Who are the minority? Visual representation in media and digital spaces
What is the role of media in constructing minority ethics identities and the development of race relations? Can they contribute to an atmosphere of mutual understanding and inclusion concerning different ethnic groups, or are they more likely to exclude, foster misunderstanding and divide? Longer-term and more recent migration patterns have resulted in high ethnic diversity within populations, such as that in the UK.
In these contexts, who are the minority? When used in its numerical sense, the term minorities refer to small groups in number, less than the majority? It’s often been applied to people of colour or diverse backgrounds in western society because individual groups such as race, gender and religion did not comprise a large percentage of the national population. Over time, it became a convenient umbrella under which any white characteristics could be a label. The use of some terms has been especially prevalent and perhaps sensitive when used in the media.
Gutiérrez.F and Wilson (1995), notes the relationship between media and ethnic identities focuses on the connection between media constructions of nation and exclusionary or racist forms of discourse; representation of ethnic minority groups in media engage with debates about stereotyping (p 43). The small number of Black Asian Minority ethnic (BAME) journalists and their position in non-directive roles helped to explain the stereotyped portrayals of these ethnic groups in the media (Greenberg & Mazingo, 1976).
Media by different ethnic minority and migrant groups, focusing mainly on specialists and global consumption; the implications of such specialist media use for the facilitation of transnational ethnic communities and the relations between such groups and the broader population among whom they reside.
Racism and exclusion
In countries espoused in democratic principles, it is interesting to see the relationship between issues raised by ‘minorities’ vs those of the majority. Three quarters (75%) of people, in general, portray the UK as a democratic country (up from 67% in 2012) but the YouGov Democracy study (2020) finds that the British public thinks that some aspects of what enables such a society are in danger. This is reflected in public perception of how well democracy works — the same YouGov Democracy Study shows that only six and ten people (63%) find the democratic principles of the UK to be working well (Dinic, 2020).
Racial differences are now widely accepted as a cultural norm, with academic research focusing attention on both biological differences and historical human behaviours. Historically, specific sets of interactions and representations established that, while some of the characteristics that differentiate humans is ignored, others such as skin colour, forms the foundation for collective racial types regarded as naturally distinct. Important in the development of such understanding were negative western representations of the perceived characteristics of coloured individuals throughout the days of slavery and colonialism.
Whether through literature, music, drama, journalism or cartoon, racial exploitation was justified by representing those on the receiving end as irrational, animalistic, lazy, uncivil, childlike and depending on the context, either dependant slaves or savage natives (Pieterse, 1992). Using the example of Richard Okorogheye, from the second Richard disappeared into the London night, his case correlated with others. For better or worse, online media has made missing people a game of compare and contrast; immediately, Richard’s name started to be referenced close by those of other individuals of colour whom the authorities had noticeably failed in recent months.
With statements such as: “If you care about [insert missing white person’s name here], you should be talking about [insert missing black person’s name here]”, was a familiar theme, along with: “Why is no one talking about [insert black person’s name here]?”
Frequently, Richard’s image appeared to set in opposition to Sarah Everard; the 33-year-old marketing executive kidnapped and killed in March by a metropolitan police officer, or Madeleine McCann, the little child who notoriously disappeared in Portugal a decade earlier. The shared characteristics with Richard and Sarah are those of shared institutional police negligence. The distinctions in the conditions of their disappearance and media coverage are significant.
More recent forms of white bigoted/racist discourse, developed in the context of the migration of the populations from colonies to western countries, have drafted away from ideas of normal or natural racial inadequacy and the thought of fundamental social-cultural differences.
They were considered to make co-presence of the different groups inside a similar territory undesirable: a danger to every one of their characters and a reason for regular aggression and struggle. Reliable with such accentuation on a domain, Barker (1981) stressed that the ‘new racism’, as he at that point called it, unpredictably interlaced with national character development.
