tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/racial-issues-9255/articles
Racial issues – The Conversation
2023-12-15T13:22:43Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/214053
2023-12-15T13:22:43Z
2023-12-15T13:22:43Z
Racism produces subtle brain changes that lead to increased disease risk in Black populations
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565115/original/file-20231212-21-79wl3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C30%2C6659%2C4436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Coping with everyday affronts comes at a cost and requires a certain level of emotional suppression. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/composite-of-portraits-with-varying-shades-of-skin-royalty-free-image/1249641728?phrase=discrimination&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">RyanJLane/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. is in the midst of a racial reckoning. The COVID-19 pandemic, which took a particularly <a href="https://covidtracking.com/race">heavy toll on Black communities</a>, turned a harsh spotlight on long-standing health disparities that the public could no longer overlook.</p>
<p>Although the health disparities for Black communities have been well known to researchers for decades, the pandemic put real names and faces to these numbers. Compared with white people, Black people are at much greater risk for developing a range of health problems, including <a href="https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/heart-disease-and-african-americans">heart disease</a>, <a href="https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/diabetes-and-african-americans">diabetes</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2018.09.009">dementia</a>. For example, Black people are twice as likely as white people to <a href="https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-facts-and-figures.pdf">develop Alzheimer’s disease</a>.</p>
<p>A vast and growing body of research shows that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040218-043750">racism contributes to systems that promote health inequities</a>. Most recently, our team has also learned that racism directly contributes to these inequities on a neurobiological level.</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://www.negarfani.com/">clinical</a> <a href="https://www.mcleanhospital.org/profile/nathaniel-harnett">neuroscientists</a> who study the multifaceted ways in which racism affects how our brains develop and function. We use brain imaging to study how trauma such as sexual assault or racial discrimination can cause stress that leads to mental health disorders like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. </p>
<p>We have studied trauma in the context of a study known as the <a href="https://www.gradytraumaproject.com/">Grady Trauma Project</a>, which has been running for nearly 20 years. This study is largely focused on the trauma and stress of Black people in the metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, community.</p>
<h2>How discrimination alters the brain</h2>
<p>Racial discrimination is commonly experienced through subtle indignities: a woman clutching her purse as a Black man walks by on the sidewalk, a shopkeeper keeping close watch on a Black woman shopping in a clothing store, a comment about a Black employee being a “diversity hire.” These slights are often referred to as <a href="https://www.med.unc.edu/inclusion/justice-equity-diversity-and-inclusion-j-e-d-i-toolkit/microaggressions-microaffirmations/#">microaggressions</a>.</p>
<p>Decades of research has shown that the everyday burden of these race-related threats, slights and exclusions in day-to-day life translates into a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040218-043750">real increase in disease risk</a>. But researchers are only beginning to understand how these forms of discrimination affect a person’s biology and overall health.</p>
<p>Our team’s research shows that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2022.05.004">everyday burden of racism</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.1480">affects the function</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2021.08.011">structure</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-022-01445-8">of the brain</a>. In turn, these changes play a major role in risk for health problems.</p>
<p>For instance, our studies show that racial discrimination <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.1480">increases the activity of brain regions</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-023-01737-7">such as the prefrontal cortex</a>, that are involved in regulating emotions. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565418/original/file-20231213-25-bah2a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Scientist and technologist view brain images." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565418/original/file-20231213-25-bah2a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565418/original/file-20231213-25-bah2a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565418/original/file-20231213-25-bah2a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565418/original/file-20231213-25-bah2a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565418/original/file-20231213-25-bah2a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565418/original/file-20231213-25-bah2a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565418/original/file-20231213-25-bah2a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Negar Fani and a team member view brain images.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Patrick Heagney</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This increased activity in prefrontal brain regions occurs because responding to these types of affronts requires high-effort coping strategies, such as suppressing emotions. People who have experienced more racial discrimination also show more activation in brain regions that enable them to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2021.100967">inhibit and suppress anger, shock or sadness</a> so that they can curate a socially acceptable response. </p>
<h2>A cost for overcompensating</h2>
