In breaking down her journey from casting to her life after Survivor: Edge of Extinction, Julia Carter recalls hearing the n-word used repeatedly at Kama.
Though I am rarely, if ever, the guy who capes for the underedited player in a Survivor season to get more screentime just because, Julia Carter was a special exception in Edge of Extinction. For starters, she was a focal point for one of the most explosive, longest Tribal Councils in the show’s history, and for us not to have an understanding for a character behind it makes no sense.
It took five episodes before we saw Julia’s name appear on the bottom of the screen, which is a testament to the failure of the season’s design; we were given so much time to people voted out of the game that they couldn’t develop a cast of 18 (four of which were returning players) better than they could a cast of 20.
It meant not getting an understanding of who Julia Carter was in Survivor: Edge of Extinction, which is why we’re more than grateful that she took the time to recount her story on her personal blog. There, she talks about her casting process, how she got on the show, and her thoughts on pivotal moments from the show.
However, one of the first experiences she can recall in Fiji should be something nobody should hear; she overheard a fellow castaway on the Kama tribe use a racial slur in a quote used for a “guess the movie” style of game. To defuse the situation, she stated the movie it came from, Django, but not a few days later someone used the n-word again in reference to an episode of South Park.
Thankfully, Ron Clark publicly told that person they were wrong to use that word and comforted Julia in private earlier about the first usage of the word, but as a Survivor fan, the fact that we heard this story after the fact because Julia’s experience with racism (which included emotional confessionals talking about it) was completely erased from the show is ludicrous.
It’s not like Survivor hasn’t dealt with racism or race-related issues on the show before. A Tribe of One broke down the tales of Ben Browning’s racism on Samoa perfectly, and who could forget the infamous “rice wars” of Redemption Island. Whether it’s the use of coded words like “ghetto” or calling someone “aggressive,” or using demeaning terms for people of a sexual minority, it’s appeared on the show before.
The point of bringing this up isn’t to name and shame the person who said these things (if she isn’t pointing fingers, neither should you), but to highlight the continued ways that Edge of Extinction let its viewers down.
I’ve spoken about how bad the season twist was at length before, but the fact that they erased racist moments from the show illustrates the lack of fullness of every player’s stories. She shouldn’t have had to hear it, and the show shouldn’t have pretended it didn’t happen.
I implore you to read the entirety of the blog for yourself; it’s a fascinating read into a player who, despite being so pivotal to Survivor history, was the least represented player of the season.