tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/racial-stereotyping-15949/articlesRacial Stereotyping – The Conversation2023-12-08T14:17:14Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2195152023-12-08T14:17:14Z2023-12-08T14:17:14ZHow Benjamin Zephaniah became the face of British Rastafari<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/07/british-poet-benjamin-zephaniah-dies-aged-65">sudden and untimely passing</a> of Benjamin Zephaniah at age 65 has rightly brought reflection on his legacy as a poet and as a writer, the two fields in which he made monumental contributions. </p>
<p>Zephaniah’s warmth, his accessibility –- and his lyrical genius – made him a household name and a national treasure. Hear him, in 2018, on BBC Radio 3, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0695pcz">waxing lyrical</a> about his favourite Shakespearean moments. “In Caribbean and African folklore,” he says, “there’s a character called Anansi who’s a spider and a bit of trickster, and it’s very much like Puck.” </p>
<p>See him on a Channel 4 chat show sofa, two years later, as MC Big Narstie asks why he <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-colonialism-and-slavery-why-empire-needs-to-be-removed-from-the-uk-honours-system-129311">turned down an OBE</a>. “I’ve been fighting against empire all my life,” Zephaniah replies. “How could I then go and accept an honour which puts empire on to my name?” </p>
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<p>These same attributes made Zephaniah the most prominent face of the UK Rastafari movement, in which he found his spiritual home. I had the privilege of getting to know him over the course of my research into Rastafari spirituality. </p>
<p>If the evergreen popularity of reggae music has resulted in public recognition of the Rastafari movement in name, in its beliefs, it remains misunderstood and mischaracterised. In the UK, Zephaniah became its standard bearer. His public adherence represented a full frontal challenge to the pervasive criminal stereotypes with which racist politicians and police forces have long tagged Rastafari. </p>
<h2>Persecution of Rastafari</h2>
<p>Zephaniah was born and raised in the Handsworth area of Birmingham in 1958. He came of age in the late 1970s, as the UK fell head first into Thatcherism and the far-right National Front achieved its biggest ever vote tally.</p>
<p>Black Rastafari of the era invariably faced daily racist persecution. Faith-based persecution, endorsed by the establishment, was soon to follow. </p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-19399-8_3">Sociologists</a> point to a 1977 report commissioned by the West Midlands Police and titled Shades of Grey as having been instrumental in creating, as journalist Derek Bishton <a href="https://derekbishton.com/shades-of-grey-a-report-on-police-west-indian-relations-in-handsworth/">notes</a>, “the popular sentiment that Black people were much more predisposed to criminality, and that it was their culture which produced this behaviour”. </p>
<p>The report insidiously associated “hardcore Dreadlocks” with “a criminalised sub-culture”. It asserted this community posed a constant threat to “the peace of individual citizens”. </p>
<p>There was of course crime and violence in the area, as in any other. Indeed, Zephaniah himself has spoken about possessing a gun at one point and also serving time in prison for burglary. </p>
<p>What Brown’s report served to do, however, was to designate this criminality as wholly tied to specific cultural norms. It hinged on a thinly defined and spurious characterisation of Rastafari as a criminal enterprise, rather than the spiritual movement it is.</p>
<p>Criminologists highlight how this false association of <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-people-are-often-associated-with-deviance-but-i-never-understood-the-true-impact-until-i-was-racially-profiled-179259">“deviance”</a> with Black communities and Black culture persists in British society, with horrendous consequences.</p>
<h2>Challenging oppression</h2>
<p>Zephaniah rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s through published poetry and subsequent musical and TV appearances. Through his titanic output, he showed Rastafari to be a vibrant and assertive movement, which rejected violence and hatred, and challenged oppression wherever it resided.</p>
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<img alt="A signed frontispiece in a book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564482/original/file-20231208-15-u3u9pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564482/original/file-20231208-15-u3u9pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564482/original/file-20231208-15-u3u9pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564482/original/file-20231208-15-u3u9pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564482/original/file-20231208-15-u3u9pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=691&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564482/original/file-20231208-15-u3u9pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=691&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564482/original/file-20231208-15-u3u9pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=691&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Eternal optimism: Benjamin Zephaniah’s dedication for the author’s nephew, Henry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joseph Powell</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Zephaniah had seemingly eternal optimism. This never limited his ability to confront. When he appeared on <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0094495">Desert Island Discs in 1997</a>, presenter Sue Lawley asked, what it means to be Rastafari “beyond all the things we know, the dreadlocks and so on?”</p>
<p>Zephaniah inhaled, ever so slightly wearily. Then he replied: “Well, if you can imagine being in a non-Christian country and someone asking ‘Tell us what does it mean to be a Christian’ very quickly, it’s a very difficult thing to do.” He went on to list what he saw as three common uniting threads of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40654506?saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiIxODk3OTU5NS01YzhlLTRjZDctODAwZi03YjVkM2M2NDhmZmEiLCJlbWFpbCI6ImphcDg2QGNhbS5hYy51ayIsImluc3RpdHV0aW9uSWRzIjpbIjNhMWY4MjRiLWUzNzUtNDQ3Mi05YTc3LTg4NmMyODA3OTJiOCJdfQ&seq=9">Rastafari thinking</a>: veneration of former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as divine and Jamaican pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey as a prophet, as well as a spiritual orientation toward Africa. </p>
<p>When I first reached out to Zephaniah <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14769948.2021.1897097#:%7E:text=The%20%E2%80%9Cnatural%20man%E2%80%9D%20premise%20can,to%20those%20first%20in%20creation.">about</a> Rastafari dietary practice, he welcomed me into his office at Brunel University. He explained his view that human intelligence lets us know that killing animals is wrong when there’s an alternative available. </p>
<p>The last time we spoke was in February 2020. He was typically generous with his time, turning what was officially a one-hour slot into a two-hour discussion ranging widely between Extinction Rebellion, the Trump presidency, environmental tokenism and the need for Rastafari to attempt to amplify its voice in ecological debates. </p>
<p>I still now recall his powerful and vivid descriptions of communing with nature and the Almighty in parallel. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For me when I meditate I don’t feel there’s a question about if there’s a God or not, I feel God. And at the same time I’m feeling God I feel my relationship to the tree, I feel my relationship to the grass, I feel my relationship to the animals. There’s a thing I feel more than anything, more than my hand more than my foot, more than my brain. That feels like spirit. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many of the people I’ve interviewed recognise Zephaniah as a figure of authentic and artistic Rastafari spirituality. In a system which still <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rastafari">“downpresses”</a> the movement, his mere presence served to demystify and to normalise it. As he once <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzL9A895KJ0">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The seed of Abraham grows, it will not stop. </p>
<p>And those who see it know, Rastafari is on top.</p>
<p>Great schools and churches have been built to hide us from the real.</p>
<p>But those that built burn in their guilt, as prophecies reveal.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219515/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Powell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Poet, actor, activist and musical luminary, Zephaniah embodied a challenge to the pervasive, racist stereotypes that have long tagged the Rastafari movement in the UK.Joseph Powell, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Divinity, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1972372023-01-19T06:11:38Z2023-01-19T06:11:38ZHow the Fifa20 video game reproduces the racial stereotypes embedded within football<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503282/original/file-20230105-26-7ywgsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/kyiv-ukraine-april-12-2019-guys-1373273969">Lutsenko_Oleksandr | Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>EA Sports’ Fifa football videogame series is arguably the most successful sports gaming franchise of all time. Since its debut in 1993, it has sold over 260 million copies across 29 iterations. This position was reaffirmed in 2022, with its latest instalment, Fifa23, <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/19/fifa-23-is-the-uk-christmas-1-for-video-games-games-charts-17-dec-17960785/">reported</a> as the UK’s highest selling videogame at Christmas. </p>
<p>In Fifa games – soon to be rebranded as EA Sports FC – gamers are able to simulate playing as, and against, their idols, with state-of-the-art graphics and individual player attributes that are assigned to match the abilities of real-world players. It is, as the franchise’s website <a href="https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/fifa/fifa-22/buy/playstation#ea-play-benefits">puts it</a>, the “most true-to-life experience of the world’s game” without physically kicking a ball about. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2022.2109805">recent study</a> into the Fifa20 game shows that physical play wasn’t the only thing the game replicated. It also reproduced – within its very coding – the racial stereotypes that are deeply embedded within the sport.</p>
