Would you stake your life on it?

More reaction on the great "Survivor" diversity experiment. GM has withdrawn its ads but says it has nothing to do with the controversial content. Wellll, OK. There's this fascinating quote in defense of the show:

Show creator Mark Burnett said Tuesday that many of those criticizing the new approach haven't ever seen the show and don't understand how it works.

"By putting people in tribes, they clearly have to get rid of people of their own ethnicity," he told The Associated Press during a conference call. "So it's not racial at all."

So, they're encouraging people to deal with outside threats by turning on each other. That's really in the American spirit, huh?

I used to argue with people about diversity more than I do now, and I would do something like this to try to get the point across that it was a distraction from what's important rather than a definer of it. Why do you have the car you have? I would ask. The price, some would say, or the comfort, or the reliability. Do you know the ethnic makeup of the assembly line that put it together? No, almost to a person. If you had known, would it have made a difference in your decision to buy that car? Some said yes, some no.

I wonder what reaction I'd get if I put it this way: If you desperately needed an operation that was the only chance to save your life and were told the best surgeon in the field was available, would you care what race or ethnicity the surgeon represented? If you had a chance to encourage diversity in the hospital staff with your choice, would you be willing to accept, say, the 10th-best surgeon?