A fun experience of being “AuDHD”— having a dual diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and ADHD— is the hyper-focus on special interests. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, the diagnostic standard for mental health and brain related disorders, lists “Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus” as a diagnostic criteria of autism spectrum disorder (Diagnostic). While hyper-focus is not an official diagnosable criterion of ADHD, many people with ADHD note their ability to focus on an enjoyable task for long periods of time (ADHD Hyperfocus). Autistic individuals will search every nook and cranny for any new crumb of information on a special interest, while ADHD hyper-focus makes hours feel like mere minutes. Well, my AuDHD special interests are social justice and the hit reality TV program, Survivor.

After spending many, many hours reading books like How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and consuming content from equity education influencers such as activist Blair Imani, I have gathered that the more people are exposed to cultures and people different from them, the more honest, holistic and empathetic a person’s worldview becomes. The National Institute of Health acknowledges this through Zebrowitz et al.’s study, “Mere Exposure and Racial Prejudice: Exposure to Other-Race Faces Increases Liking for Strangers of That Race.” The study concluded that simply diversifying the races of people in images individuals are exposed to can make them feel more favorable when exposed to these races again (Zebrowitz). This concept can be easily applied to television programs such as Survivor.

Along with social justice research, I have consumed quite a bit of Survivor: All 47 fully-aired seasons—and all aired episodes of Season 48 as of April 2025. To the uninitiated, Survivor is a competition reality show where upwards of 20 strangers are stranded and secluded from society and forced to survive the elements and each other. Players systematically vote out one another at tribal council until the final two or three castaways remain. The castaways who were voted out, called the jury, vote for a winner who receives the title of Sole Survivor along with $1 million. Seems simple in theory but with such high stakes, simple things quickly become more complex.

A large component of success in the game of Survivor is the ability to navigate these social dynamics, and our identities aid us in creating personal connections to reach the end of the game. Individuals are generally attracted to people like themselves and when they are placed in a situation with all strangers, the first thing they have to find commonality in is appearance. So, when a player is the only one who looks like them in a group of up to 20 people, how can they break into that group successfully? The data shows that it is simply not probable (Brillman).

Survivor has been under attack for their lack of diversity for as long as they’ve been on air (Goodman). Brandon Chappell, a Black reality TV podcaster and stakeholder in the discussion of representation on Survivor, even said his family and friends of color would tease him for watching reality TV because “reality TV is for white folks” (‘Black Voices of RHAP”). It is understandable that Chappell’s family and friends would feel this way. Lita Brillman of the University of Michigan’s analysis “Race and Gender in the First 30 Seasons of Survivor” reported that 77 percent of contestants on Survivor from 2000 to 2015 were identified as white, and 79.3 percent of Survivor winners identified as white.

Historically, members of marginalized communities have struggled to connect with their largely white tribe mates while on Survivor, and many cite the reason being there is simply no one else who looks like them (“Black Voices of Survivor”). On the other hand, pockets of fans on social media sites like Facebook state that castaways need to separate their race or identity from gameplay, but is that even possible? As a white person, I could not tell you because I do not know. I have not faced the racial barriers that other races face and I will not to the degree they experience it every day. However, the more I have exposed myself to the experiences of people different than I, the more empathetic and accepting I am of people I may not relate to or look like. This exigence of the effects of inclusive representation led me to my research question: Should CBS quantify their diversity efforts with production as they have with unscripted programming casts, and should fans have a say in this change?

One expert, Christina Walker of the University of Kentucky’s College of Communication and Information, was curious about how inclusivity changes have been perceived by Survivor’s viewers. In her article “‘I’m So Sick of This Race Talk. Boo Hoo’: Perceptions of Race on 2021-22 CBS Survivor,” Walker analyzed 492 comments on Survivor’s Facebook page discussing diversity on a video where castaways of color Erica Caspusanan and DeShawn Radden discuss their struggles as People of Color. Walker aimed to answer three questions in her research, including “What do Facebook posts suggest about Survivor season 41 audiences’ perceptions CBS’ decision to intersect diversity initiatives with game play?” The study concluded that the Survivor audience engaging on the show’s Facebook page does not believe race should have any impact on casting or on someone’s ability to navigate the game (Walker).
 

