'True Colors' Makes Outing Racism Hilarious

I’m a huge fan of Top Chef, I follow The Ultimate Fighter, and I occasionally tune into Survivor, but I never understood why they called it “reality TV” when all the people on the shows are hamming it up for the camera. It’s shows like Candid Camera and Punk’d – hidden camera shows that place people in unusual, uncomfortable situations – that are the real reality TV shows.

Enter True Colors, a new hidden camera show produced by Dwayne Smith (who you may remember as a lonelygirl15 writer) and Lisa Bohacek (one of the people responsible for inflicting The Simple Life on TV audiences) for Sony Pictures TV’s Crackle.com. True Colors takes the normal premise for a hidden camera show – filming people under duress in a public setting – and focuses on creating racially charged situations to, well, show a person’s true colors. Why do I feel like I’ve seen this on Chappelle’s Show before?

The results are as hilarious as they are revealing. The pilot episode, “White Reparations” has one cast member working the mall floor for a petition – a petition to give white people financial compensation if they can prove that their ancestors had “property” confiscated from them – namely, African American slaves. Naturally, plenty of passers-by are completely appalled, but a few seem intrigued at the prospect of free money. “If you had something taken from you, whether it’s money, or a newspaper article, or a cow, I think you should deserve to have it back,” says one young woman, to which another cast member – a black man – simply says, “So we’re cows now? Mooooooo.”

If that caught your eye, go ahead and watch over at Crackle or catch the trailer for some tantalizing glimpses of other upcoming episodes, including “White Tax”, “Whites Only Jeans”, and “Dr. KKK”. New episodes will be coming out every Wednesday, so stay tuned.