An example of this was when Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Mr David Lammy was speaking on his LBC show a few weeks back on March 29, and a guest who went simply by the name Jean called in and stated: “that he ‘will not ever be English since you are African-Caribbean”. Mr Lammy countered her answer by saying:
- ‘England 400 years prior began going out into the world, colonised and conquered a ton of the world, a ton of the world has wound up returning to the motherland. His parents were part of that generation who came from the Caribbean. When he took a DNA test, he had Scottish in him, probably as a result of that. Someone, frankly, got their leg over with one of his ancestors, and now he has got Scottish blood running through him, continuing to say let’s be clear about that, and that he has grown up in this country, born of this country’.
Political reactions to the migration Black Asian minority ethnics (BAME) population to the United Kingdom from the mid-twentieth century onwards provide a case in point. Anti-immigration rhetoric focused upon the infringement of basically extraordinary ‘other’ onto the British domain and the subsequent danger to (white) British social-cultural identity (Solomas, 1993).
Greensdale (2005) suggests that asylum seekers have also attracted increasing press attention in the last fifty years in the U.K. Karpf (2002) reported that the daily mail published over 200 articles about displaced people in 2000 alone in a piece for the Guardian. Following a moderately tranquil few year the broader discussion around immigration intensified ahead of the general elections, recent headlines in the U.K. suggested that asylum seekers were living luxurious lifestyles at the taxpayer expense.
Despite expanding media coverage, few research studies look at how refugees and asylum seekers have been discursively constructed in the U.K. media. Those studies that have, the most striking finding has been the utilisation of water metaphors (floods, tides, swamped) in media reports about displaced people and asylum seekers (Pickering 2001; Baker and McEnery 2005; Baker et al. 2008; Gabrielatos and Baker 2008, KhosraviNik 2009).
In 2015, huge quantities of Syrian refugees seeking passage to the United Kingdom from France were depicted by British ex-prime minister David Cameron as a ‘swarm’. The country’s 2016 referendum on the European Union (E.U.) membership was also dominated by emphasising national sovereignty and anti-immigration rhetoric.
Elsewhere ex U.S. presidential candidate Donald trump rhetoric about the need to protect the United States from Muslim immigrants to Black live matter protest at the centre of a broader campaign about the decline of the U.S. as a nation and the need to make the country ‘great again’.
Such associations between constructions of country and exclusionary, bigoted/racist discourse have driven some to the analysis of all types of nationalism inside media — the feeling of shared experience and belonging fundamental for significant nationalist articulation considered an unavoidable limit among insiders and outsiders.
Identities, all things considered, are social, which implies each ‘us’ is dependent upon its separation from at least one ‘them’ (Woodward, 1997). In Enoch Powell’s detailing, the ‘us’ comprised of a specific white British personality, given importance by its fundamental contrast from workers’ way of life. What’s more, while contemporary portrayals of Britishness typically incorporate some ethnic minorities, unequivocal and verifiable talks of racial avoidance persevere while ethnic minorities keep on confronting underestimation inside national media channels.
Representation
The clear quitting from mainstream national media of some ethnic minority crowds carries us to some long-running conversations about portrayals of marginalised groups in the nations’ broad communications outlets. Such discussions about representation concern the degree to which ethnic minorities are represented inside such media and the specific ways.
Media on the two sides of the Atlantic have a past filled with under-representing ethnic minorities. Minority bunches give off an impression of being significantly underrepresented in computer games. An investigation of 150 well-known games by Dmitri Williams and associates (2009) found that black, mixed-race and Asian characters were all underrepresented.
As Williams and colleagues point out, minority kids are more likely than their white partners to play computer games. However, they and their more seasoned friends are left incapable to play, collaborate with individuals of their identity inside virtual universes.
British artist Stormzy has become one of many British artists into the gaming field, showing up in Watch Dogs: Legion, a 2020 action-adventure game developed and published by Ubisoft. As indicated by creative director Clint Hocking, Watch Dogs Legion’s is based on “speaking up for the oppressed and holding those in power accountable,” which is the reason Stormzy’s name came up among Londoners to be associated with the game (Stormzy takes starring role in Watch Dogs game, 2020).
As one example of what Hocking is referring to, Stormzy called out Theresa May and associates over the U.K. government’s reaction to the Grenfell Tower fire. In which 72 individuals passed on, at the 2018 Brit Awards: “You should do some jail time, you should pay some damages, we should burn your house down and see if you can manage this,” he rapped.