Walker coded each comment with one of six identifiers including: Racial invisibility/colorblind racism, reverse racism, white fragility, micro aggressions, tension free needs, and affective needs. Definitions and examples are given for each category, making it clear to understand them. The most frequent comments were part of “tension-free needs,” which Walker defined as people believing their entertainment shouldn’t contain such serious issues. It is, after all, entertainment and some individuals believe it is not an appropriate time to educate the masses.

The castaways from marginalized communities have a huge stake in the discourse of inclusive representation on-and-off camera on Survivor. Survivor: Marquesas winner and the first Black woman to win a reality television competition, Vecepia Towery, is inclined to agree with Walker’s research. The show’s fourth winner is quoted in a Heavy.com article saying “when can we get past that and actually just play? You know, why does it have to be part of the narrative all the time?” (Anagnoson). However, many other castaways of Color have differing opinions.

Julia Carter of the 38th season, Survivor: Edge of Extinction, would disagree with Towrey’s opinion. Carter wrote an essay about her experience on the island, called “Push Me to the Edge: My Survivor Experience.” In the essay, Carter details the many types and instances of racism from her first phone call from casting to the lack of development of her character edit in post-production. Carter describes her first call from casting as veiled racism, suggesting that the casting agent said they found her “going through old footage,” meaning they were in need of “more Black people” for the season’s cast. (Carter). The racism didn’t stop for Carter in casting. The first night on the Island, she recalls her tribe mates playing a game to guess the movie from a quote. A white tribe member used the N-word in a quote associated with slave movie Django Unchained, and Carter immediately felt discomfort as eyes landed on her (Carter). She also mentions that this was not the only time the word was used in her time on Survivor, but none of the instances made it into the final edit (Carter). There is also discussion of how Carter was under edited in the final show product, despite being a visible character for the entire 39 days on the island. She details that she is one of only six players in the show’s history to not have received a confessional—a production interview that details what is happening in the game and on the island—until episode five; “only six out of 570,” she says (Carter). The essay cites many more examples of how Carter felt her race affected her Survivor experience, and others Black castaways agree that being Black affected how they were represented on Survivor.

Two of these castaways are Brice Johnston and Dr. J’Tia Hart of Survivor: Cagayan. On their season together, Hart and Johnston were represented in negative, stereotypical ways associated with their identities. Hart, a nuclear engineer, was often portrayed as angry and incompetent—specifically dumping her tribe’s rice in the fire after getting angry (“Cops-R-Us”). The show’s host, Jeff Probst, was quoted in an Entertainment Weekly interview saying, “I’m not sure anyone is gonna feel too comfortable knowing that J’Tia is a nuclear engineer” (Ross, “Survivor: Cagayan”). At the time of filming, Hart was a doctor of nuclear engineering, which takes hard work, discipline and intelligence to achieve. Johnston, a gay Black man, was portrayed as effeminate, incapable, and was constantly talking about his “purple pants” (“Cops-R-Us”). As the only black man and only openly gay man on the season, Johnston says he was quickly ostracized on his Solana tribe that consisted of in-shape, traditionally attractive white men and women (“Black Voices of Survivor”). Capitalizing on the widespread rise in support of the Black community following George Floyd’s 2020 murder, Hart, Johnston and Carter along with several other Black Survivors formed The Soul Survivors Organization in June of 2020 (Soul Survivors). According to the organization’s webpage, Soul Survivors is “a collective of former Survivors of African American descent and their allies who are focused on supporting the Black community by shifting our representation in entertainment” (Soul Survivors). The organization released a petition addressed to several representatives of CBS and Survivor, demanding 30-percent BIPOC representation, mental health support for BIPOC cast, equal screen time and post-production opportunities, amongst other equity initiatives. As of September 2023, the petition titled “A Petition for Anti-Racism Action by Survivor Entertainment Group” has garnered nearly 8500 signatures. After meeting with CBS in 2020, the organization and media giant came to an agreement that included 50-percent BIPOC representation in front of the camera on their unscripted programming but did not give specific guidelines for how they would handle production equity (Ross, Hibberd).

