Survivor: Samoa

Ben Browning: the first Survivor player thrown out of a challenge

Jeff Probst warned both Survivor: Samoa tribes that the next cheap shot meant removal from the challenge. In the next round Ben Browning kicked Russell Swan's leg and was pulled out. Contemporaneous reporting called it the first ejection of a castaway from a challenge in the show's history.

Confirmed The removal, the on-air remarks and the vote are carried by contemporaneous reporting and by preserved archive captures of it. Whether Browning is racist is a characterisation he rejects on the record, and it is attributed throughout rather than asserted.

Ben Browning Ben Browning Yasmin Giles Yasmin Giles Jaison Robinson Jaison Robinson Russell Swan Russell Swan

What the record shows

  • Confirmed Jeff Probst warned both tribes not to try "anything resembling a cheap shot," and in the next round Browning kicked Russell Swan in the back of the leg and was removed from the Schmergen Brawl challenge. Reality Blurred and TV Guide each reported it at the time as the first ejection from a challenge in the show's history.
  • Confirmed In the episode that aired 24 September 2009 Browning called Yasmin Giles "ghetto trash" and said she was "pretty close to being a hooker." He also got her name wrong, calling her Jasmine. Two contemporaneous accounts of the broadcast record the same run of remarks.
  • Admitted Browning said the words were deliberate. He told Reality Blurred he picked "ghetto trash" "to piss her off, plain and simple, and it worked," and that "I'm trying to piss her off, I'll say whatever. That doesn't make me a racist, that just makes me a mean bastard."
  • Disputed The remarks were widely described at the time as racist, and Jaison Robinson said on air, "It's the racist comments. I just won't stand here and tolerate that." Browning rejected the label, telling TV Guide, "Not at all, I just think it's funny. I'm so not racist that it makes me laugh."
  • Confirmed Browning was the third castaway voted out, on day 8, by a 6 to 1 vote, finishing 17th in a cast of 20.
  • Unverified No CBS statement, sanction or ban has been located. The removal from the challenge is the only penalty on the record, and nothing reviewed here shows the network took any further action.
  • Unverified Yasmin Giles told Reality Blurred that Browning went after her during the challenge and that she came away with a knot on her head "the size of a golf ball." That is her account. No second source reviewed here records the injury, and Browning was not asked about it in any interview located.

What actually got him thrown out

The challenge was Schmergen Brawl, a full-contact scramble for paper-mache-wrapped balls that Survivor: Samoa aired on 24 September 2009 in its second episode. Andy Dehnart had rehearsed the same challenge in Samoa with the visiting press corps, and wrote the next morning that Browning made show history by kicking Russell Swan in the back of the leg and getting thrown out after Jeff Probst warned the tribes not to try "anything resembling a cheap shot." A week later TV Guide put it in the same terms, calling him the first Survivor cast mate ever to be thrown out of a challenge.

Probst delivered the warning on air, which is why the moment is remembered as Probst ejecting him. Neither contemporaneous account names who made the final call, so the accurate phrasing is that Browning was removed from the challenge after a warning from Probst. Browning disputed the severity, not the outcome. He told TV Guide he had tripped somebody and that "there were head butts and punches and elbows and all kinds of stuff going on," and Reality Blurred reported that he pushed back on the call, saying he had not known they were "playing by your sissy rules."

What he said to Yasmin Giles

Yasmin Giles visited the rival Foa Foa camp in the same episode and the two argued. Dehnart's recap the following morning listed what Browning said about her on air: he called her Jasmine, which is not her name, and then called her "ghetto trash" and said she was "pretty close to being a hooker." Renee Martin, writing at Global Comment two days later, transcribed the same run of remarks and included his line that "she's got really poor grammar." The remarks drew immediate accusations of racism.

