‘Summer House’ Addresses the Race ‘Elephant in the Room’ After Five Long Years

“Summer should be fun!!!!”

That’s the war-cry Kyle Cooke—long-time castmate and near-40-year-old Peter Pan of Bravo’s Summer House—wails each time petty drama fractures the house of twenty- and thirty-somethings whilst they “summer” in the Hamptons.

Summer House is ostensibly about nothing at all, which is why I’ve been watching it for five years. My brain immediately turns off as it witnesses this group of mouthy New Yorkers sit in four hours of traffic (each way) in the name of blacking out and fucking randos they met at Southampton Social Club. The drama is generally born out of the weekly group drinking sessions, which usually involve women flashing each other and then yelling at pre-sobriety Carl Radke for playing them like a bunch of tanned, bikini-adorned fiddles. Indeed, the entire show is pure ecstasy in that it is truly just a bunch of pretty people taking jello shots, throwing America-themed ragers, and screaming “WOO!” No one asked for this (not even the town of East Hampton), and yet, I would sooner shave off my eyebrows than miss an episode.

This is why I was shocked when an exchange in the fifth episode of season 6 snapped me out of my catatonic watching state. Summer should be mindless. Summer should be a time for Kyle to disassociate from his $4 million in debt and marital problems, but six seasons in, thanks to the show’s two Black housemates, summer will be…full of mature and meaningful discussions about race.

The show that Ciara Miller (Season 5) and Mya Allen (Season 6) initially walked into was too busy chronicling emotionally stunted adults to notice that it had taken four years to cast a Black housemate in a city that is pretty fucking diverse. By design, Summer House touched upon alcoholism, grief, and strained parental relationships long before it dared to touch race; a conceit following the blueprint set forth by other Bravo shows that center on excessive drinking first and money flowing out the ass second.

Even in the morally depraved realm of reality television, which has faced its own sort of reckoning, race is now unavoidable. In just the last few years, we’ve seen former Bachelor-franchise host Chris Harrison pressured into leaving the shows he hosted for nearly two decades after defending contestant Rachael KirkConnell’s past racism; Bravo fired Vanderpump Rules stars Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute for calling the cops on their Black castmate for a crime she was not involved in; Real Housewives of Beverly Hills castmate Sutton Stracke was quick to morph into a Karen after telling her Asian costar that she “doesn’t see color;” while Dorit Kemsley, hoping to prove she knows people of color, said in that same season, “We’ve had a lot of people that work for us that are very multicultural…I’ve had a lot of Black and Hispanic and Filipino…These are some of the people who [my kids have] loved most in this world, are dark-skinned.”

In Summer House, Allen had been subjected to several glaring microaggressions, some of which included Andrea “Italian Stallion” Denver blatantly ignoring Allen’s presence and calling her the wrong name despite having lived with her for a month, as well as Paige DeSorbo openly confusing Allen with Miller. Allen shared in a tearful beach chat with Miller that she felt ostracized as one of the few people of color in the house. This chat prompted the two women to sit the entire house down and have a candid conversation about race the following day.

“You cannot diversify a show that’s been historically white and not have a conversation like this,” Miller told Jezebel. “We couldn’t go another season without it. We can’t have multiple people of color and minorities in this house and still not talk about the elephant in the room.”

It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen on Summer House, or for that matter, on any reality show.

Allen, a baker with an e-commerce cookie business who is often the first to sneak up to bed while her roommates drink their anxieties away, joined the predominantly white cast this season. Just one year before, her costar Miller had been the lone Black castmate. Allen told Jezebel that while she’s relatively comfortable existing within white spaces—something she’s had to practice since she was 5 years old—she was still cautious heading into filming and called it “nerve-racking for sure.”

“I don’t know that I would have been as comfortable or as gung ho about spending the summer with all these new people if I didn’t have some sort of ally in Ciara,” she explained.

For her part, Miller says that while this is the first time microaggressions have been acknowledged and discussed in a group setting on the show, she’d been dealing with the same issues and addressing them individually from the moment she entered the group.

“Coming into this house is already very intimidating, period. Then, you bring in the fact that you’re coming into this house as a person of color, which is insanely intimidating. When I came into the house my first season, that was the first thing on my mind: I’m the only Black person here. Who’s going to be able to identify with me?” Miller said. “To be the first person in a situation, and to be the first Black person in a situation, is very hard. I feel like I didn’t have anybody to really talk to about the subject.”

Both Allen and Miller told Jezebel that there was more casual racism enacted by party guests than the housemates, which viewers didn’t see. Castmate Alex Wach, who is Asian, also alluded to similar incidents with party guests. Allen emphasized that she “ran into some trouble” at some of the parties they’d thrown, but did not elaborate on what kind of trouble.

We couldn’t go another season without it. We can’t have multiple people of color and minorities in this house and still not talk about the elephant in the room.

What viewers did see, in Allen and Miller’s leading of the conversation, was shockingly well-received by the other housemates. No one got defensive. No one assumed Allen or Miller was attacking them. No one shrieked or threw a glass à la Housewives. Instead, the housemates listened, nodded, apologized, and even cried together. The only reaction close to a guffaw was Luke Gulbranson’s efforts to empathize with the women by saying that he, a white man, also felt ostracized when he joined the show. (Allen says Gulbranson is aware of how this comment came off, and that she doesn’t think he had any malicious intent.)

“It’s a perfect example of how you would hope someone might respond to opening up that difficult conversation,” Allen said. “We were given space to speak our truth. People were asking questions during the conversation, trying to figure out what is appropriate and what’s not. It felt like such a safe space for everybody involved. They’ve set the bar.”

The magnitude of this conversation and the ease of its reception, specifically in the alcohol-induced setting of a reality television show, cannot be understated. These men and women, united in their shared love of twerking on pool floaties, chugging beer, and prowling for hook-ups, have suddenly become a very real example of how to navigate sensitive topics. Miller said she’s even received messages from other women of color who said they’ve never related to anything so much.

Historically, reality stars haven’t really existed to teach us about morality or the institutional ways in which our world is set up to deny the existence of Black and brown people. Reality shows were always meant to showcase (mainly) white people at their worst, so it’s unclear if pointing out their casual racism creates any meaningful change. To put it bluntly: If the objective of reality TV is often to hate-watch abhorrent behavior, are these really shows that can be held responsible for educating the masses on how to treat others?

Miller argues that they are. “Even though the basis of our show is supposed to be fun and light, we’re still people. We’re not these one-dimensional creatures that are just gonna walk and talk and drink alcohol and party,” she said. “We still live this life outside of the Hamptons, and we still, unfortunately, have this stark reality that is battling racism and fighting microaggressions, while also trying to have a good time.”

Perhaps Miller and Allen are trying to give reality television no choice but to actually get real. What a privilege it was to expect a trashy television series to present meaningless drama and casual sex that allowed us to escape into an alternate reality where we were not plagued by racism or a total apathy towards low-income communities or war. I’m not sure that reality can or should return to its blissful ignorance either.