Episode Report Card Sara M: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Race Wars
By Sara M | Season 22 | Episode 10 | Aired on 04.20.2011
Rob, of course, has no intention of voting for anyone except Julie, Steve, or Ralph. He admits that Phillip's behavior concerns him and he knows that his tribe has enough numbers to vote him out without losing the majority, but he's only saying that to try to instill some kind of suspense in what will be an obvious boot.
The contestants arrive at Tribal Council. Phillip is wearing his underwear, his feather, his buff and that's about it. David arrives and takes a seat, and Probst asks the big question: WTF Phillip? He asks if Phillip's lack of clothing is due to another meditation, and Phillip angrily says that this is Zapato's fault, as one of them stole his clothes. David grins. Probst asks if Phillip was looking at Steve. Phillip says he was, because he's sure that he was the one who took his clothes. Probst asks if Phillip is using his Former Federal Agent? skills to determine this. Phillip says he is. Julie smiles. Phillip tells the story of how he confronted Steve over his alliance consuming all the rice, saying that it's been "war between the two tribes" since then.
Probst asks Steve if this is true. Steve says Zapato are eating more rice, but that's just because there are fewer of them. Probst asks Andrea if she agrees with Phillip or Steve, and Andrea says it is frustrating to look over and see Zapato with their big bowls of rice while her alliance is stuck with very little rice. Also, she adds, their rice container is full of maggots. Steve knows how to set Phillip off, so he mentions that Phillip made the rice war into a race war and how he said the N-word when all Steve wanted to do was nap. "Whoa!" says Probst at the mention of the N-word. Julie speaks up and says things got really ugly and Phillip was threatening Steve was physical violence. Steve agrees. Probst just wants to know who brought up the N-word in the first place. Oh come on, Probst. If Steve was the one who said it, I'm pretty sure you would already know. Julie quickly says it was Phillip. Phillip agrees and says he only said it because he was making a "rational argument" about how they should put their rice in Zapato's container, and Steve called him crazy out of nowhere. He thinks that Steve called him crazy because he knew he couldn't call him the N-word, which is what he was thinking.
Probst tries to figure out what Phillip is saying, but Philip keeps going, quoting Richard Pryor and saying that when black people confront "certain types of individuals," those individuals will think they are crazy N-words. Um, or something. I mean, I am all for a race debate, but this is difficult to recap because Phillip actually is crazy [Stop being racist, Sara! -- Angel] and it's hard to understand the point he's trying to make. Probst tells Phillip he's going to have to explain this better, because Probst isn't getting it. "Do you know what it's like to be a woman?" Phillip asks. " ... I don't," Probst says, only momentarily thrown by the question. Phillip sort of has a point, though, which is that Probst doesn't know what it's like to be black, either. Probst tries to stop Phillip, but he will not be stopped. He demands that Probst let him finish. We will be here all night. Phillip says that when he was a federal agent in the unnamed "department" that he worked for, he was the only black person out of 67 agents. I think that's more because the other 66 agents were fictional, and therefore no race at all. He says he knew when his co-workers were being racist just like a woman knows when a man is talking down to her. And he gets that vibe from Steve, who shakes his head.