<h2>How digital players are ranked</h2>
<p>In Fifa, gamers choose to play as almost any professional club or national team. These are digital versions of current, real-world squads, which include players from Paris St Germain’s Kylian Mbappé to Chelsea’s Samantha Kerr. Each player’s performance level is determined by <a href="https://talksport.com/football/1206820/fifa-23-player-ratings-decide-system-pace-michael-muller-mohring-ea-thomas-muller/#:%7E:text=Muller%2DMohring%2C%20a%20fan%20of,made%20up%20of%2035%20attributes">a score</a> of 1 to 99, assigned to them by the game’s data collection team, which determines their ranking within the game. </p>
<p>This score is an aggregate value of the scores the player gets on 29 different competencies. These <a href="https://fifauteam.com/fifa-20-attributes-guide/">range</a> from the player’s ability to perform “long shots” and how high they can “jump” to their “strength” and “aggression”. And the scores are based on the data collection team’s interpretation of the real-world player’s competencies. </p>
<p>In 2020, we collated data from what was, at the time, the latest instalment in the Fifa series: Fifa20. We examined the aggregate scores assigned to the white and black digital players who were ranked as the game’s <a href="https://www.futbin.com/20/players">top 100 players</a>. We found that when it came to competencies that the game itself had classified as “physical”, black players scored more highly in almost all cases compared to white players. </p>
<p>This included in relation to their sprint speed (79.15 to 71.63), ability to jump (78.19 to 71.24), physical strength (76.69 to 72.0), balance (76.69 to 75.45) and levels of aggression (74.04 to 71.5).</p>
<p>When it came to attributes that the game classified as relating to a player’s technical or cognitive ability, the reverse was apparent. White digital players’ scores were, on average, higher than black players in almost all categories. </p>
<p>White players had higher average scores for their ability to cross a ball (72.29 to 71.35), to accurately take free kicks (67.98 to 64.53) and to accurately curve a pass (74.53 to 71.04). They scored more highly for composure (85.4 to 84.62) too. </p>
<p>Put simply, our study found that the aggregate scores for the digital players’ sporting attributes directly correlated with the racial stereotypes associated with black and white footballers in real life.</p>
<h2>The “natural black athlete” stereotype</h2>
<p>Sociological studies on racism in sports commentary <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-in-%20football-new-research-shows-media-treats-black-men-differently-to-white-men-160841">have consistently found</a> that football match commentators overwhelming “see” and praise white athletes for their intelligence and black players for their inherent physical prowess – even when black and white footballers are doing the exact same thing on the pitch. </p>
<p>This racist bias is traceable back to pseudoscience that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00948705.1999.9714583?journalCode=rjps20">emerged</a> in Europe during the enlightenment era. White people were argued to be the most evolved, with the largest skull sizes – the most intelligent, learned and civilised. Black people, conversely, were positioned as the least evolved, with the smallest brains, physically and intellectually as close to other animals as they were to white humans. </p>
<p>These beliefs were deployed to argue that black people were naturally more
durable, faster, stronger and less intelligent than white people. This facilitated the view that black people were inherently better suited to physically demanding labour. It also made them “natural” athletes.</p>
<p>The fact that this perception of black talent as simply the result of players’ biology persists in professional football was perhaps most clearly demonstrated in 2018 by ex-Wimbledon footballer, Vinnie Jones. In a TalkSport radio interview, Jones <a href="https://talksport.com/football/397018/raheem-sterling-exeter-vinnie-jones-england-world-cup/">said</a> that if it were not for Chelsea and England forward Raheem Sterling’s inherent ability to run fast, he would not even be a professional footballer, let alone an England international player. (Jones later said <a href="https://talksport.com/football/442026/vinnie-jones-wrong-about-raheem-sterling-manchester-city/">he’d changed his mind</a>.)</p>
<h2>Why this coding matters</h2>
<p>Numerical values represent the foundation on which videogames are built. They influence every aspect of gameplay. In the case of Fifa20, the attributes coded into the virtual football experience dictated what these digital players could do, how they performed, and their artificial intelligence. Crucially, they shaped what the gamer literally feels when controlling each player. </p>
<p>You play this kind of game with a gaming controller. The tech in these pieces of kit responds to the scores that each player has coded into them. If a player scores high in their ability to dribble or to run fast, that is communicated to you through a series of vibrations you feel through your controller. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://fifauteam.com/fifa-20-attributes-guide/">game’s descriptions</a> of attributes put it plainly: scores for balance “influence how responsive the player you are controlling feels. High stats for agility and balance mean you’ll move fluidly. A low score for balance will mean your player could feel sluggish and unresponsive.” </p>
<p>It follows that the racial differences present within the coding mean that, on average, black and white digital players would feel very different to the gamer who is controlling them. In this sense, players of Fifa20 could well learn racial difference – and often from a very young age – through seeing and feeling digital players perform differently. </p>
<p>In her 2021 book, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/on-video-games-9781350217706/">On Video Games</a>, visual culture and gaming scholar Soraya Murray shows how gaming is a powerful space though which children and adults learn racial stereotypes and difference. Our findings demonstrate further subtle ways in which these stereotypes are reinforced. </p>
<p>There is a risk that children are effectively taught that black and white athletes are meaningfully “different” through sight, sound and touch – through the seemingly innocent and banal act of play.</p>
<p><em>A spokesperson for EA Sports, the makers of Fifa20, said: “When accounting for position, there is no correlation between skin tone and skill in our game.”</em> </p>
<p><em>“The data presented within this study provides a narrow and incomplete view of overall player ratings. The study does not control for player position, which is crucial when determining a player’s final attributes. Furthermore, the study accounted for 88 of approximately 17,000 players found within EA Sports Fifa20. In our most recent game, EA Sports Fifa23, this total is now over 19,000.”</em></p>
<p><em>They said: “Racism has no place in the world of football, and has no place in any of our games. While we acknowledge that biases continue to exist in sport, it is our duty as a leader in global football to stand against them. We highlighted this in our <a href="https://www.copa90.com/beatthebias">Beat the Bias</a> campaign alongside our partners at Copa90 in 2020.” They added that teams across the company had taken unconscious bias training “as part of our continual commitment to learn, improve and eliminate prejudice within our game and the world of football.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Black footballers in the game are given lower scores for technical or cognitive ability than white players.Paul Ian Campbell, Associate Professor in Sociology (Race and Inclusion in sport and in education), University of LeicesterMarcus Maloney, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1608412021-05-14T11:36:53Z2021-05-14T11:36:53ZRacism in football: new research shows media treats black men differently to white men<p>On BBC Sport, Match of the Day pundits Ian Wright and Alan Shearer recently had a conversation about racism in football. Shearer, the white ex-England international striker asked his black ex-teammate Wright: “Do you believe a black guy gets treated differently to a white guy?” <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/56949360">Wright’s response</a> was unequivocal: “Without a doubt, Al!”</p>
<p>Black players face discrimination on every level: public (anti-black racism from fans <a href="https://theconversation.com/football-and-race-relations-have-progressed-a-lot-since-cyrille-regiss-day-but-not-enough-90274">in stadiums</a>), private (abusive DMs on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/apr/24/footballers-to-boycott-social-media-in-mass-protest-over-racist-abuse">social media</a>) and institutional (lack of management and coaching <a href="https://theconversation.com/frank-lampards-talk-about-hard-work-will-not-help-football-tackle-black-under-representation-141653">opportunities</a>). Wright, however, also pointed to the disparate treatment players receive in the press, referencing recent reports on similar property investments by strikers Marcus Rashford and Phil Foden. </p>
<p>Rashford, who plays for Manchester United and is black, was framed an extravagant, cash-rich, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8949391/Campaigning-football-star-Marcus-Rashford-bought-five-luxury-homes-worth-2million.html">cash-loose footballer</a>. Foden, meanwhile, who plays for City and is white, was described as the local Stockport boy <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-6241313/Manchester-City-starlet-Phil-Foden-buys-new-2m-home-mum.html">looking after his family</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17430437.2020.1777102">A recent study</a> on racial stereotyping in football match commentary, which I co-authored with Louis Bebb, backs up this observation. The findings show how differently black and white footballers are talked about within the very TV studios where Wright and Shearer work.</p>
<h2>Considerable differences</h2>