Ethnic minority media presence in U.K. media was lacking before the 1980s when racial agitation provoked a collaborative endeavour to receive a more comprehensive methodology. Despite significant upgrades in the many years which followed, Sreberny (1999) disapproved of closing in 1999 that ‘On the off chance that you flick through the national channels for ten minutes, everything is white, white, white’ (1999: 27). An assessment affirmed in 2001 by BBC Director-General Greg Dyke, who portrayed his partnership as ‘repulsively white’.
Let’s examine representation from an institutional and industry point of view more generally. It is clear that the situation has improved, but there remains significant under-representation in key decision-making roles. While Ofcom (2007a) reports in 2007 that they accounted for 9.3% of U.K. broadcasters’ employees as a whole, even by 2016, ethnic minorities occupied just one of 46 seats on the country’s four boards major broadcasters (Phillips 2016).
Stereotypical Representations
The subject of under-or over-representation, be that as it may, involves just a piece of the story. This is on the grounds that, in any event, when present, the jobs in which ethnic minorities have been portrayed in media have would in general be confined and cliché, building a restricted and summed up form of such populations’ lives and personalities.
Among the generalisations that created during the long stretches of slavery and colonialism were the committed and honest ‘Uncle Tom’; the lethargic, uninformed ‘Coon’; the overwhelming ‘Mammy’; the ‘giddy’ performer; and the dangerous, animalistic native — every one of whom introduced those of African beginning as unreasonable and mediocre.
By the 1990s, it was not unexpected to consider black individuals to be as police, doctors, news presenters, or even decent circumstance satire families. Meanwhile, in recent decades, black male Hollywood entertainers, for example, Denzel Washington, Samuel Jackson, Morgan Freeman and Will Smith have been projected in a scope of featuring Hollywood projects, including the last as President of the United States in blockbuster, Deep Impact in 1998. something that ended up preceding the appointment of Barak Obama, a black president a decade later. More recently, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, perhaps the most distinctly expected, discussed and watched blockbusters for quite a long time, included black British entertainer John Boyega is one of the film’s two lead jobs. The central role of black actors highlights the apparent gap in representation in awards upstream from the films produced.
Controversy erupted in 2016 about the continuing exclusion of minority characters from the Hollywood establishment when Oscar nominations did not include a single non-white actor for the second year running. Whether this reflected the ethnic make-up of Academy members, the lack of availability to ethnic minority actors of crucial roles in critically acclaimed films, or a combination of these, has been hotly debated.
The circumstance is especially problematic for ethnic minority women; a couple of notable exemptions continue to be excluded from prominent roles in a reasonable representation of how racial and sexual orientation inconveniences can converge.
Meanwhile, large numbers of the most conspicuous representations of African Americans across media stay restricted and stereotypical. For instance, in the music industry, opportunities for black artists are essentially confined to R&B, hip hop and related classifications.
Meanwhile, despite of critical indications of broadening lately, considerable parts of standard hip hop stay overwhelmed by generalisations of urban gang culture. Portraying a mix of male criminality, violence and heterosexual aggression on the one hand and — sometimes — passive, sexualised and commodified female groupies on the other (Perry 2003).
A long way from the grassroots empowerment associated with some earlier and more specialist forms of hip hop, such views — outlined strikingly in the 2006 narrative, Beyond Beats and Rhymes — keep on representing a huge extent of the intervened portrayals of black culture found in the United States and across the globe. What’s more, significantly, such models are sifted, advanced and energised by a generally white-overwhelmed music industry whose essential market is white consumers, inciting Tricia Rose to regret ‘the dangerous powers of popularised assembling of ghetto street life’ (Rose 2008: ix).
In the U.K. and Europe, images of ethnic minorities often relate closely to U.S. representations. BAME’s depictions have centred consistently on criminality, violence, and trouble with images of angry young non-white men dominating news media moral panics. About muggings in the 1970s (Hall et al. 1978), and urban riots, gang culture, shootings and stabbings in the decades that followed (Malik 2002; Alexander 2000). Most recently, the London riots of 2011 saw a notable return to newspaper front pages of young black men engaged in street violence.
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