By: Ebenezer Nkunda
After 24 seasons, the television show: Big Brother has crowned their first ever Black Woman as the winner. This comes only one year and one season after the series crowned their first black winner in 2021. If you are unfamiliar with the show; Big Brother follows a group of people under 24/7 surveillance. Every week, there is a Head of Household (HOH) competition; whom is tasked to nominate two houseguests for eviction. Those two houseguests, along with the HOH and three more randomly chosen houseguests, will compete in a veto competition. The winner of the veto competition has the power to remove a nominee from the eviction block if they so choose. If a nominee is removed from the block, the HOH then nominates another person to take their place. These final two nominees are set, and the cast will vote one off at the end of
each week during the live show. To survive this show and make it to the end, the houseguests not only rely on a physical game but a social game, which includes alliances, backdooring, etc.
In past years, there has been a pattern regarding the people of color in the house. Usually, there are alliances formed within the first week, and the demographics of these alliances are usually majority white. Common instances are that people of color are the first ones evicted and scapegoated. In 2020, CBS set a diversity mandate for its non-scripted shows; on November 9, 2022, CBS announced that all non-scripted television shows would require 50% of the cast to be Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Due to this new mandate, the 2021 season of Big Brother had an unprecedented amount of black houseguests, equating to a total of six. These black houseguests formed a secret alliance called “The Cookout” and made it to the final six, and for the first time in Big Brother history, a black winner was crowned.
In the following season, the diversity mandate was still in effect, with half the houseguests being BIPOC. However, there was still some blatant discrimination. The Big Brother season 24 winner was Houseguest Taylor Hale, who is a black woman, but this victory did not come easy. Taylor was on the outs with the house almost immediately when the season started. She was also ignored by other houseguests and was facing eviction constantly. Due to the amount of disrespect and ridicule Taylor was experiencing, an alliance was formed called The Leftovers, and they protected Taylor.
Many Howard students watch big brother and keep up with the series. This season resonated a lot with the female population the most.
Howard Junior Cydney Wright said, “I started watching Big Brother with my family every summer, and I was excited to watch this season, but the beginning was hard. She was so alone; sometimes, I watched the live feeds, and she was just constantly alone. The entire house believed Paloma and joined the Taylor hate train, so I stopped watching in the beginning. I started watching the season again when I learned on Twitter that Taylor joined an alliance, and they have been taking out the people leading the charge against her. I am overall really happy she won.”
Senior Howard Student Shelby Fountain said, “Taylor’s story was the best. She literally started at the bottom and got to the top. The reaction of her haters when she survived the block and one of their friends went home was perfect. It was really Taylor’s Karma.”
Taylor’s Karma is what fans call ‘what happened to everyone who spoke ill of Taylor in the beginning’, who left the game way earlier than she did. Throughout the season, Taylor sat on the eviction block even more times than any other contestant, but she still stayed. She made the final two which was a surprise to many houseguests. Taylor was against a tough competitor, and it was assumed that the contestant would win, but then came Taylor’s finale night speech.
“As someone who has sat on this eviction block six times on eviction night, I have bled out the most in this game, but I have bandaged myself together every single time and gotten up and continued to fight because, like so many other women in the world, that is what we have to do to get to do end – I have overcome so much in this game, and I have come to understand, I am
not a shield, I am a sword. I am not a victor, I am a survivor, and if there is one word that is going to describe the entire season, it is resiliency,” she said to the jury.
With a vote of 8-1, Taylor won the season and became the first black woman to win Big Brother. Taylor also became the first person in the history of the series to be voted America’s favorite houseguest. When Entertainment Weekly asked Taylor how much she thought about previous black woman houseguests who faced similar experiences to her, she said, “when it was hard, I thought about them, and I thought about Da’Vonne in her first season. She was evicted, like, in week three because people were talking about her the first week when she was counting things in the house. Why is it that people who look like me playing this game are immediately villainized, immediately looked at with shadows of doubt when there are so many other players who have played more mischievous and malicious games?” A hard reality, hopefully forever changed with this monumental win. Big Brother season 25 premieres next summer, and here’s to hope another black woman doesn’t suffer for the seasons to come.