<p>The study focused on commentary during the FIFA World Cup in 2018. It analysed 1,009 comments of praise given to footballers during 30 hours of BBC and ITV coverage, across 20 matches (between 19 of the 32 competing teams). We found that black players were overwhelmingly praised for their perceived physical prowess and natural athleticism, and white players for their intelligence and character. </p>
<p>We sorted the comments by attribute. The percentage breakdown of 281 praise comments given to visibly black players centred on physical (69.8%), natural (10.7%), learned (10.3%), character (5%) and cognitive (4%) attributes. Of the 448 praise comments given to white players, 47.9% were for their learned attributes, followed by physical (18.3%), character (13.8%), cognition (11.4%) and natural (8.6%) attributes. </p>
<p>The data indicated that this was not simply a case of commentators reporting objectively on what they had seen in the match. Instead, certain attributes, such as power and pace, were more likely to be noticed or overlooked depending on the player’s race. </p>
<h2>Racialised stereotypes</h2>
<p>Many of the racial stereotypes in sport are traceable back to the pseudo race sciences that emerged in the 1800s, and particularly to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00948705.1999.9714583?journalCode=rjps20">social Darwinism</a>. This held that white people were the most evolved race in terms of intellect, morality and character, and as such, did not require physical prowess. Black people were considered to be the least evolved, inherently violent, lazy, intellectually limited and lacking in character – they conversely needed greater physical strength than white people. </p>
<p>This facilitated the view that black people were inherently suited to physical activities rather than cognitive tasks. It was seen as making them natural athletes. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/sports/perspective-a-special-bond-between-champions.html">Dean Cromwell</a>, coach to the University of Southern California track and US Olympic sprint teams, wrote in 1941: “It was not long ago that [the African Americans athlete’s] ability to sprint and jump was a life-and-death matter to him in the jungle.” </p>
<h2>Damaging impact</h2>
<p>The near blanket praise by football commentators for black physiology in our study reinforces the idea of the “natural” black athlete. </p>
<p>This has a detrimental effect on how we see and value black talent, in that it is celebrated while simultaneously reduced to being about physical attributes. By this logic, black players are only professional footballers because they are supremely strong, or can run fast, or jump high. </p>
<p>This is how Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling was characterised during the 2018 tournament on UK radio station, talkSPORT. Here, the commentator, white ex-Wales international midfielder Vinnie Jones (ironically a player of very limited technical ability) asserted that if Sterling didn’t have pace he would not even be playing for England or any team in the English Premier League. </p>
<p>He would instead, <a href="https://talksport.com/football/397018/raheem-sterling-exeter-vinnie-jones-england-world-cup/">said Jones</a>, “be playing for Exeter”, that is, in the lowest professional division in English football. </p>
<h2>Beyond sport</h2>
<p>Ideas of black people as natural athletes contribute to wider social myths of black people as hyperphysical, uncontrollably strong and cognitively challenged. These ideas have very real consequences for black communities in Britain. </p>
<p>This perception often legitimises brutality by the state. In 2020 black-heritage young people were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/16/bame-children-three-times-more-likely-to-have-taser-used-on-them-by-police">three times more likely</a> to be tasered by police for the same crimes as white criminals. And black people with mental health conditions were more likely to be detained <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1454134/Patients-death-reveals-festering-NHS-racism.html">when compared</a> to all other ethnic-groups. </p>
<p>Black children, meanwhile, were more likely to be predicted grades <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-schools-gcse-level-universities-predicted-grades-a9418471.html">below their intellectual talent</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/mar/24/exclusion-rates-black-caribbean-pupils-england">five times more likely</a> to be excluded for similar misbehaviour as white peers.</p>
<h2>Necessary changes</h2>
<p>We need to expand our definition of what constitutes racist behaviour and attitudes. Instead of <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/i-didn-t-mean-to-be-racist-claims-boris-6648542.html">focusing only</a> on those forms of discrimination and abuse that require intent, we need to understand that unintentional practices also contribute to racism.</p>
<p>Our study shows that racism includes the match commentary of sports broadcasters who – arguably unwittingly – treat black and white players differently. As shown here, these practices may not be intentional, but they contribute to racism in society more broadly, and so need to be unlearned. </p>
<p>We recommend that those within the sport media industry undertake more robust and meaningful education programmes. Doing reflexive tallying exercises like that employed in our study would help them identify racial stereotyping and discrimination within their own journalistic practice. </p>
<p>We also argue that media and journalism degrees - where we train producers and journalists of the future - also have an integral role to play. Unless this happens, we will continue to see black people being treated differently on the pitch, in commentary boxes and in wider society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160841/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Ian Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To tackle the racial stereotyping rife within football commentary, robust education – and uncomfortable conversation – is criticalPaul Ian Campbell, Lecturer in Sociology (Race, Ethnicity and Leisure), University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1300692020-01-17T16:30:47Z2020-01-17T16:30:47ZCats: a box office bomb, but has anyone noticed the ethnic stereotyping?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310669/original/file-20200117-118347-jpz5ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3585%2C1491&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Idris Elba and Francesca Hayward</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">2019 Universal Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/box-office/cats-box-office-losses-flop-1203453171/">US$100 million film version</a> of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash-hit musical Cats, currently in cinemas, has bombed at <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2020/12/30/cats-is-a-box-office-bomb-that-on-paper-looked-like-a-pretty-safe-bet/#2a076ed267f0">the box office</a>, <a href="https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/cats-review-round-up-film-new-adaptation-musical-andrew-lloyd-webber-1345293">been savaged by critics</a> and withdrawn from <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/cats-reviews-oscars-awards-box-office-cost-critics-universal-a9262156.html">Oscar consideration</a>. </p>
<p>Part of this failure relates to problems in adaptation. How should creators transpose animal characters from stage to screen? How do we view bodies differently in real and recorded formats? What kind of criteria should be used to judge a hybrid production? But one thing the media has hardly mentioned, that is a problem, is the racial bias that is embodied in the representation of the cats on screen.</p>
<p>Adapting a text or play for the screen can be a tricky business. We inherit certain expectations from source materials, and ask questions about “fidelity” and what’s been added and cut when a narrative is translated into film.</p>
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<p>TS Eliot’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/old-possums-book-of-practical-cats-by-t-s-eliot?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6bHvmeDt5gIVirTtCh3O7Q5iEAAYAiAAEgIOSfD_BwE">original poems for children</a> were adapted to a stage show by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1981. The musical was hugely successful and went on to run for more than 20 years, grossing <a href="https://nypost.com/2012/11/21/how-cats-was-purrfected/">several billion dollars</a> and winning <a href="https://www.tonyawards.com/winners/?q=cats">seven Tony awards</a>.</p>
<p>Nearly four decades later, Universal Pictures adapted the show for the big screen and the resulting film was released in December 2019. The audience for this film is made up of musical theatre fans as well as other moviegoers who may not have the same expectations – and the film must make sense for both groups.</p>
<p>Much of the controversy over the Cats adaptation has focused on how bodies are represented and viewed. Cats as a stage show, with its 1980s unitards, was heavy on sex appeal – particularly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=63&v=ywFbpDjpZno&feature=emb_logo">Rum Tum Tugger</a>, whose hip-thrusting choreography conjured up animalistic hedonism. </p>
<p>Criticism of the movie has fixated on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/19/cats-the-kinkiest-film-to-ever-earn-a-u-certificate-tom-hooper-andrew-lloyd-webber">CGI choices</a>, the grafting of moving ears, tails and “digital fur”, and <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jason-derulo-cats-penis-928006/">removal of human parts</a> in pursuit of the “U” rating. In a moment that may be an in-joke, the character Jennyanydots wonders if Rum Tum Tugger has been neutered.</p>
<h2>Uncanny valley</h2>
<p>In digital film, an effect recently described as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/uncanny-valley-why-we-find-human-like-robots-and-dolls-so-creepy-50268">uncanny valley</a>” – the slightly creepy effect created by use of technology to alter images – means that we find hybrid bodies disconcerting, as our expectations are confused. Are these human-like cats, or cat-like humans? Is the feline characterisation erotic or innocent? Is this a movie for adults or children?</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/uncanny-valley-why-we-find-human-like-robots-and-dolls-so-creepy-50268">Uncanny valley: why we find human-like robots and dolls so creepy</a>
