No, it’s not an MLA paper topic. But Negrophile points to an interesting economics paper on same-race voting preferences in American Idol. Short version: the number of black viewers rises with the number of black contestants, and voting behavior tends toward same-race recognition, with black viewers more likely to vote for black candidates, non-black viewers more likely to vote for non-black candidates. The author finds this unfortunate in ways I don’t, and I’d isolate my main gripe in statements like this:
First, voting behaviors are racially biased. A black contestant is less likely to be voted off as there are relatively more black viewers. This pattern is only significant when it comes down to a relatively small number of the final contestants.
Of course, as a film/media scholar, the thing I’m wondering is how much genre plays a role. Certainly there are white AI contestants performing traditionally black musical genres (though usually those genres with the patina of historical distance), but even if no bias was expressed beyond generic preferences, voting would still tend toward same-race selection. That’s because for complex reasons, black viewers of American Idol in aggregate tend to prefer different music than white viewers do in aggregate - music that is more likely to be performed, and performed credibly, by black performers than white. And the reverse, mutatis mutandis.
Of course, as a film/media scholar, the thing I’m wondering is how much genre plays a role. Certainly there are white contestants (though usually those genres with the patina of historical distance), but even if no bias was expressed beyond generic preferences, voting would still tend toward same-race selection. That’s because for complex reasons, black viewers of tend to prefer different music than white viewers do - music that is to be performed, and performed credibly, by black performers than white. And the reverse, mutatis mutandis.Or maybe this is just another way of phrasing the problematic posed by Merrittgate.
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