O.K. confession time. I’ve never seen a single episode of
The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and
have never wanted to either. Call me strange, old fashioned, or out of the loop, or whatever,
but I just haven’t had any interest in watching a group of yaki weave wearing
black women fight and make fools of themselves on television.

Of course, we all know that it’s all staged and scripted, and
that the women are encouraged and pushed to act that way, or else they’ll be dumped from the
show, which means they won’t be able to stretch their allotted 15 minutes of
fame for at least another minute or two. But would the show lose viewers
overnight if everyone on it acted like an
intelligent, adult person?

Well the civil rights group Color of Change.org wants some major changes to the show, since they feel that it’s gotten too ridiculous, and that RHOA does nothing but perpetrate negative and destructive stereotypes of black
women in the media.

Push evidently came to shove with this Sunday’s RHOA “reunion” special, when a couple of the women got
into a physical brawl, prompting Color of Change to release the following statement:

“The
physical violence displayed during Bravo’s Sunday primetime lineup was deeply
alarming. After weeks of promoting the RHOA reunion altercation on Sunday, executive producer Andy Cohen
finally condemned the violent behavior of cast members — completely ignoring
the staged hostile environment that provoked the altercation and the troubling
pattern of violent, stereotypical portrayals of Black people across many of Bravo’s
Black reality franchises.”

The statement further went on to say that:

“Research
shows that dehumanizing portrayals of Black people on television lead to
real-world consequences for Black folks — influencing how we are treated by
doctors, judges, teachers and lawmakers. No matter how entertaining, this
should be the last fight between Black women that Bravo profits from.”

However, Color of Change falls short of calling for a straight-out boycott
of the show. Rather, they want RHOA and the Bravo Network to enact a “no
excessive confrontations policy” – the same thing that VH1’s Basketball Wives did back in 2012, when things on that show
got out of hand.

But seriously, the only way to have people act rationally
on a TV show is to have them, in effect, sign a contract to behave?  As if they can’t act normally on their own. 

Has it gotten this bad or am I just naïve?

What do you say?