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<p>There’s also a big difference between the way music works on stage and on screen – and if you saw the musical, your expectations for the film might leave you disappointed. The director, Tom Hooper, chose quiet, up-close delivery, similar to the effect he chose for his 2012 musical film version of Les Misérables, prioritising intimate vocals over the projection needed in a stage show. An exception is made for Jennifer Hudson’s powerful voice (as Grizabella), which we are primed for by her fame as a singer and a preview of her big moment in the trailer.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310658/original/file-20200117-118319-1dd5fzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310658/original/file-20200117-118319-1dd5fzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310658/original/file-20200117-118319-1dd5fzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310658/original/file-20200117-118319-1dd5fzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310658/original/file-20200117-118319-1dd5fzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310658/original/file-20200117-118319-1dd5fzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310658/original/file-20200117-118319-1dd5fzx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Tragic diva: Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">2019 Universal Pictures</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In fact, most of her big number, Memory, is almost spoken. Hushed vocals, made for film, contrast with large-scale, theatrical choreography (much borrowed from the stage show). This confuses our expectations of the screen versus the stage even further.</p>
<p>But none of these issues prepare us for the central problem with the 2019 Cats – the racial bias evident in characterisation.</p>
<h2>Racial bias</h2>
<p>Since black-face minstrelsy, musical theatre has had a fraught history with race. It could be argued that anthropomorphised animal characters have the potential to express racial bias at its most troubling. For example, American academic and theatre-maker <a href="https://www.montclair.edu/profilepages/view_profile.php?username=braterj">Jessica Brater</a> and her co-authors have noted (in Theatre Journal – not available online) how the character of Donkey in Shrek The Musical – an adaptation from Eddie Murphy’s voicing of the character from the animated film – embodies the lineage of minstrelsy in operation on the Broadway stage. </p>
<p>In the Cats movie, black actors portray marginalised characters. Macavity, the criminal – originally a ginger cat – is now Idris Elba, clad in rich brown digital fur. Grizabella the outcast is also a character of colour, played, as we have heard, by Jennifer Hudson. Grizabella’s saviour, Old Deuteronomy, comes in the distinctly white form of Judi Dench. This is doubly unfortunate given the history of the character on stage – played by several black actors including Ken Page on Broadway and Quentin Earl Darrington in the 2016 revival. </p>
<p>Jason Derulo recreates the oversexed Rum Tum Tugger bedecked in hip-hop apparel. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310676/original/file-20200117-118331-1bxsvhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310676/original/file-20200117-118331-1bxsvhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310676/original/file-20200117-118331-1bxsvhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310676/original/file-20200117-118331-1bxsvhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310676/original/file-20200117-118331-1bxsvhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310676/original/file-20200117-118331-1bxsvhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310676/original/file-20200117-118331-1bxsvhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Oversexed: Rum Tum Tugger played by Jason Derulo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">2019 Universal Pictures</span></span>
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<p>The central character, Victoria – the white cat, ballerina and ingenue – is played by a dancer of dual heritage, Francesca Hayward. But <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2019/07/19/real-cats-controversy-whitewashing-francesca-hayward/">it has been noted in the press</a> and by many commentators on Twitter, that only in her case is her original skin tone concealed, by digital whitewashing.</p>
<p>Overall, elements of casting, costume, cultural appropriation and aesthetics become more problematic on a cumulative basis, where actors who are visibly black are cast and costumed as the criminal, the Lothario and the outcast, while saviour and ingenue characters are made explicitly white.</p>
<p>But, apart from the apparent whitening of Hayward, this appears to have largely escaped the notice of the press. </p>
<p>The film seeks family appeal – and there is potentially a great deal of appeal in a tale of singing, dancing, CGI-enhanced cats to engage youngsters. But this huge budget spectacle frees itself from the obligation to take on the social responsibility that is assumed, for example, <a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/site/diversity-inclusion-commissioning-guidelines-bbc-content.pdf">by BBC television productions</a> and other content created explicitly for children. </p>
<p>If there is a cult afterlife for Cats, as <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2019/12/worst-movies-2019-cats-cult-classic.html">some predict</a>, it is not raciness but racial bias embedded in the film that will frame it markedly within our current age – a time that really ought to know better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130069/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Daniel has previously received funding from the AHRC, the Royal Musical Association and the Fund for Women Graduates. She is currently affiliated with the Labour Party. </span></em></p>There are many reasons the movie version of Cats has flopped, not least the unfortunate way in which various characters have been assigned racial characteristics.Jennifer Daniel, Senior Lecturer in Musical Theatre, Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/602742016-08-11T19:40:59Z2016-08-11T19:40:59ZOf washing powder, Afrophobia and racism in China<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133682/original/image-20160810-25924-w2nkby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tourists visit the Great Wall of China.The problem of racism in the country is bigger than that of Afrophobia. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Stringer </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is Afrophobia really on the rise in China? </p>
<p>Roughly two months have passed since the Qiaobi detergent advertisement went viral. The advert, in which a Chinese woman shoves a black man into a washing machine only for him to emerge as a shiny, clean, Asian man, prompted Western media to call it “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/qiaobi-chinese-laundry-detergent-brand-may-have-made-the-most-racist-advert-ever_uk_5746fd99e4b0ebf6a329590d?ckfvsavx6oli35wmi">the most racist ad ever</a>”. At the height of the controversy, commentators from all over the world quarrelled endlessly over whether or not the advert was evidence of China being a racist society. Eventually, the Chinese government <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/05/30/chinese-detergent-makers-full-translated-apology-for-allegedly-racist-ad/">intervened</a> and the company behind the offensive advert issued an <a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2016/05/29/qiaobi_issues_apology_statement_racist_ad.php">apology</a>.</p>
<p>Across my social and academic networks, the ad caused a <a href="https://africansinchina.net/compilation-opinion-and-analysis-pieces-about-the-notorious-racistchinesead/">major storm</a>. Everyone from traders to academics and advertisers weighed in. With tensions running high, African traders in Guangzhou were quick to point out that Chinese ignorance in race-related matters was probably behind the advert. </p>
<p>Academics debated the need to “contextualise” racism and racial prejudice in <a href="http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1960474/one-bad-advert-doesnt-make-14-billion-chinese-racist">China</a>. They also highlighted how international media tend to portray China and the Chinese in a negative light (especially in the context of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/qa-why-western-media-so-biased-against-china-africa-eric-olander-%E6%AC%A7%E7%91%9E%E5%85%8B">Sino-African relations</a>). At the same time, advertisers pointed out that adverts like the Qiaobi one are influenced by the <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/babymantis/racism-in-30-vintage-ads-1opu">long history</a> of racist advertising in the West. They also explained that the advert showed how Chinese advertisers were unaware that their adverts could have a global reach.</p>
<h2>Racialism and a rising China</h2>
<p>Despite the fact that “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-origin-of-the-khoisan-tells-us-that-race-has-no-place-in-human-ancestry-53594">race</a>” as a biological category was discredited long ago, racial thinking or “racialism” is still common in China. Racialism is the belief that humans are naturally divided into biological categories called “races”. Sometimes, the term racialism is used interchangeably with “racism” to mean a race-based way of thinking through human differences. </p>
<p>Contemporary racial thinking in China is informed by historical ways of imagining “otherness”. These ways centre around differences such as skin colour, class and “ethnicity”. Contact with 19th-century European colonialism and racial theories was also influential. More recently, the “<a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2008-01-01/rise-china-and-future-west">rise of China</a>” within the context of global consumerist societies has stirred up ethno-nationalist sentiments that affect how Chinese people think about “race”.</p>
<p>In China, like other places, racial thinking is often accompanied by stereotypes and prejudices. Dark skin, for instance, is often seen negatively. This is something many of us foreigners have to live with in China. </p>
<p>Within this context, the Qiaobi advert was seen by some as proof that there’s racism in China, and as evidence that “<a href="https://blacklivesinchina.wordpress.com/2016/05/29/why-the-racist-chinese-ad-may-be-just-as-racist-as-you-think/">Afrophobia</a>” was on the rise. Those who “see” Afrophobia are quick to point to Chinese hiring practices, which prefer white foreigners to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqtS3hSwq3o">black ones</a>.</p>
