So the new season of "Survivor", where competitors are divided into four tribes - whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics - has been condemned everywhere, including myself on this blog where I suggested that producer Mark Burnett was taking the television industry to a new ethical low.

But commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson begs to differ in this provocative piece in AlterNet.

While the show has been lambasted, the reality is that self-segregation in America is thriving and the racial divide in business and society is as wide as ever.

Hutchinson writes: "Despite the well-publicized shove to the top of black executives at American Express, Merrill Lynch, and AOL Time Warner, black CEOs are still a rarity at most of the Fortune 1000 corporations. The overwhelming majority of senior managers at these companies are white males. Many blacks discover that departments or divisions within the same company are top heavy with black employees and managers while others are virtually lily-white.

"Years later many still find themselves stuck in the same dead-end positions, or stacked into the corporate ghetto jobs or positions such as director, VP, or manager of community relations, or equal employment opportunity or human resources, or assigned to oversee special markets (i.e. black or minority)."

He has a good point. But turning it into entertainment is unlikely to make Americans address the issue.