, with people who fit normative stereotypes not necessarily adding to the mix, I get that. But why is there always a black character on the show with some major factor that pushes him farther into the margins beyond the effect of his black skin? And let's be real, the formula almost always includes a guy that we can label as "other" and rarely a black woman. We are, for the most part, invisible.

Is there an agenda here? I'm definitely sniffing something fishy, but what do you think?