An unacceptable game on public television

Top Chef It's the new baking competition on La 1, from the creators of MasterChefOn Wednesday, they proposed a game to the contestants that was full of prejudice.The jury presented the participants with exquisitely crafted desserts. They were delicious little cakes made with black sesame and currants, with golden touches.They were made by a pastry chef of Chinese origin, who wonderfully fuses French and Far Eastern pastry techniques.The suspicious "but" in the middle of the sentence already grated and foreshadowed the absurdity. As if the French touch were what truly elevated the pastry. They proposed that the contestants prepare the same desserts and announced:You'll have the help of the creator! Let's welcome the pastry chef who created these tarts!"But, to everyone's surprise, three Chinese women appeared on set, not one. Even more dismaying was discovering the reason:"We want to test your intuition. If you guess which of these three women is the creator of these Asian-fusion tarts, you'll have her help for one minute at a time of your choosing."They had to guess the correct Chinese character."The camera showed the three women, side by side. Numbers 1, 2, and 3 were pinned to their shirts, and they were given a clue: beyond the pastry chef, another was a violinist, and the third an extra. The last two were only there to mislead and create confusion in the "guess the correct Chinese woman" game. The test was reminiscent of the most racist games of The anthill.They asked the girls to show their hands. They eliminated the first one by having her play the violin, and ultimately, they were wrong in their choice. Up until then, they hadn't even bothered to announce the pastry chef's name or her professional qualifications, as they had done the previous week with a chef. They gave no professional background whatsoever on Tian Lu.The program implicitly activated a mechanism identified by multiple studies on racism: the supposed interchangeability of racialized bodies. The test reinforced the Western racist prejudice that all Asians look alike. It subtly played on the premise that it's difficult to distinguish between three Chinese women, stimulating a kind of perceptual challenge. Turning this bias into a game is to normalize it to absolutely unacceptable levels. The test wasn't based on culinary skill but on the ability to identify different faces. Furthermore, the idea amplified the exoticization of the pastry chef and obscured her professional competence. Would they have taken three French chefs and made them show their hands and play the violin? Would they have hired a Frenchman who was a bit of a showman just to throw people off the scent? With a French pastry chef, would they have simply stated his first name without acknowledging his expertise? Making racialized people lose their individuality is a way of dehumanizing them and turning them into mere tools at the service of the program. It is very serious that a public television station tolerates this.