<p>Despite the fact that high-energy coping allows people to manage a constant barrage of threats, this comes at a cost.</p>
<p>The more brain energy you use to suppress, control or manage your feelings, the more energy you take away from the rest of the body. Over time, and without prolonged periods of rest, relief and restoration, this can contribute to other problems, a process that public health researcher <a href="https://psc.isr.umich.edu/news/a-monumental-new-book-weathering-arline-geronimuss-lifes-work/">Arline Geronimus termed “weathering</a>.” Having these brain regions in continual overdrive is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113169">linked with</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs12110-010-9078-0">accelerated biological aging</a>, which can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.ssmph.2018.11.003">create vulnerability for health problems</a> and early death. </p>
<p>In our research, we have found that this <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-022-01445-8">weathering process is evident</a> in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2021.08.011">gradual degradation</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2022.05.004">of brain structure</a>, particularly in the heavily myelinated axons of the brain, known as “<a href="https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002344.htm#">white matter</a>,” which serve as the brain’s information highways. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565504/original/file-20231213-21-yeiyph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Computer-generated image of white matter tracts in the brain." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565504/original/file-20231213-21-yeiyph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565504/original/file-20231213-21-yeiyph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565504/original/file-20231213-21-yeiyph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565504/original/file-20231213-21-yeiyph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565504/original/file-20231213-21-yeiyph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565504/original/file-20231213-21-yeiyph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565504/original/file-20231213-21-yeiyph.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rendering of white matter fibers − shown in color − throughout the brain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Negar Fani</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002261.htm">Myelin</a> is a protective sheath around nerve fibers that allows for improved communication between brain cells. Similar to highways for vehicles, without sufficient maintenance of the myelin, degradation will occur. </p>
<p>Erosion in these brain pathways can affect self-regulation, making a person more vulnerable to developing unhealthy coping strategies for stress, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2015.15060710">emotional eating or substance use</a>. These behaviors, in turn, can increase one’s risk for a wide variety of health problems. </p>
<p>These racism-related changes in the brain, and their direct effects on coping, may help to explain why Black people are twice as likely to develop brain health problems such as <a href="https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-facts-and-figures.pdf">Alzheimer’s disease</a> compared with white people.</p>
<h2>Recognizing racial gaslighting</h2>
<p>In our view, what makes racism particularly insidious and pernicious to the health of Black people is the societal invalidation that accompanies it. This makes racial trauma effectively invisible. Racism, whether it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616659391">originates from people</a> or from institutional systems, is often rationalized, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2020.09.001">excused or dismissed</a>. </p>
<p>Such invalidation leads those who experience racism to second-guess themselves: “Am I just being too sensitive?” People who have the temerity to report racist events are often ridiculed or met with skepticism. This <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-021-00361-5">extends to</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732220984183">academic spheres</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.009">as well</a>.</p>
<p>This continual questioning and doubting of the circumstances around racist experiences, or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2017.1403934">racial gaslighting</a>, may be part of what depletes the brain of its resources, causing the weathering that ultimately increases vulnerability to brain health problems.</p>
<p>Interrupting this cycle requires that people learn to identify their biases toward people of color and people in marginalized groups more generally, and to understand how those biases may lead to discriminatory words and behavior. We believe that by finding their blind spots, people can see ways in which their actions and behaviors could be viewed as hurtful, exclusionary or offensive. Through recognition of these experiences as racist, people can become allies rather than skeptics. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.institutionalcourage.org/">Institutions can help</a> to create a culture of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.focus.20220045">healing, validation and support</a> for people of color. A validating, supportive institutional culture may help people of color normalize their reactions to these stressors, in addition to the connection – and restoration – they may find within their communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214053/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Negar Fani receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and Emory University School of Medicine. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathaniel Harnett receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, and the Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College. </span></em></p>
Racial threats and slights take a toll on health, but the continual invalidation and questioning of whether those so-called microaggressions exist has an even more insidious effect, research shows.