Early seasons could have benefitted from more diverse casting managers and production crews like the Soul Survivors envision. On the show’s 11th season, Survivor: Guatemala, castaway Jamie Newton said regarding representation on his tribe: “We got the most diverse group there. We’ve got a bum—me—we got a police officer, we got a magician’s assistant, we have a fish monger, we have a gay guy, and we got a landscaper” (“Man Down”). Homophobic comment aside, that is where the diversity virtually stops on the Yaxhá tribe, which is blatant when the show’s intro progresses through close-ups of each castaway. Newton’s tribe of nine was made up of four white men and four white women, with the exception being Lydia Morales who identifies as a Puerto Rican Latina (“Man Down”). Morales was also the only person of color on the cast of Guatemala.

Coincidentally—or maybe not a coincidence at all—the following season, Cook Islands was cast with an equal mix of white, Black, Latinx and Asian castaways (Survivor: Cook Islands). Even within these groups there was no varied representation. For example, the Puka Puka tribe which was made up of all Asian castaways was hardly diverse. The tribe had two people who identified as South Korean and zero Indian-American representation (Survivor: Cook Islands).

In fact, the first Indian-American castaway on Survivor was not until the show’s 39th season, Island of the Idols, when Karishma Patel walked on to the beaches of Fiji (Bloom). Patel discussed the double-edged sword of being the first Indian-American on the show with Parade reporter Mike Bloom, saying “I’m out here doing something that traditionally speaking a 37-year-old married Indian woman is not supposed to do” (Bloom). She continues with “But I’m Indian-American. I was born and raised here” (Bloom).
Another major stakeholder is the Survivor fanbase. Contrary to Walker’s research, many fans have supported the idea of more diversity on the beaches of Survivor. In a Reddit post titled “Diversity makes survivor better” on the r/survivor subreddit, user u/Both_Selection_8934 says “We’re seeing characters bond and grow relationships from being small queer boys from immigrant families…” which was not an experience that minorities on Survivor could bond about before (“Diversity Makes Survivor Better”). However, u/Both_Selection_8934 edited to add at the end of their post “it is honestly wild to me how willing some people are willing to die on the hill of anti-diversity on an American tv show in 2022” (“Diversity Makes Survivor Better”). This indicates that there was disagreement in the topic of increased diversity. User u/funkster123456 replied, saying “I hate quotas on diversity. I wish they would just cast the best people” (“Diversity Makes Survivor Better”). The post has many dissenting comments, mostly either deleted or downvoted to indicate their irrelevance to the topic at hand. Many still visible post replies are filled with suggestions about further improving diversity, such as gender and age diversity. User u/MessyMop says “I hope we get more geographical diversity too.” (“Diversity Makes Survivor Better”). These suggestions show that pockets of fans not only approve of this uptick in diversity but want to find ways to make Survivor even more inclusive.

Facebook fans also have things to say about CBS’ on-camera diversity initiative. Facebook user Ana la Chalma says “a lot of white people r bother by the diversity in this season n can’t stop complaining about how bad the show is now. I appreciate the diversity n the conversations about social issues” (“Vulnerable Conversations”). La Chalma’s statement comes from the comment section of the video “Vulnerable Conversations,” the same video used in Walker’s analysis. In a group for fans of Survivor podcast network Rob Has a Podcast, listener Humberto Daniel Urrutia Camargo’s original post discussing the diversity on the podcasting network gained a massive 377 comments and 66 reactions. Camargo’s post asks for suggestions for female and BIPOC guest suggestions, after the network announced 24 podcast guests of which 19 were white men and 5 were white women (Camargo). Following this lively discussion and the success of the Soul Survivors initiative, Rob Cesternino, the figurehead of Rob Has a Podcast, set out to diversify the network’s talent and announced “The RHAP Class of 2020” (@robcesternino). The network held open auditions, specifically encouraging women and People of Color to apply. The auditions brought some of the network’s shining stars, including trans femme podcaster and game expert, Grace Leeder, and Black reality television expert and Survivor 47 castaway, Aysha Welsh.