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<p>Any non-white foreigner living in China knows that these practices do not only discriminate against black people. They extend to other dark-skinned people. So, while deplorable, it’s not exactly Afrophobia. </p>
<p>Despite little concrete evidence supporting claims of Afrophobia or “Anti-African” campaigns, these claims are often picked up by Western media. Some journalists seem all too ready to cast <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2016/05/30/en-chine-beaucoup-d-africains-souffrent-de-racisme_4928893_3212.html?xtmc=le_belzic&xtcr=9">China and the Chinese as “racist”</a> and Africans as the poor victims with no agency. This pattern is replicated in coverage of China as a “<a href="http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/19/08/2014/new-neo-colonialism-africa">neo-colonial</a>” power in Africa.</p>
<p>To equate Chinese rac(ial)ism with racism in the West is intellectually and historically dishonest. Rac(ial)ism and racial prejudice in China are still far from producing the exploitation, oppression, discrimination and murder that racist worldviews continue to produce in the West. </p>
<p>In short, while there are deep-seated forms of rac(ial)ism in China, the rise of “Afrophobia” is difficult to prove. The issue is much more complex than that. </p>
<h2>‘Race’ and racism in global media</h2>
<p>In most of the articles and comments following the offensive Chinese advert, people from all over the world used the terms racism, stereotypes and racial prejudice interchangeably. It quickly became clear to me that we haven’t figured out how to talk about “race” and racism in globally inclusive ways. </p>
<p>The conversation is usually dominated by the American ways of talking about “race” and racism. Needless to say, using the black/white binary paradigm of race as a measuring stick for racial issues in global and non-Western settings is problematic. If the many “racist” comments I’ve heard from African men about their Chinese counterparts is any guide, the problems highlighted by the Qiaobi advert are far more complex than what the American binary suggests.</p>
<p>Figuring out who’s the racist, or if <em>this</em> or <em>that</em> is racist, or if the Chinese are racist, is a waste of time. Rather than being black or white, it’s a complex matrix of practices that reproduce global systems of exploitation and oppression. Despite our skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, “race”, nationality or faith, we are all, to different degrees, participants in these systems.</p>
<h2>White supremacy the Chinese way?</h2>
<p>As pointed out <a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2016/05/26/racist_laundry_detergent_ad.php">early on</a> during the Qiaobi controversy, the advert is a revamped iteration of old Western racist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6drdI_RBt8">tropes</a>. To understand why such iterations emerge in China – and elsewhere in Asia – it’s important to look at how contemporary global media imaginations are influenced by long-standing racial <a href="http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/winant/Race_and_Race_Theory.html">theories</a> and <a href="http://leneeson.com/2014/03/19/media-images-girls-and-identity/">ideas</a>. Enter white supremacy. </p>
<p>As I write this piece, a tram covered in advertising stops in front of me on Shipyard Lane in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. In the advert, a young, handsome, white guy in a suit is levitating in front of a building. The Chinese words next to him are about leadership and success. </p>
<p>On the next tram a blonde woman wearing a Swarovski ring is being admired by a young white man. Any survey of street advertising in this, or any other big Asian city, will show that white bodies are pervasively used as the markers of <a href="http://www.highsnobiety.com/2016/05/02/asian-fashion-brands-white-models/">success, power, beauty and romance</a>.</p>
<p>It is hardly news that global media are deeply shaped by a racial hierarchy that frames whiteness as a superior state of being. What I find fascinating is how these racially informed imaginations are negotiated by people in China when they imagine themselves and the world they live in.</p>
<p>These negotiations have to be factored in against the backdrop of the “rise of China” – a rise that has led many to believe that the country will take up the reins of the global capitalist system. </p>
<p>I believe that there are few indications that China would be willing (or able) to transform the (old imperial, capitalist, white supremacist and patriarchal) structures and practices that inform contemporary capitalism and that are, ultimately, behind the Qiaobi detergent advert. </p>
<p>For me, these reflections were the main takeaways amid the uproar that followed the advert controversy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roberto Castillo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Although ‘race’ as a biological category was discredited long ago, racial thinking or racialism is still common in China.Roberto Castillo, Lecturer in China Africa Relations, University of Hong KongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/542032016-02-23T16:15:05Z2016-02-23T16:15:05ZThe man who began campaigning against #OscarsSoWhite – 74 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112603/original/image-20160223-16422-113pimn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/daverugby83/3893586483/in/photolist-6W4DBr-oE48W-qQV5YZ-Cp7juk-oyjAH-7HLr9f-byGDUV-9kRurU-bkMM4Y-bkMLU3-bkMM6E-bkMM8b-bkMLNw-byGDxe-9kRu7y-9kRu6Q-9kNqde-9kRur5-9kNqv2-4v2N3W-6vDQ2h-dTQ6Y-qZAv72-bxfZxP-9kNqct-6rkEqM-kzoomJ-65bqsg-34TJZ-bPDTJp-bAKeW1-bPDTNZ-F8uHN-6vDPJy-6vCXSd-bPrk7H-6vCXw1-3jmhu-6vDQnb-bPDTKt-nyQGh8-pN2Qdm-eXnGT3-9pJiiF-7S4Fm9-9P6EZM-ozV6q-69MP5u-kWjemn-rn8amV">daverugby83/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The latest raft of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/22/hollywood-so-white-diversity-report-us-film-industry-ethnic-minorities-lgbt-women">damning statistics</a> concerning diversity in Hollywood have revealed that only 12% of films or TV shows reflect the actual balance of ethnic minorities in US society. </p>
<p>These figures are particularly shocking if we consider that over 70 years ago, when African Americans were struggling for their civil rights, they were also engaged in a battle to improve their depiction on film. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112576/original/image-20160223-16459-1irmu06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112576/original/image-20160223-16459-1irmu06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112576/original/image-20160223-16459-1irmu06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112576/original/image-20160223-16459-1irmu06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112576/original/image-20160223-16459-1irmu06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112576/original/image-20160223-16459-1irmu06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/112576/original/image-20160223-16459-1irmu06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Walter Francis White, 1942.</span>
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<p>In 1942 a man called Walter White travelled from New York to Hollywood, armed with a letter of introduction from the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. His aim was to try to persuade filmmakers to positively portray African Americans in movies.</p>
<p>White grew up in Atlanta. His parents, George and Madeleine White, had both been born into slavery. Many of their ancestors had been white, and they had fair skin. In his biography he emphasised this: “I am a Negro. My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blond. The traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me.” He became head of America’s largest civil rights organisation, the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Since its creation in 1909, the group had been concerned about African Americans in popular culture, believing that negative representations exacerbated racial tension and reinforced prejudice. As White told a meeting of film producers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Restriction of Negroes to roles with rolling eyes, chattering teeth, always scared of ghosts, or to portrayals of none-too-bright servants perpetuates a stereotype which is doing the Negro infinite harm. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He wanted to convince the film industry to produce more positive images. For White and his organisation, this largely meant more middle-class, professional characters which would challenge white stereotypes of African Americans. White also wanted more black characters and faces in interracial settings. </p>
<p>He was helped in his campaign by the atmosphere of World War II. African Americans were quick to realise that the changing climate of a war against fascism might offer an opportunity to press for improvements at home. Additionally, government agencies put pressure on the film industry to produce films which would help the war effort. This included “selling” the war to African Americans and helping to improve black morale. White, who for many years had been monitoring the film industry’s effect on race relations, saw this as the moment to take his case to Hollywood. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"701743921718755330"}"></div></p>
<h2>Bright lights</h2>
<p>So it was that in early 1942 he travelled to the West coast. The trip was a rush of meetings and dinners. Lunching with actors like Jimmy Cagney, Melvyn Douglas and Jean Muir was glamorous but White recognised that they weren’t the power-makers he needed to reach. The breakthrough came on the last day of his trip when he was summoned to the Biltmore hotel to meet with a group of producers. White boasted that during the meeting leading producer Darryl Zanuck stopped “puffing a cigar” to claim he’d never thought of the issue until White had “presented the facts”. </p>
<p>White returned to Hollywood later that year for more meetings and further attempts at persuasion. He was confident that his message had hit home. But all he actually got were murmurs of agreement and promises. Most film executives were happy to support vague notions of improvements but were suspicious of any real interference or change.</p>
