After 23 seasons of crazy alliances, intense endurance competitions, and dramatic eviction nights, reality TV show Big Brother has just announced its first Black winner, Xavier Prather.
The main reason this historical moment could happen was due to the dedication of an alliance known as “The Cookout”. This alliance consisted of the six Black players in the Big Brother house this season: Azah Awasum, Hannah Chaddha, Derek Frazier, Tiffany Mitchell, Xavier Prather, and Kyland Young. The mission of this alliance was to ensure that not only all the members got to the final six, but to also guarantee that a Black player would win for the first time in Big Brother’s history.
In previous seasons, people of color were evicted early on in the game because the major alliances that formed tended to consist of mostly white people, which left people of color as the targets. On top of this, the cast itself has not always been the most diverse, meaning that the odds of a Black player winning have been extremely slim.
This season, however, we saw all six of the Black players align to work towards the same goal, and they were in fact successful. Once “The Cookout ” made it to the final six, the players had essentially accomplished their main goal of confirming there to be a Black winner, and the game changed to being everyone for themselves.
As a person of color myself and a major Big Brother fan, it has always been frustrating to see the lack of diversity on the show mixed with the way in which BIPOC are usually pinned against one another.
So, seeing history be made like this after 23 seasons was seriously exciting. After seeing the success of “The Cookout”, I can’t help but wonder if we will finally start to see more representation in the entertainment world.
It also makes me hope that we will finally see more people of color succeed and thrive on shows like these so those represented watching at home will feel inspired in the same way I am right now.