Negar Fani, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Emory University
Nathaniel Harnett, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183098
2022-05-15T16:52:10Z
2022-05-15T16:52:10Z
More mass shootings are happening at grocery stores – 13% of shooters are motivated by racial hatred, criminologists find
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463131/original/file-20220515-35526-n9i0ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C191%2C4928%2C3083&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racial hatred is a factor in 13% of mass shootings at grocery stores.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/buffalo-police-on-scene-at-a-tops-friendly-market-on-may-14-news-photo/1240669163?adppopup=true">John Normile/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An apparently <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/14/us/buffalo-ny-supermarket-multiple-shooting/index.html">racially motivated</a> attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, resulted in 10 deaths on May 14, 2022, with the teenage suspect allegedly targeting Black shoppers in a prominently African American neighborhood.</p>
<p>Mass public shootings in which four or more people are killed have become <a href="https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/public-mass-shootings-database-amasses-details-half-century-us-mass-shootings">more frequent, and deadly</a>, in the last decade. And the tragedy in Buffalo is the latest in a recent trend of mass public shootings taking place in retail establishments.</p>
<p><iframe id="LRXUH" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/LRXUH/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>We <a href="https://www.hamline.edu/faculty-staff/jillian-peterson/">are criminologists</a> <a href="https://www.metrostate.edu/about/directory/james-densley">who study</a> the <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/">life histories of public mass shooters</a> in the United States. Since 2017, we have conducted <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Project-Stop-Shooting-Epidemic-ebook/dp/B08WJV7W3P">dozens of interviews</a> with incarcerated perpetrators and people who knew them. We also built a <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database/">comprehensive database</a> of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on over 200 different variables, including location and racial profile.</p>
<h2>What do we know about supermarket mass shootings?</h2>
<p>Only one shooting in our database prior to 2019 took place at a supermarket. In 1999, a 23-year-old white male with a history of criminal violence <a href="https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/drugs-abuse-and-a-zest-to-kill-zane-floyds-path-to-nevada-death-row-limbo">killed four people at a supermarket in Las Vegas</a>. However, there has been a raft of mass shootings at American supermarkets since.</p>
<p>The Buffalo shooting on May 14, 2022, is similar to an August 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. On that occasion, the 21-year-old white suspect posted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/patrick-crusius-el-paso-shooter-manifesto.html">a racist rant on social media</a> before allegedly driving some distance to intentionally target racial and ethnic minority shoppers. He has been charged with killing 23 people.</p>
<p>Another shooting in 2019 took place at a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/11/jersey-city-shootout/">Kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey</a>. Two perpetrators, a man and woman, both Black and around the age of 50 with a criminal and violent history, murdered four people before being killed in a shootout with police. Social media posts and a note left behind indicated an antisemitic motive.</p>
<p>Then in March 2021, a 21-year-old man of Middle Eastern descent with a history of paranoid and anti-social behavior entered a King Soopers in Boulder, Colorado, and <a href="https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/boulder-shooting/boulder-king-soopers-shooting-one-year/73-cc012646-e3b8-4972-a28f-953915c3d322">shot dead 10 people</a>. Six months later, in September 2021, a 29-year-old Asian man killed one person and injured 13 others at a Kroger supermarket in Tennessee. The perpetrator, who worked at the store, was asked to leave his job that morning. He died by suicide before the police arrived on the scene.</p>
<h2>No one profile of a retail shooter</h2>
<p>Mass shootings are <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/08/06/748767807/mass-shootings-can-be-contagious-research-shows">socially contagious</a>. Perpetrators study other perpetrators and learn from each other, which may explain the rise in supermarket shootings in the past few years. However, the data shows there is no one profile of a supermarket mass shooter.</p>
<p>Racial hatred is a feature of about 10% of all mass public shootings in our database. Our analysis suggests that when it comes to retail shooters, around 13% are driven by racism – so slightly above the average for all mass shooting events.</p>
<p>Some grocery stores by their nature may be frequented predominantly by one racial group – for example, Asian markets that cater to local Asian communities.</p>
<p>But racial hatred appears to be just one of many motivations cited by retail shooters. Our data points to a range of factors, including the suspect’s own economic issues (16%), confrontation with employees or shoppers (22%), or psychosis (31%). But the most common motivation among retail shooters is unknown (34%).</p>
<p>Like the Buffalo shooter, 22% of perpetrators of retail mass shootings left behind something to be found, a “manifesto” or video to share their grievances with the world. And nearly half of them leaked their plans ahead of time, typically on social media.</p>
<p>The lack of a consistent profile doesn’t leave us helpless. <a href="https://www.startribune.com/two-minnesota-professors-have-devoted-their-careers-to-researching-mass-shooters/600123369/">Our research</a> suggests many strategies to prevent mass shootings – from <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/02/1095489487/trigger-points-mark-follman-how-to-stop-mass-shootings">behavioral threat assessment</a> to restricting <a href="https://rockinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/policy-solutions-public-mass-shootings.pdf">access to firearms</a> for high-risk people. And the way to stop the social contagion of mass shootings is to stop providing perpetrators with the <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1177/0002764217730854">fame and notoriety</a> they seek.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183098/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jillian Peterson receives funding from the National Institute of Justice</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Densley receives funding from the National Institute of Justice</span></em></p>
A suspect apparently motivated by a white supremacist agenda shot dead 10 shoppers. Analysis shows that mass shootings – and those at grocery stores – are on the rise.