<p>There were a handful of films made during the war which gave White cause for satisfaction and which he cited as proof that his campaign was working. Three war films from 1943 – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035763/">Crash Dive</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035664/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Bataan</a>, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036323/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Sahara</a> – showed African Americans in uniform, serving their country and making a great sacrifice. These were the positive depictions White wanted to see on movie screens. Other films made during the war also suggested a relaxation of the racial codes which had governed Hollywood’s use of black characters. </p>
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<p>But these were the exceptions rather than the rule. In fact, opportunities for black actors may have even decreased after the war. Hollywood decided the best way to avoid controversy about the negative portrayals was to remove African-American characters all together.</p>
<h2>Not much headway</h2>
<p>So White’s early attempt at changing racial stereotyping in film fell rather flat. Given the nature of his strategy, this might seem unsurprising – he was drawn to the glamour and dazzled by the bright lights of Hollywood; he enjoyed the chance to mingle with celebrities and powerful people. His campaign boiled down to little more than luncheons and parties and chatting to important people, backed up with frequent press releases and letters. </p>
<p>But at the same time, White knew that he had little leverage and he believed that there wasn’t much to gain from antagonising Hollywood with radical demands. He was an experienced lobbyist; he had honed his skills on Capitol Hill, and negotiated for civil rights, and he knew how to deal with large egos. But his options were severely limited. White made the most of the opportunities which presented themselves and cleverly tied his demands into the broader conversation about the war. He was able to form an alliance between his organisation, sympathetic government officials, and liberals within the studio system. Together they established a more racially tolerant tone which would linger throughout the decade.</p>
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<p>The NAACP has continued to monitor Hollywood’s treatment of race. In 1967 it established the annual Image Awards as a necessary alternative to the almost exclusively white mainstream awards, such as the Oscars. And when this year’s Academy Awards were announced, the NAACP <a href="http://www.naacp.org/press/entry/naacp-statement-on-the-announcement-of-the-nominees-for-88th-academy-awards">issued a statement</a> explaining “our mission and efforts are as relevant today as they have been in the past”. Clearly much has changed in America’s racial landscape since Walter White went to Hollywood to press for improvements. Nevertheless, 70 years on, there are still far too few black people on the red carpet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54203/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenny Woodley has received funding from the AHRC.</span></em></p>In 1942 a man called Walter White travelled to Hollywood to try and persuade filmmakers to cut the negative stereotypes of African Americans in movies.Jenny Woodley, Lecturer in Modern American History, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/461302015-08-19T00:33:06Z2015-08-19T00:33:06ZRemember the Pacific’s people when we remember the war in the Pacific<p>Recent media coverage of <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/vp_day/">Victory in the Pacific Day</a> has highlighted the way Indigenous peoples of the Pacific remain invisible in our public memory of the Pacific War. We sometimes recall the deeds of the so-called <a href="http://www.ww2australia.gov.au/asfaras/angels.html">“Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels”</a> of Papua New Guinea. But the wider impact of war on Pacific Island worlds should also be part of our collective memory.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92046/original/image-20150817-5088-wc6rc3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92046/original/image-20150817-5088-wc6rc3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92046/original/image-20150817-5088-wc6rc3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92046/original/image-20150817-5088-wc6rc3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92046/original/image-20150817-5088-wc6rc3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92046/original/image-20150817-5088-wc6rc3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92046/original/image-20150817-5088-wc6rc3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/92046/original/image-20150817-5088-wc6rc3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A page from the wartime government guide, ‘You and the Native’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1439789733334~467&locale=en_US&metadata_object_ratio=10&show_metadata=true&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&preferred_usage_type=VIEW_MAIN&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=10&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true">State Library of Victoria</a></span>
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<p>In 1941, much of the Pacific was under some form of colonial or external rule. Rigid rules maintained vast social distances between colonial masters and Indigenous peoples in many Pacific colonies. An Australian government pamphlet, <a href="http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1439789592374%7E502&locale=en_US&metadata_object_ratio=10&show_metadata=true&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&preferred_usage_type=VIEW_MAIN&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=10&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true">“You and the Native”</a>, for example, advised Allied servicemen in New Guinea to “maintain your position or pose of superiority”. Never “descend to his level”, it advised, and “be the master”.</p>
<p>When war broke out, Allied and Japanese command treated Pacific Islanders as the Natives of colonial territories. Their islands, crops, plantations and bodies were widely used to support the war effort, with devastating results. But the Pacific War was not just a tale of loss, it was also one of transformation and recovery on a scale that deserves commemoration.</p>
<h2>War brought devastation to Pacific Islands</h2>
<p>When war broke out the Japanese Imperial forces moved rapidly down the western rim of the Pacific. Within months the islands of New Guinea, New Britain, Bougainville and parts of the British Solomon Islands were engulfed in war. </p>
<p>To make way for battlegrounds and Japanese and Allied bases, villages, farms and sometimes entire island populations were relocated. The population of Mavea in Vanuatu, for example, was moved by the Allies to make space for target practice.</p>
<p>The labour needs of war were immense and untold thousands of Pacific Islanders were enlisted as labourers. In New Guinea alone, August Kituai <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2b5ipWtZwy0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">estimated</a> that the labour of at least 40,000 men and women supported the war effort. </p>
<p>As workers, Pacific Islanders were also relocated. Palauan workers were shipped to Rabaul, Nauruans to Truk and Kiribati, and Pohnpeians were sent to Kosrae Island. They worked as general labourers, but also as armed scouts, coastwatchers and soldiers in island regiments beside Allied and Japanese troops.</p>
<p>By 1942 the Allies had halted the Japanese advance southwards with intense <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_Campaign">air and land battles</a> on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. As an indicator of scale, within six months the Japanese and Allied dead outnumbered the entire indigenous population of 15,000 <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Pacific_Theater.html?id=7ONQf-Qui0UC">by two to one</a>. </p>
<p>For coastal villagers on and around Guadalcanal, their sea was turned toxic as the dead, and the detritus of oil and debris from naval and airborne warfare, washed up on their beaches.</p>
<p>During 1943, the Allies island-hopped north in an attempt to sever the supply lines to Japanese bases in the islands. The intent was to starve the Japanese into retreat. As their supplies dried up in New Guinea and Bougainville, and on Kosrae, Guam and Palau, tens of thousands of Japanese servicemen leaned on indigenous locals for sustenance. </p>
<p>With farms unable to keep up, everyone was plunged into prolonged famine. On Kosrae, labourers from Kiribati survived on potato leaves. On Bougainville, soldiers <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Pacific_Theater.html?id=7ONQf-Qui0UC">recorded</a> eating grass and tree sprouts to survive. Reporting from an Allied camp on Bougainville on May 25, 1945, the Ellesmere Guardian noted a constant stream of “emaciated natives” who were “mere skeletons” emerging from the jungles in search of sanctuary.</p>
<p>The Allies eventually “liberated” Japanese-occupied islands in Micronesia with a brutal twin campaign of severing supplies and conducting indiscriminate bombing raids. With nowhere to evacuate, Indigenous peoples were repeatedly bombed, strafed and starved alongside the Japanese. </p>
<p>On many islands, including Chuuk, Pohnpei and Palau, these strafing raids left the landscape utterly denuded. Elsewhere in the Solomons, New Guinea and Bougainville, villages and farms along entire fertile strips of land were left ruined and deserted as the war ended.</p>
<p>It is probably not possible to enumerate the full impact of the war on the Pacific. In New Guinea alone, Douglas Oliver has suggested that at least 15,000 civilians <a>perished</a> in the crossfire. </p>
<p>Air and maritime bombardment also left tens of thousands of people displaced, missing and unaccounted for. The New York Times reported on September 2, 1944, that 60,000 were still missing in the southern mountain areas of Bougainville, as were thousands on Guam and the former Japanese mandates. These are rubbery figures, but they hint at the scale of devastation of a war not of Islanders’ making.</p>
<h2>No going back: the postwar transformation</h2>
