Bigotry seems like a feature, not a bug, on Real Housewives shows

Vox

Jennie Nguyen’s firing this week from Real Housewives of Salt Lake City over offensive anti-Black and anti–Black Lives Matter Facebook posts "was seen by many fans as the right thing to do, but the termination raises questions about where Bravo draws the line," says Alex Abad-Santos. "If Jennie’s past comments are grounds for firing, what about someone like Ramona Singer who was, according to tabloids, investigated by Bravo for making a racist comment about fellow cast member Eboni K. Williams? Singer was also recently on a Housewife spinoff show where she feuded with and cursed at castmate Kenya Moore and repeatedly called her 'Porsha,' who is Moore’s Atlanta castmate. (Both Moore and Porsha are Black.) What about Singer’s castmate Luann De Lesseps, who appeared on the show in a blackface costume in 2018? (De Lesseps has denied that she wore blackface.) And where was Bravo when Tiffany Moon, an Asian American cast member on The Real Housewives of Dallas, complained about overt racism against her, including by one of her castmates, Brandi Redmond, who filmed herself mocking Asian Americans in a 2017 social media post? I’m not privy to Bravo’s Housewives employment calculus, but the abhorrent and frequently bigoted behavior from some of its Housewives seems more like a feature of its design than a bug. The Real Housewives franchise exists because Bravo casts women who possess an embarrassing amount of wealth and a mortifying lack of shame. The latter allows the women to hurl drinks, insult each other’s husbands and loved ones, and mock each other’s financial situations on television season after season. As Bravo has found, chronicling the intersection of affluence and shamelessness results in cast members who exhibit a wide range of awful behaviors, including racism and bigotry."

ALSO:

• Jen Shah accuses fired castmate Jennie Nguyen of lying about posting her offensive Facebook posts
• Ex-Real Housewives star Kelly Dodd says Bravo should've done a better background check on Nguyen