Jillian Peterson, Professor of Criminal Justice, Hamline University
James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/154433
2021-03-09T13:36:47Z
2021-03-09T13:36:47Z
How urban planning and housing policy helped create ‘food apartheid’ in US cities
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388298/original/file-20210308-23-zjnlm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C3000%2C1980&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black neighborhoods have a higher density of fast-food outlets than in white districts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/person-stands-next-to-a-churchs-chicken-restaurant-on-july-news-photo/82056337?adppopup=true">David McNew/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america">Hunger</a> is <a href="https://map.feedingamerica.org/">not evenly spread across the U.S.</a>, nor within its cities.</p>
<p>Even in the the richest parts of urban America there are pockets of deep <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-food-insecurity-152746">food insecurity</a>, and more often than not it is <a href="http://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-017-0733-8">Black and Latino communities that are hit hardest</a>.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://as.tufts.edu/uep/people/faculty/julian-agyeman">urban planning academic</a> who teaches a course on <a href="https://julianagyeman.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/NUTR285-UEP285_Fall-2020_FA-DRAFT.pdf">food justice</a>, I’m aware that this disparity is in large part through design. For over a century, urban planning has been used as <a href="https://theconversation.com/urban-planning-as-a-tool-of-white-supremacy-the-other-lesson-from-minneapolis-142249">a toolkit for maintaining white supremacy</a> that has divided U.S. cities along racial lines. And this has contributed to the development of so-called “<a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/documentation/#definitions">food deserts</a>” – areas of limited access to reasonably priced, healthy, culturally relevant foods – and “<a href="https://theconversation.com/please-dont-call-it-a-food-swamp-97219">food swamps</a>” – places with a preponderance of stores selling “fast” and “junk” food.</p>
<p>Both terms are <a href="https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/resources/lessons/covering-food-deserts#:%7E:text=Controversy%20over%20%22food%20deserts%22%20term&text=It%20is%20not%20accidental.%22,exclude%20healthy%20from%20those%20communities.">controversial and have been contested</a> on the grounds that they ignore both the historical roots and deeply racialized nature of food access, whereby white communities are more likely to have sufficient availability of healthy, reasonably priced produce. </p>
<p>Instead, food justice scholar <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/aads/faculty/amr8294">Ashanté M. Reese</a> suggests the term “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/15/food-apartheid-food-deserts-racism-inequality-america-karen-washington-interview">food apartheid</a>.” According to Reese, food apartheid is “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/food-desert-problem-access-healthy-options_n_5d1b910ee4b082e55370dee5">intimately tied to policies and practices, current and historical, that come from a place of anti-Blackness</a>.”</p>
<p>Regardless of what they are called, these areas of inequitable food access and limited options exist. The U.S. Department of Agriculture <a href="http://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.262134">estimates that 54.4 million Americans</a> live in low-income areas with poor access to healthy food. For city residents, this means they are more than half a mile from the nearest supermarket.</p>
<h2>More expensive, fewer options</h2>
<p>The development of these areas of limited healthy food options has a long history tied to urban planning and housing policies. Practices such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america">redlining</a> and <a href="https://beltmag.com/chicago-yellowlined-road-southwest-side/">yellowlining</a> – in which the private sector and government conspired to restrict mortgage lending to Black and other minority homebuyers – and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/15/us/racist-deeds-covenants/index.html">racial covenants</a> that limited rental and sale property to white people only meant that areas of poverty were concentrated along racial lines. </p>
<p>In addition, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/homeowners-associations-black-americans-discriminaiton-2020-9">homeowner associations</a> that denied access to Black people in particular and <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/keeanga-yamahtta-taylor-race-for-profit/">federal housing subsidies</a> that have <a href="https://talkpoverty.org/2016/06/30/biggest-beneficiaries-housing-subsidies-wealthy/">largely gone to white, richer Americans</a> have made it harder for people living in lower-income areas to move out or accrue wealth. It also leads to urban blight.</p>
