Now it’s the The Traitors’ turn to face tedious accusations of racism

‘So I hear The Traitors is racist now, Claudia.’

That’s certainly the view coming out of Guardian-land this past week. According to countless op-eds in the right-thinking press, amplified by the usual witless fog-horns on social media, the BBC’s super-popular, cloaks-and-daggers reality-TV show is in fact rife with racism.

Now, for those who clearly have better things to do with their lives, it’s worth explaining how The Traitors works. Twenty-plus contestants are whisked off to a castle in Scotland, where host Claudia Winkleman sits them all around the ‘Roundtable’, blindfolds them and silently chooses three (usually) to be ‘Traitors’. The remaining contestants are known as ‘Faithfuls’. The Traitors have the power to ‘murder’ one of the Faithfuls each night, while the Faithfuls have the chance to identify and ‘banish’ a suspected Traitor at the daily Roundtable votes. Over the course of a few weeks, the contestants whittle down their number, as Faithfuls and Traitors eliminate each other in the battle for a big pot of cash.

We’re now into the fifth series and Britain’s ever-diligent racism-finder generals, their minds bunged up with the jargon of critical race theory, have alighted on a seemingly disturbing trend. It seems that black and non-white contestants are more likely than white contestants to be wrongly suspected of being Traitors and therefore ‘banished’ early. This, they claim, is due to the ‘unconscious racial bias’ of the contestants who can’t help but see black and brown people as acting, well, suspiciously. One Guardian commentator even said this reflected the experience in general of black Britons who are ‘stopped and searched’ by police on far too regular a basis.

The claim that Traitors contestants are unconsciously inclined to view black and brown people as suspicious generally, and therefore Traitors in the game, looks like quite the flaw in the BBC’s most-watched show. This, after all, is a game whose very rules encourage each participant to regard everyone else with suspicion. It is a reality-TV game built on active distrust of others. A game that encourages people to doubt their fellows. And this, if the racism-hunters are to be believed, is giving Britain’s unconscious racists a chance to give full vent to their biases, and to cast out black and brown people willy-nilly.

If this really were true, it would be quite the cock-up. After the numerous Strictly scandals, Gregg Wallace’s no-trouser days on MasterChef, the dark shadow of Huw Edwards and Donald Trump’s big beautiful lawsuit, this is surely the last thing the BBC needs – an allegation it’s providing unwitting racists with a chance to chuck POC out of their very own Scottish castle. I’m not sure what the solution would be either. Give the contestants ‘unconscious bias’ training? Launch a BAME-only Traitors spin-off? Get Claudia to take the knee at the end of every Roundtable?

Luckily for the Beeb, these racism claims don’t really bear too much scrutiny. Take the early exits that critics point to as evidence of this unconscious bias: YouTuber Niko Omilana and actor Tameka Empson in last year’s celebrity version, and those of Judy Wilson and Ross Garshong in this year’s series.

The celeb contestants were certainly prejudiced against Omilana – not because his father is Nigerian, but due to him being a YouTube ‘prankster’. The likes of Stephen Fry and Celia Imrie, both into their seventies, clearly had no idea who or what he was before they met him. And what they soon discovered about his job sounded very dubious indeed. As for poor old Empson, her skin colour played less of a role in her banishment than the fact she mistakenly said in front of the others, ‘I’m a traitor’. Who’d have thought that might count against her?

When it comes to this year’s early removals, Wilson was clearly acting a little oddly, changing her demeanour after the first Roundtable – and no wonder. Unbeknownst to the others, one of the contestants, Roxy, is also her daughter. She really was hiding something. Something big.

Ross was very nice, but also very useless. He had an effortless ability to talk himself into trouble. And to be fair, he was also hiding a lot. He was in a real-life relationship with one of the other contestants, which he kept secret. He also knew another contestant when he arrived, but only partially withheld that information, muttering something about that ‘not being the plan’. Looking for any reason to be suspicious, the Faithfuls leapt on hapless Ross’s behaviour, while the Traitors set about framing him. And that was that.

Then there’s the fact that plenty of black- and brown-skinned contestants have actually done very well on The Traitors. Three non-white celebrities, historian David Osuluga, actor Nick Mohammad and singer Cat Burns, made it to the final five last year – and Burns actually was a Traitor. As indeed was the breakout star from last year’s non-celebrity version, Minah Shannon. The black Liverpudlian call-centre worker beguiled everyone and avoided detection until episode 10. She is now a BBC Radio 1 presenter.

Not that any of this will make much difference to the identitarian activists, who are determined to portray popular culture, and reality-TV shows in particular, as unashamedly racist. Big Brother, Strictly, I’m a Celebrity, The X Factor and Love Island have all been subject to similar allegations. That non-white people are voted out first. That unconscious racism runs through these shows like Brighton through a stick of rock.

Nothing will persuade them otherwise – for one good reason. They assume these shows are racist, because they think Britain as a whole is racist. That’s their starting point, from which all other non-insights flow. The result is tedious beyond belief. They reduce popular culture to little more than an expression of their own prejudiced views of British people. And this is all lapped up by those in the liberal media, long used to regarding the proles who watch reality TV with horror and contempt. If there’s any unconscious bias here, it’s located firmly in the heads of our cultural elites, and aimed at the so-called masses.

The Traitors is not everyone’s cup of tea. But there are nearly seven million viewers out there who find it essential viewing. So don’t let the racism-finder generals ruin it.

Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.