big brother australia

‘Big Brother’ Is Being Called Out After Three POC Were Evicted In The First Week

Tell us you love Punkee without telling us you love Punkee. Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter. It'll mean the world.

Big Brother Australia returned this week with a brand new format which includes an elimination every episode.

The new format involves challenges between housemates, with the winning housemate able to choose three people to nominate for elimination, before the other housemates vote on who goes. Think Survivor but with people stuck in a big house instead of on an island, and who don’t seem to play the game with that much obvious strategy.

However, if you’ve been watching Big Brother this week, you would’ve noticed that the three people evicted this week – Laura, Allan, and SooBong – have all been people of colour and fans of the show are rightfully calling this out.

While Laura and SooBong were challenge threats and Allan’s social game worked against him, there’s something to be said for the implicit bias we’re seeing unfold on our screens as the housemates decide who to evict.

Fans of Big Brother aren’t happy about how the evictions have worked this week:

The eliminated contestants have since said it was a coincidence in an interview with Huffington Post Australia.

“It was coincidence, it was a bit of bad luck and it just happened that Laura is of that ethnicity and that she is a strong person athletically,” Allan said. “Then you’ve got me who is the brains behind the operation that plays a great social game, and then you’ve got Soobong who everyone thought was a threat because he’s quite an interesting character.”

Laura did point out in the interview that there had been an “us vs. them” mentality. “Inside the house, obviously Angela and Allan were the only two people I thought I could relate to,” she said. “There’s this kind of unspoken language where we will immediately band and respect each other knowing when you’re in the presence of a lot of white people.”

Look, I don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather watch a whole hour of SooBong doing push-ups on his fingers and toes than hear Talia passive-aggressively say “it was just a JOKE” again.

We have reached out to Channel 7 for a statement.