When analyzing what stakeholders and experts had to say about inclusive representation in the production of Survivor, I discovered that Walker’s study may not have the most reliable data set to form a well-rounded argument. The data set, while statistically significant in numbers at 492, seems like it does not provide data from more than a dissenting opinion on increased diversity. All 492 comments Walker analyzed could be quantified into what is considered a negative comment about the increased diversity on Season 41. As of October 2023, the same post has 718 comments, with zero new comments within one year. When sorting comments by “newest,” the comment that the article’s name derives from is the third comment, indicating that there was quite a bit of data left out of Walker’s analysis. A clear missing data set indicates this study may not accurately reflect how the whole of Survivor fans feel about increased representation. This was surprising yet not a shock at the same time. I always considered myself to highly value logical data, which makes it surprising I found little value in Walker’s peer-reviewed work. The lack of surprise comes from the same value in logical data. This study does not have data that appropriately reports on the feelings of Survivor fans on a single Facebook video, so it likely cannot be representative of the fanbase as a whole.

The actual players of the game provide the perspective that holds the most value to me. Since they are the ones who are directly affected by production’s decisions, their thoughts on production diversity on Survivor are the most valuable to the conversation. The Soul Survivors believed the race problem was large enough to go directly to CBS, demonstrating a strong need for minority support on Survivor. Furthermore, CBS executives agreed with the Soul Survivors and gave them more on-screen representation than they asked for. These points are largely qualitative and appeal to my emotions, though. While reading Carter’s essay, I could feel myself getting angrier and more disappointed, showing that my emotions were dictating how I felt. However, these qualitative datapoints are made quantitative by the number of castaways sharing this sentiment, making it easier to see why castaways' opinions are important to my stance.

A perspective missing from this paper was the perspective of CBS Studios executives. These executives have a stake in the discussion of inclusivity because they are the end-all-be-all in how programming will be created. That is a huge stake, but major companies like tv programming networks will most often do whatever is best to make the most money and satisfy shareholders, whether or not it benefits the public. Since Floyd’s murder, a “hot topic” in media is equity and inclusion, and I believe companies will commit to it for as long as their bottom line shows it is worth it. I came to this conclusion based on the fact that CBS agreed to 50 percent representation on screen while not quantifying how they can change production representation behind the lens. This to me indicates two things: 1. CBS is over delivering on-screen so initiatives can be easily distinguishable by the public, limiting the future pressures to diversify. And 2. The network will not be as pressured by the public to uphold higher standards in production representation since the public does not generally perceive production when they consume media. To me, this shows that CBS’ diversity initiative could be performative. When considering the benefits for CBS executives, this decision could be considered a smooth public relations decision at best, and performative anti racism at worst.

Before starting my research for this paper, I was a strong supporter of increasing production diversity on Survivor, especially after the increased opportunities available to marginalized identities following the adoption of the on-screen diversity initiative. Since there is a lack of quantitative data available showing that increased diversity on Survivor has created more winning opportunities for marginalized identities, I continued the work of Brillman’s race analysis of winners to include seasons 30 through 44. I identified the winners' race, then calculated the ratio of white winners to all winners. When merging the data sets, I found that before CBS implemented 50 percent BIPOC representation in season 41, 80 percent of Survivor winners were categorized as white (Brillman). However, for seasons 41 through 47, five of the seven winners have been People of Color—nearly flipping the previous statistics on their head.
One thing that having off-camera diversity can aid in is accurate storytelling for underrepresented identities. Season 41 winner Erica Caspusanan is vocal that her experiences on the show mirror her experiences in real life as a woman of Color. In an interview with Alena Papayanis, Caspusanan said that she was often pushed into an almost subservient role on the island, a role often attributed to Asian women (Papayanis). She continues by stating that “I think that perhaps I did that almost too well because people wondered why I ended up winning at all” (Papayanis). Caspusanan is referring to the edit she received, saying that since she was an Asian woman in the stereotypical role of advisor to the person in power, production had a hard time editing her in a way that positively showed the game path that culminated in a seven-to-one-to-zero final vote in Caspunanan’s favor (Papayanis).