<p>Although colonial administrations expected life in the Pacific territories could go back to business as usual after 1945, it could not. Beyond the devastated physical landscape, the internal terrain of peoples’ consciousness had shifted.</p>
<p>While war had brought unprecedented violence, it also brought access to a world that contrasted sharply with prewar colonial orders. In the space of weeks and months the Pacific had been flooded with war-related cargo as airfields, roads, hospitals and telecommunications infrastructure were built. </p>
<p>In Vanuatu and the Solomons, radio channels broadcast music, world newsreels and entertainment for the first time. The Allies built movie theatres and dance halls, and so much associated infrastructure that new townships popped up in months. This was juxtaposed against the relative neglect and penny-pinching conservatism of colonial administrations.</p>
<p>In contrast to the drudgery of plantation labour that many Melanesian Islanders had done in the colonial period, at war they worked with shortwave radio, viewed radar in action, drove trucks, cars and motorbikes, operated telephone exchanges and strung telephone wires, laid railways, built roads and handled the extraordinary volumes of cargo that arrived in Pacific docks.</p>
<p>At war, Pacific Islanders also experienced Japanese command and they worked beside and often in friendship with white Allied service personnel. They saw African-American servicemen who, although segregated, wore the same uniforms and ate the same food as whites. For many, this completely reset race relations.</p>
<p>The Pacific War played out as a colonial war in the Pacific. It was brutal for non-combatant civilians in its path, and its impact epitomised the dehumanising capacity of both war and colonialism. </p>
<p>But the human interactions between locals and both Japanese and Allied servicemen also blew away the stuffy rules of the old-world colonial past. This laid foundations for a longer process of decolonisation. This is a story that should be remembered when we commemorate the Pacific War.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tracey Banivanua Mar receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>The Pacific War played out as a colonial war in the Pacific. It was brutal for non-combatant civilians in its path, and its impact epitomised the dehumanising capacity of both war and colonialism.Tracey Banivanua Mar, Associate Professor in Colonial and Indigenous History and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/418162015-05-18T02:12:21Z2015-05-18T02:12:21ZA $147m budget saving missed: income management has failed<p>The expensive and extensive government-funded evaluation of income management in the Northern Territory clearly failed to find it worth ongoing funding. Note the following significant findings in the <a href="http://caepr.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/cck_misc_documents/2014/12/Evaluation%20of%20New%20Income%20Management%20in%20the%20Northern%20Territory_summary%20report.pdf">summary report</a> of <a href="http://caepr.anu.edu.au/others/Report-1418859519.php">the final evaluation report</a> on NT income management programs: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The evaluation could not find any substantive evidence of the program having significant changes relative to its key policy objectives, including changing people’s behaviours.</p>
<p>More general measures of wellbeing at the community level show no evidence of improvement, including for children.</p>
<p>The evaluation found that, rather than building capacity and independence, for many the program has acted to make people more dependent on welfare.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet the 2015-16 budget has not only included a two-year extension of the services to 25,000 recipients, but <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/05_2015/2015_budget_fact_sheet_-_income_management_-_final_0_0.pdf">signals more expansion</a> of the basic concept. This makes no sense as most forms of income management fail to show positive outcomes, despite some individuals, mainly voluntary participants, claiming income management has benefited them.</p>
<p>The included funding is for new technology and commercial involvement in the future program, which suggests the Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest version of a cashless <a href="http://indigenousjobsandtrainingreview.dpmc.gov.au/chapter-2-healthy-welfare-card">welfare card</a> is the next step. Why would the Forrest version offer better outcomes, apart from cutting administration costs by removing Centrelink? </p>
<p>The announcement below fails to acknowledge there are any questions about benefits of the program. The budget statement <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/05_2015/2015_budget_fact_sheet_-_income_management_-_final_0_0.pdf">claims</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Income Management 2015 Budget</strong></p>
<p>Income management is a tool that helps people better budget their welfare payments and ensures they are getting the basic essentials of life such as food, housing, electricity and education.</p>
<p><strong>What was announced in the 2015 budget?</strong></p>
<p>Income management will continue for another two years in all locations where it currently operates, with possible expansion to four new communities. This $144.6 million investment will build on the positive impacts of income management; giving participants more control of their welfare money, improving family stability, reducing stress and financial hardship. It will also give Government time to fully test alternative approaches to welfare payments quarantining.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Returning to the evaluation report, there are further clear statements, backed by data in the <a href="http://caepr.anu.edu.au/others/Report-1418859519.php">body of the report</a> by the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW, that do not recommend continuing the program in any of its current forms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Summarising the impact</strong></p>
<p>Taking the results as a whole, the conclusion is that there is no evidence of any consistent positive impacts on problematic behaviours related to alcohol, drugs, gambling, and financial harassment, in the extent to which financial hardships and stresses are experienced – for example, running out of food, not being able to pay bills, or on community level outcomes such as children not being looked after properly, school attendance, drinking, and financial harassment. (p.307)</p>
<p>Despite the magnitude of the program the evaluation does not find any consistent evidence of income management having a significant systematic positive impact. (p.317)</p>
<p>Data on spending point to continued major problems of diet and poor levels of fruit and vegetable consumption, in particular for Indigenous people living in remote communities. There is no evidence of income management having resulted in changes in spending or consumption, including on alcohol, tobacco, fresh fruit and vegetables. (p.317)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Given the report was delivered to the government last September and released publicly in December, it is puzzling that there has been no acknowledgement of the flaws. In late March, the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/healthy-welfare-card-trials-to-tackle-violence-and-alcohol-abuse-20150322-1m4uk2.html">government announced</a> that welfare recipients would be given cashless cards to stop them spending money on alcohol and drugs in a bid to combat violence against women and children. Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Alan Tudge said the government was planning trials of the cards “in a small number” of places, which were yet to be decided, later this year. </p>
<p>And now it is in the budget. This decision clearly ignores the findings of the evaluation report, which seriously undermine any government claims that quarantining incomes is effective in changing behaviour or that its new card will affect spending positively and reduce drinking. The report does not recommend continuing the program in any of its current forms.</p>
<h2>Prejudice makes it easier to ignore evidence</h2>
<p>The question arises: why does this particular policy change receive so little attention or objections? Despite the threat that controlling income may well alter the basis for general income support, the possibilities stay beneath the public debate radar. Few in the welfare sector have raised objections or questions.</p>
<p>One can only assume an element of racial and wider prejudice is operating, as the original and many ongoing recipients have been Indigenous. Income management started as part of the Howard government’s NT Emergency Response to a child sexual abuse report. </p>
<p>Originally, the income management program was targeted at all Commonwealth payment recipients in 72 Indigenous communities, controlling 50% of their spending. It required suspending the Racial Discrimination Act. There was no explanation as to how financial controls would fix child abuse.</p>
<p>When the ALP took office some months later, it expanded the numbers and set up a review. Despite the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/nt/content/2006/s2400936.htm">Yu report</a> raising some questions and doubts, the new government extended the scheme to the rest of the NT. It was de-racialised but still covers mostly Indigenous recipients in the NT, with smaller mainly non-Indigenous and Indigenous pilots elsewhere.</p>
