Dr. Martin Luthor King was a great man. He stood for more than his human frailties and human imperfections have been made out to be the real man. He was, as most important people are, greater than the sum of his parts. And he had a dream.

It was not segregation. It was not exploitation. It was not total ignorance to generations of suffering. It was reality.

But today, reality is determined by cheaply produced, highly profitable wasteland television programs; Survivor now taking its place as the worst.

And that is what our kids are watching.

Generations of kids have grown up watching their parents fight for equal opportunity. They watched as good hearted people stood up only to be knocked down for daring to enforce the laws of the land and before there were laws, for daring to try to make sense out of ignorant chaos.

A generation listened to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sing "Teach Your Children" and many actually heard the words. "You who are on the road, Must have a code that you can live by".

To those who heard what the song was saying the present environment of 'reality' programming makes one pause. Just what 'reality' is being displayed as 'reality'?

Struggling through the brush, or diverting death in a jungle is one thing as the teams competing were competing against the game. But not this year. Survivor has graduated (or sunk) to the level of defining 'reality' not as the game of Survival, but by the make up of the teams.

On August 28, 1963 Dr. King stood before the country and said, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

And yet, CBS has devised a program that will begin airing on September 13, 2006, where teams are judged not only by the color of the skin but by not one shred of their character; just their cunning and emotional outbursts and immature responses to threatening situations. It is a dream gone nightmare.

In a time when the nation still reeks of isolated bigotry, in a time when the country is still torn apart by ignorance and disdain for anything or anyone not perfectly like each other, in a time when to this day people assume they can get away with segregation and bigotry and hatred for those unlike themselves; CBS finds the topic of the test of racial superiority to be a worthy avenue for entertainment.

While our children have learned how to emotionally respond to trying situations by accusing the other guy of cheating; while our children have learned how to ignore personal responsibility by blaming it on the rules; while our children have learned how to overpower competition through verbal assaults instead of overcome competition through superiority of thought, CBS finds it entertaining to pit one racial group against another and they do it in stereotypical fashion.

A white team. A black team. An Asian team. A Spanish team. To CBS that is what race is. A category to place people in regardless of their individual ability to stand out in the team. The very premise of elimination fails miserably to encourage shining. It promotes negative instead.

How do members of each racial team find themselves lumped into file folders? Is a Japanese person the same as a Chinese person? Is a Spaniard the same as a Mexican? Is it not true that we are all human and any effort, especially one in which our children will be watching and learning should be condemned for thinking the topic of racial division should not be one glorified on television?

According to Mark Burnett, creator of Survivor: Cook Islands, as reported by Contact Music.com slams survivor critics_1006792; "By putting people in tribes, they clearly have to get rid of people of their own ethnicity. So that's not racial at all."

Oh yes it is Mr. Burnett. It changed the game from competition to win the game, to competition between races to win the game. Each 'tribe' may be eliminating their own race but at the end it will be one of each race against each other race and that person will be known by the color of their skin or the race they are, far more than their individual abilities to survive. The consequence of Burnett's not considering consequence is a return to what our children should never have to live again.

As Graham Nash penned, "Teach your children well, Their father's hell did slowly go by, And feed them on your dreams, The one they picks, the one you'll know by."

If CBS has their way, father's hell will be youth's destiny. At least General Motors recognized the seriousness of the problem and pulled their advertising of the program. "Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry, So just look at them and sigh and know they love you." I now plan to make my next vehicle a GM.

Dr. King also said, "...we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Not if CBS has their way.

So next, to keep up the excitement; I suggest CBS create next year's show as Survivor: Idol Mania; and pit teams of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus in a battle for religious superiority, eliminating each contestant as they fail to carry the message well enough and ending with the final survivor, descending into hell for exploiting what should be a personal experience. News coverage could use current events to entice viewership and the hype and hoopla of the anger of all religions could only increase the ratings of the show. Unless more advertisers pull the plug and shut this disgrace down now.