After concluding my research on increased production diversity on Survivor, I don’t think my position has changed that CBS should extend BIPOC representation to production and has in fact been reinforced. I believe that castaways and the fanbase benefit from increased diversity in all aspects of Survivor. It provides the opportunity for diverse players to win the game as demonstrated by the diversified winner pool of the “new era” of season following season 40, and adding more representation where the story is manufactured post-production provides the opportunity to have their winning stories told authentically. I believe that when the stories of minorities and marginalized communities are told from their own perspectives, it allows members of these communities to see reflections in positive and successful ways, which they may not have seen before. Diversifying production crews behind the camera can help accurately detail the nuances of marginalized identities, which leads to a less stereotypical representation on our television screens.

Players like Carter, Hart and Johnston have fought to bring a more inclusive Survivor experience to our screens, and despite believing that there should be more diverse representation in all aspects of Survivor, I do not believe that fans should dictate the diversification of the island. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs reports that only a slight majority of Americans say that “growing diversity makes the country a better place to live” (Smeltz et al.).

When I consider the current cultural climate in the United States, I am also inclined to believe that CBS should leave equity and inclusion initiatives to the experts in lieu of public opinion. The political polarization of the United States has led to factions so deep, the two sides of the country cannot even agree on basic human rights, much less the behind-the-scenes details of their reality television programs. While Walker’s analysis may not have been the most accurate representation of all Survivor fans, it does represent at least 492 out of 718 comments that do not approve of the diversified direction Survivor is headed. If this statistic were representative of the country as a whole, it would mean that 69 percent of Americans would not want their entertainment diversified. Given Zebrowitz’s theory that exposure to different races simply through seeing more pictures of them creates more feelings of favor, I believe CBS and Survivor have a duty as media producers with wide-reaching influence to diversify their product and create more empathy in a deeply divided society.

Additionally, CBS has contracted with the NAACP to help produce accurate portrayals of marginalized communities, showing at least some initiative in the battle for equitable representation across the whole CBS network (Ross, Hibberd). Starting with the show’s 45th season, Martin Holmes reports that Survivor episodes will be extended from 60 to 90-minute run times (Holmes). An increase in run time allows for more storytelling and character development, including stories associated with identity. After watching what has come out of these 90-minute episodes in Season 45, I can see a true effort in the storytelling of castaways of Color. For example, two Black castaways, Katurah Topps and Bruce Perreault, have a feud building on the island. Historically, Black players have mentioned they felt they had to work together since there were so few, if any more than one of them (“Black Voices of Survivor”). In an interview with Cesternino, former Black castaway Davie Rickenbacker said that since there are five Black people on Season 45, Black castaways don’t feel the pressure to work together simply to represent their race and can play a more authentic game (“Ep 4 Feedback Show”). The show is clearly heading along a better path, and if fans interject their opinions into how diversity should be represented, it could critically damage castaways of color; especially if they are fans like the ones referenced in Walker’s research.

Survivor has made great progress in their efforts to feature more inclusive racial representation on camera, which is evident by the identities of castaways since CBS adopted its diversity initiative for unscripted programming. The Soul Survivors Organization has won their battle for more equitable experiences for castaways of color, but they are far from winning the war of full inclusion. Players like Caspusanan may have never been cast let alone win without such strides in representation, which helps me believe that these policies should extend beyond casting and permeate every aspect of all television programming even beyond unscripted shows. The more exposure we as a society have to marginalized communities, the more we can empathize with their stories, and we can begin to work towards true equity and inclusion.