And I keep wondering if she's being held back by aversive racism (via her partners or the judges or the voters, who knows)
I really like Comfort, but I'd been disappointed by a lot of her performances.
I watched season 3 of SYTYCD for the first time this year, and tried to keep track of the proportion of people of color at each stage of the competition, to see if they were eliminated at a higher rate than white contestants. What I found was that at every stage, about 30-35% of the dancers (plus or minus 5%) were people of color, suggesting that they weren't more likely to get cut. And then of course, there were two people of color in the final four, and (awesomely!) Sabra won with Danny as runner up.
This year, things seemed to follow a similar pattern for the first half of the season, though the percentage of people of color was a bit higher on average -- maybe 35-40%. I don't know if you've seen this week's episodes yet, so I won't say more now -- but things have gotten really interesting now that we're down to the top 8!
Of course, the show still has a fair amount of racial issues. Especially around stereotypes & fetishization of dance styles associated with blacks -- i.e. the recurring drama of whether white dancers can be sufficiently 'gangsta' when dancing hip hop, or the whole 'animalistic'/primitive stuff viz. African jazz routines -- and the pseudo-affirmative action narratives around 'street dancers' and b-boys/b-girls. Plus there's the preponderance of white judges and choreographers.
As a counterpoint, I've also been watching America's Best Dance Crew on MTV (the episodes are all online, though I don't know if they're accessible from outside the U.S.), where the majority of crew members and two out of the three judges are people of color (the crews come up with their own choreography). The first season, which aired earlier this year, was amazing; the crews in the current season don't seem as strong or memorable, but it's still enjoyable with some really impressive dancing.
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I really like Comfort, but I'd been disappointed by a lot of her performances.
I watched season 3 of SYTYCD for the first time this year, and tried to keep track of the proportion of people of color at each stage of the competition, to see if they were eliminated at a higher rate than white contestants. What I found was that at every stage, about 30-35% of the dancers (plus or minus 5%) were people of color, suggesting that they weren't more likely to get cut. And then of course, there were two people of color in the final four, and (awesomely!) Sabra won with Danny as runner up.
This year, things seemed to follow a similar pattern for the first half of the season, though the percentage of people of color was a bit higher on average -- maybe 35-40%. I don't know if you've seen this week's episodes yet, so I won't say more now -- but things have gotten really interesting now that we're down to the top 8!
Of course, the show still has a fair amount of racial issues. Especially around stereotypes & fetishization of dance styles associated with blacks -- i.e. the recurring drama of whether white dancers can be sufficiently 'gangsta' when dancing hip hop, or the whole 'animalistic'/primitive stuff viz. African jazz routines -- and the pseudo-affirmative action narratives around 'street dancers' and b-boys/b-girls. Plus there's the preponderance of white judges and choreographers.
As a counterpoint, I've also been watching America's Best Dance Crew on MTV (the episodes are all online, though I don't know if they're accessible from outside the U.S.), where the majority of crew members and two out of the three judges are people of color (the crews come up with their own choreography). The first season, which aired earlier this year, was amazing; the crews in the current season don't seem as strong or memorable, but it's still enjoyable with some really impressive dancing.