Browning did not deny saying them. Speaking to Reality Blurred the morning his elimination aired, he said he chose words like "ghetto trash" "to piss her off, plain and simple, and it worked," and that "I'm trying to piss her off, I'll say whatever. That doesn't make me a racist, that just makes me a mean bastard." He argued Giles had used similar language about herself, saying she "kept saying she was hood and she was ghetto, but if I say that, it's racist."

The tribal council that ended his game

The fallout carried into the next episode, which aired 1 October 2009. Jaison Robinson told the camera he had considered quitting over it: "It's the racist comments. I just won't stand here and tolerate that. I just won't." Instead he confronted Browning at tribal council and dismantled Russell Hantz's argument for keeping him, asking Hantz to "name one thing he's done in a challenge." Browning was voted out 6 to 1 on day 8, the third castaway gone, finishing 17th of 20.

Browning rejected the racist label in both exit interviews he gave the next morning. He told TV Guide, "Not at all, I just think it's funny. I'm so not racist that it makes me laugh," adding, "It's not like I hit a girl or anything like that. It was strictly me sticking up for my tribe." Speaking to Gordon Holmes the same day, he described himself as a personality-ist rather than a racist. His response belongs beside the accusation at equal weight: nobody has adjudicated either.

What he said about Jaison afterwards

The interview Browning gave Reality Blurred went further than the one TV Guide ran. Asked about the tribal council, he opened by complimenting Robinson as "a thinker, for sure," then said, "One thing I just don't like is people trying to play the historic race card. Give it up, dude. It's the human race. We have a black president now." Moments later he added, "get over it, dude; you're not a slave."

Those lines were said to a reporter after the game, not on the broadcast, and only Dehnart reported them. He also told Dehnart that if historic racism mattered, "you guys should be more sensitive to me because I'm a Native American." These are quotations of what Browning said, which is a different thing from a finding about who he is, and this page does not make the second claim.

What the record does not establish

There is no CBS statement, no sanction and no ban. The removal from the challenge is the entire penalty on the record, and the network has never publicly addressed the episode. The widely repeated line that Browning told Giles to go back to grammar school is a paraphrase; the contemporaneous transcription has him saying she has really poor grammar, which is close but is not the sentence people quote.

Giles gave her own account a week later. She said the worst of what Browning said reached her only on television, because it came after their fight, and that "I think I would have went hood if he'd said all those things to my face." At Ponderosa she said he "never initially apologized, but he did say to me, you are much different than I thought." She also said she did not have a problem with him. Her claim that he went after her in the challenge and left her with a knot on her head is hers alone in the sources reviewed here.

People in this story

Questions people ask

Was Ben Browning really the first Survivor player thrown out of a challenge?
That is how it was reported at the time. Reality Blurred called it a moment that made Survivor history and TV Guide called him the first cast mate ever thrown out of a challenge. Both accounts are from September and October 2009.
Why was Ben Browning removed from the challenge?
Jeff Probst warned both tribes not to attempt anything resembling a cheap shot. In the next round Browning kicked Russell Swan in the back of the leg and was pulled from Schmergen Brawl. Browning said he had only tripped someone.
What did Ben Browning say to Yasmin Giles?
On the episode that aired 24 September 2009 he called her Jasmine, called her ghetto trash and said she was pretty close to being a hooker. Two contemporaneous accounts of the broadcast record the same remarks.
Did Ben Browning admit to being racist?
No. He admitted choosing the words to provoke her, telling Reality Blurred it made him a mean bastard rather than a racist, and told TV Guide, "I'm so not racist that it makes me laugh." The accusation and his denial both stand unadjudicated.
Was Ben Browning punished or banned by CBS?
No CBS statement, sanction or ban has been located. The removal from the challenge is the only penalty on the record, and his game ended when his tribe voted him out three days later.
Where did Ben Browning finish on Survivor: Samoa?
Seventeenth of 20. He was the third castaway voted out, going home on day 8 by a 6 to 1 vote, and he has never played again.

Sources

Checked on 2026-07-26. If something here is wrong or out of date, we want to know: get in touch.