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Never mind that Upchurch seemed quite clearheaded when she cited her exclusion from a ''sorority-like, cliquish-type girl thing.'' Set aside the disgraceful mean-girl groupthink of the 20-watt nincompoops (sorry for the name-calling, but they started it!) on Stacie's team. This isn't about the injustice of Stacie's elimination -- we're not talking about the World Court. It's about the perpetuation of an ugly reality TV stereotype: the Angry/Crazy Black Woman.

Stacie seems to have been cast as a sequel to Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, the African American who, as the breakout villainess of The Apprentice's first season, helped turn Survivor creator Mark Burnett's latest creation into a Thursday-night staple. Omarosa had entire promos built around her scariness! (''Two words: Oma. Rosa.'') But her commodification as an African-American menace to corporate stability left a sour aftertaste, as the depiction of black women often does in Burnett's shows. Remember Survivor's rageful Ghandia, with her accusations of sexual harassment? Or the finger-snapping oh-no-you-didn't Alicia? Sure, there was also Vecepia Towery, who lay low, played the game shrewdly, and won. But she's the exception to a casting rule that increasingly dictates that women of color on reality TV be volatile and touchy, a little pepper in the big bowl of vanilla pudding that these shows would become without them. In other words, maybe Upchurch, a would-be entrepreneur from Harlem, was cast to make trouble. ''The producers want to make a No. 1 show at anyone's expense,'' says Upchurch. ''They have different characters they want to fill.''

''It's only Americans who actually think this way,'' says Burnett, who is British, when asked if race played any part in the group's takedown of Upchurch. ''Till you just asked me, I hadn't ever thought about it. It's a bunch of real people representing a fair diversity of the country. I'm not going to sanitize it.''

But some reality shows have better ways to define diversity. CBS' The Amazing Race has won two consecutive Emmys in part by realizing that diverse ''casting'' means assembling a variety of interesting personalities, not creating an all-Ken-and-Barbie show and then adding token African Americans or gays to stir things up. And on America's Next Top Model's season premiere, exec producer Tyra Banks said, with bracing bluntness, ''I don't want to cast another black bitch.'' (Would that have topped a white male producer's list of concerns? As Stacie J.'s Magic 8 Ball might say, Don't Count on It.)

Banks solved her problem by picking 14 finalists who included 6 women of color, unimaginable outside of UPN. In an era when the major networks have decided that African-American viewers aren't particularly worth pursuing, it's hardly a surprise to watch Donald Trump blithely dismiss a black woman because ''I don't need a person that's got a problem.'' But the episode also underscored what a load of nonsense The Apprentice is selling about the corporate world. In real life, Stacie's next stops would have been human resources and a good lawyer. Now, there's a reality show we'd like to see.

(Reporting by Jennifer Armstrong)