Page 275 - Culture Society and the Media

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How the media report race

PETER BRAHAM

INTRODUCTION
Since 1948 when the first post-war West Indian immigrants arrived on the
Empire Windrush, the number of black people resident in Britain has risen to
more than one million. Though there has in this period been substantial white
immigration, the word ‘immigrant’ has come to be generally employed as a
synonym for ‘black’, thereby excluding the large number of immigrants to
Britain who are white and including the large number of black people who were
born here. Thus most people would assume that a headline which read
‘IMMIGRANT BIRTHS UP’ would be about an increase in the black population.
Many of the connotations of the word ‘black’ are to be found in Britain’s colonial
past. According to Dilip Hiro for example, in most white people’s minds dark
pigmentation is associated with ‘dirt, poverty, low social status, low intelligence,
animal sexuality, primitiveness, violence and a general inferiority’ (1973, p.
280). If black people arrived in Britain with the stigma of slavery and
subordinate colonial status attached to them, as immigrants they came to be
associated with undesirable behaviour such as mugging, and with social
problems such as urban decay, poor housing and overcrowding. The ease with
which negative symbols can be culled from their colonial history and their
present status are perfectly encapsulated in the Daily Express headline, ‘POLICE
FIND 40 INDIANS IN BLACK HOLE’ (cited in Hartmann et al, 1974, p. 275).
The growth in Britain’s black population has given rise to much private and
public debate, to a number of Acts of Parliament—some designed to control
further immigration and others to counter discrimination, to a great deal of
research into race relations, as well as to a great deal of conflict and hostility. It
is against this background that the way the media report race must be considered.
Race and immigration are very controversial issues, arousing strong emotions. It
is therefore to be expected that media coverage will itself be controversial, that
what is reported and the way it is reported will be very sensitive matters. This
will be so whether race is approached with caution on the grounds that it is
potentially explosive, whether it is felt best that all the tensions and hostility
which surround race relations are fully aired, or whether those within the media