<p>Now, eight years on and despite all the evidence to the contrary, the budget papers state clearly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Government is investing $147 million to deliver more streamlined and cost-effective income management. Around 25,000 people will continue to benefit from this programme designed to support vulnerable Australians.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Why? How about some serious economic rationality, both to save taxpayers’ money and improve social well-being?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41816/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eva Cox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Various studies, culminating in the final evaluation report of income management in the Northern Territory, have found such programs don’t achieve the claimed benefits. Why did the budget extend them?Eva Cox, Professorial Fellow Jumbunna IHL, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/386942015-04-09T10:07:55Z2015-04-09T10:07:55ZStruggling with racial biases, black families homeschool kids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77120/original/image-20150406-26496-uo448i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Homeschooling for black children is increasing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=rnmcz_JXAomneKWv1xBSiQ&searchterm=school%20black%20kids%20mother&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=801780">Mother image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Homeschooling, <a href="http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschooling.html">common</a> among white Americans, is showing an increase among African- Americans kids as well. African-Americans now <a href="http://www.nheri.org">make up about 10%</a> of all homeschooled children in this <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21568763-home-schooling-growing-ever-faster-keep-it-famil">fastest-growing form of education</a>.</p>
<p>However, the reasons for black kids to be homeschooled may not be the same as white kids. <a href="http://jbs.sagepub.com/content/43/7/723.abstract">My research</a> shows that black parents homeschool their children due to white racism. </p>
<p>This may come as a surprise since, for many, we live in an age of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/05/28/197390/when-colorblindness-isnt-colorblind/">alleged color blindness</a> and <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/half-of-america-thinks-we-live-in-a-post-racial-society-the-other-half-not-so-much">post-racialism</a>, characterized by the declining significance of race and racism. </p>
<p>My research found strong evidence to suggest that racism is far from being a thing of the past.</p>
<p>I found <a href="http://academic.udayton.edu/race/2008electionandracism/raceandracism/racism02.htm">covert institutional racism</a> and individual racism still persist and are largely responsible for the persistence of profound racial disparities and inequalities in many social realms. Schools, of course, are no exception, which helps one understand why racism is such a powerful drive for black homeschoolers. </p>
<p>In the Spring and Fall 2010, I interviewed 74 African-American homeschooling families from around the US. While the size of my sample does not allow me to claim that it is representative of the whole African-American homeschooling population, it was nonetheless large enough to allow me to capture the main reasons why black parents tend to homeschool their children.</p>
<h2>Eurocentric curriculum and teachers’ attitudes</h2>
<p>When it comes to schools, there are at least two important areas of concern: the curriculum and teachers’ attitudes and behaviors.</p>
<p>School curricula continue to promote a worldview developed by Western civilization. This wholesale <a href="http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/counseling/n377.xml">Eurocentric orientation</a> of most schools’ curricula, in a society that, ironically, is becoming increasingly brown, speaks volumes about a pervasive <a href="http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-ethnocentrism.html">European ethnocentrism</a>, that is, the notion that every one in the world thinks and does or should think and do like Europeans. </p>
<p><a href="http://genius.com/Peggy-mcintosh-white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack-annotated">Peggy McIntosh, an anti-racism activist</a>, often cites a list of things she can take for granted as a white woman. Her list reflects the nature of the curriculum that students grow up being exposed to.</p>
<p>As she says: “When I am told about our national heritage or about civilization, I’m shown that people of my color made it what it is;” as well as “I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that attest to the existence of their race.”</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77121/original/image-20150406-26483-1wr0m1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">As school curricula is Eurocentric, African-Americans find themselves quasi-excluded from the curriculum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=rXPHTL6YTUCr8AHctG9qTw&searchterm=europe%20school&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=2155837">Boy image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>For black people, <a href="http://journalofafricanamericanmales.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2014/02/Lundy-2014.pdf">as I found</a>, it is a totally different experience. Indeed, while European culture and thought are implicitly presented as universal and Europe as the only place from which great ideas and discoveries originated, Africa and African-descended people find themselves quasi-excluded from the curriculum. </p>
<p>As one of the fathers with whom I spoke in Atlanta succinctly articulated, “All we learn about is their stuff, and we know nothing about our stuff, our history, our culture.”</p>
<p>This results in a general school-sanctioned ignorance about Africa and its descendants and in a disdain for the black experience, as I found through my interviews. Eventually, this becomes a pervasive and potent form of institutional racism.</p>
<h2>Racial stereotypes harm black kids</h2>
<p>Furthermore, the attitudes and actions of white teachers (<a href="http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006030_1.pdf">who make up 85% of all public school teachers</a>) were questioned by many of the African-American parents <a href="https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=african+american+homeschooling+as+racial+protectionism">with whom I spoke</a>. They consistently portrayed white teachers as “overly critical, unresponsive, unqualified, insensitive, offensive, mean, hypocritical, and using double standards.” </p>
<p>Indeed, many white teachers seem to bring into the schools the many racist stereotypes and attitudes that have been ingrained in them, in particular the notions that <a href="https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=african+american+homeschooling+as+racial+protectionism&start=10">blacks lack in intelligence, or are notoriously lazy and bent on criminality</a> .</p>
<p><a href="http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ839497.pdf">Studies of the impact of negative white teachers’ attitudes</a> on the school experience of black children reveal that there are two areas where teachers’ unchecked prejudices have been particularly visible and tragic: the over-referral of black students to special education programs and to the criminal system.</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="http://www.nyclu.org/issues/youth-and-student-rights/school-prison-pipeline">African-American students are more than twice as likely</a> to be labeled cognitively “deficient” than white American students. Although they only make up 17% of the student population, they nonetheless represent 33% of those enrolled in programs for the mentally challenged.</p>
<p>What appears to be a <a href="http://www.nyclu.org/issues/youth-and-student-rights/school-prison-pipeline">false and incorrect labeling</a>, has a dire impact on the ability of black students to attend college and achieve social mobility. </p>
<h2>Harsh school punishments</h2>
<p>Likewise, black students account <a href="http://www.nyclu.org/issues/youth-and-student-rights/school-prison-pipeline">nationally for 34% of all suspensions</a>. In reality, harsh school punishments have become one of the primary mechanisms through which the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/education-under-arrest/school-to-prison-pipeline-fact-sheet/">school-to-prison pipeline </a> operates, pushing large numbers of black children out of school and into the “justice” system to feed the prison industrial complex that has blossomed over recent years.</p>
<p>Certainly, the parents I interviewed were very much aware of and concerned about the “traps” set by many public schools for black children. One mother in New York poignantly declared, “I say America does not love my children. You know the statistics about prisons and all that. They have a plan for my children, and I am not going along with it.” </p>
<p>Given this state of affairs, it is hardly surprising that a growing number of black parents, frustrated with a school system that is quick to criminalize and disenfranchise their children, turn to homeschooling as an alternative.</p>
<p>Thus, for many black parents, homeschooling equates with a refusal to surrender their children to a system that they see as bent on destroying them. For them, it is an act of active and conscious resistance to racism.</p>
<h2>African-American homeschooling</h2>
<p>By taking the constant threat of harassment and discrimination out of the picture, homeschooling provides African-American parents the space and time to educate and socialize their children for optimal personal development. </p>
<p>I found the home education is planned and delivered primarily by mothers, who stay at home, or work from home. This mother-led home education process is commonly observed among homeschoolers.</p>
<p>In general, two strategies are commonly observed among black home educators: imparting self-knowledge and self-esteem through positive teaching about Africa and African-Americans. </p>
<p>While finding ready-to-use educational materials can be challenging, most parents reported creating their own materials, by drawing from different sources, such as books, documentaries, the internet, field-trips, etc. </p>
<p>Many go out of their way to provide exposure to black people who have achieved greatness in their domain, for instance, literature, science, or history, in an effort not only to educate their children about their history and culture, but also to instill racial pride and confidence in them. </p>
<p>In other words, many black homeschooling parents engage in <a href="http://icher.org/blog/?p=585">racial protectionism</a>, so that they will have the self-confidence and knowledge necessary to face and overcome the hurdles that white racism appears to place in their path.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ama Mazama does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar finds black parents are homeschooling kids to protect them from racism and what they see as a Eurocentric education.Ama Mazama, Associate Professor and Graduate Director, Temple UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.