<p>This matters when looking at food access because retailers are less willing to go into poorer areas. A process of “<a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/tgis.12142">supermarket redlining</a>” has seen larger grocery stores either refuse to move in to lower-income areas, shut existing outlets or relocate to wealthier suburbs. The thinking behind this process is that as pockets in a city become poorer, they are less profitable and more prone to crime. </p>
<p>There is also, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/tgis.12142">scholars suggest</a>, a cultural bias among large retailers against putting outlets in minority-populated areas. Speaking about why supermarkets were fleeing the New York borough of Queens in the 1990s, the city’s then-Consumer Affairs Commissioner Mark Green <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/06/nyregion/where-markets-are-never-super-some-urban-neighborhoods-fight-absence-major.html">put it this way</a>: “First they may fear that they do not understand the minority market. But second is their knee-jerk premise that Blacks are poor, and poor people are a poor market.”</p>
<p>In the absence of larger grocery stores, less healthy food options – often at <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/05/in-poverty-groceries-can-be-five-times-more-expensive-as-this-video-stunt-shows.html">a higher price</a> – have taken over in low-income areas. Research among <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.27.5.1381">food providers in New Haven, Connecticut in 2008</a> found “significantly worse average produce quality” in lower-income neighborhoods. Meanwhile <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2004.06.007">a study of New Orleans</a> in 2001 found fast-food density was higher in poorer areas, and that predominantly Black neighborhoods had 2.5 fast-food outlets for every square mile, compared to 1.5 in white areas. </p>
<h2>‘Whole Foods and whole food deserts’</h2>
<p>Geographer <a href="https://inrs.ca/en/research/professors/nathan-mcclintock/">Nathan McClintock</a> conducted a detailed study in 2009 of the causes of Oakland’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8922.001.0001">food deserts</a>. Although restricted to one Californian city, I believe what he found holds true for most U.S. cities. </p>
<p>McClintock details how the development of racially segregated areas in the inter-war period and redlining policies afterward led to concentrated areas of poverty in Oakland. Meanwhile, decisions in the late 1950s by the then all-white Oakland City Council to build major freeways cutting through the city effectively isolated predominantly Black West Oakland from downtown Oakland.</p>
<p>The net effect was an outward flow of capital and white flight to the wealthy Oakland Hills neighborhoods. Black and Latino neighborhoods <a href="http://www.web.pdx.edu/%7Encm3/files/McClintock_Cultivating_Food_Justice.pdf">were drained of wealth</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Burger King outlet displaying a 'We Accept EBT' poster in the window." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388329/original/file-20210308-23-fnv7ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388329/original/file-20210308-23-fnv7ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388329/original/file-20210308-23-fnv7ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388329/original/file-20210308-23-fnv7ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388329/original/file-20210308-23-fnv7ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388329/original/file-20210308-23-fnv7ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388329/original/file-20210308-23-fnv7ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Burger King in Oakland, Calif. advertising that it accepts benefits issued to low-income families for food.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-noting-the-acceptance-of-electronic-benefit-transfer-news-photo/1191971157?adppopup=true">Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This, together with the advent of surburban Oakland supermarkets accessible by car in the 1980s and 1990s, led to a dearth of fresh food outlets in predominantly Black districts such as West Oakland and Central East Oakland. What was left, McClintock concludes, is a “<a href="http://www.web.pdx.edu/%7Encm3/files/McClintock_Cultivating_Food_Justice.pdf">crude mosaic of parks and pollution, privilege and poverty, Whole Foods and whole food deserts</a>.”</p>
<h2>Urban planning as a solution</h2>
<p>Food disparities in U.S. cities have a cumulative effect on people’s health. Research has linked them to the disproportionately <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/factsheets/nutrition.htm">poor nutrition</a> of Black and Latino Americans, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01049.x">even after adjustment for socioeconomic status</a>.</p>
<p>As much as urban planning has been part of the problem, it could now be part of the solution. Some cities have begun using planning tools to increase food equity.</p>
<p>Minneapolis, for example, has as part of its 2040 plan an aim to “<a href="https://minneapolis2040.com/policies/food-access/">establish equitable distribution of food sources and food markets</a> to provide all Minneapolis residents with reliable access to healthy, affordable, safe and culturally appropriate food.” To achieve this, the city is reviewing urban plans, including exploring and implementing regulatory changes to allow and promote mobile food markets and mobile food pantries.</p>
<p>My hometown of Boston is engaged in a similar process. In 2010, the city began the process of establishing an <a href="https://sustainablecitycode.org/brief/agricultural-overlay-zoning/">urban agriculture overlay district</a> in the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood of Dorchester, by changing zoning to allow commercial urban agriculture. This change has provided employment for local people and food for local cooperatives, such as the <a href="https://dorchesterfoodcoop.com">Dorchester Food Coop</a>, as well as area restaurants.</p>
<p>And this could be just the start. My students and I contributed to Boston mayoral candidate Michelle Wu’s <a href="https://www.michelleforboston.com/plans/food-justice">Food Justice Agenda</a>. It includes provisions such as a formal process in which private developers would have to work with the community to ensure there is space for diverse food retailers and commercial kitchens, and licensing restrictions to discourage the proliferation of fast-food outlets in poorer neighborhoods. If Wu is elected and the plan implemented, it would, I believe, provide more equitable access to nutritious and culturally appropriate foods, good jobs and economically vibrant neighborhoods.</p>
<p>As Wu’s Food Justice Agenda notes: “Food justice means racial justice, demanding a clear-eyed understanding of how white supremacy has shaped our food systems” and that “nutritious, affordable, and culturally relevant food is a <a href="https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2655&context=ulj">universal human right</a>.”</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Agyeman 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>
Discriminatory zoning and housing policies have concentrated poverty in America along racial lines. As a result, healthy food options are limited in many low-income and Black neighborhoods.
Julian Agyeman, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/138085
2020-05-07T20:37:56Z
2020-05-07T20:37:56Z
The killing of Ahmaud Arbery highlights the danger of jogging while Black
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333504/original/file-20200507-49542-9audry.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C6%2C1414%2C776&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Footage captured the last moments of Ahmaud Arbery's life.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIve50vSeLQ&bpctr=1588882465">Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Youtube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Unsteady cellphone footage follows a jogger – an apparently young, black man – as he approaches and attempts to run around a white pickup truck parked in the middle of a suburban road. Moments later he lies dead on the ground. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/06/ahmaud-arbery-shooting-georgia">killing of Ahmaud Arbery</a> took place on Feb. 23, after the 25-year-old was confronted by Gregory McMichael, a 64-year-old former police officer and investigator for the Brunswick, Georgia district attorney’s office, and his 34-year-old son, Travis. It took 10 weeks to gain widespread attention with the circulation of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIve50vSeLQ&bpctr=1588880417">video footage</a> on social media, prompting <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/07/ahmaud-arbery-video-shooting-sharing-viral">revulsion</a> and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/496571-ocasio-cortez-calls-for-justice-in-shooting-death-of-ahmaud-arbery">calls for justice</a>. </p>
<p>Gregory and Travis McMichael were both taken into custody on May 7 on <a href="https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2020-05-06/ahmaud-arbery-death-investigation">charges of murder and aggravated assault</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fIve50vSeLQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Warning: This video includes graphic images.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Death in suburbia</h2>
<p>But the killing of Arbery by people with links to law enforcement raises important <a href="http://rashawnray.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Why-Police-Kill-Black-Males-with-Impunity_Gilbert-and-Ray.pdf">questions over why it took so long to make arrests in the case</a> and the so-called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/learning/editorial-winner-breaking-the-blue-wall-of-silence-changing-the-social-narrative-about-policing-in-america.html">blue wall of silence</a> that extends from law enforcement agencies to prosecutor’s offices and courtrooms.</p>
<p>But there is a separate question that needs to be asked: Why do these incidents seem to occur in certain types of neighborhoods? <a href="https://www.zipdatamaps.com/31523">Satilla Shores</a>, where Arbery was killed by the McMichaels, is predominately white and suburban. It evokes memories of the killings of <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/what-happened-trayvon-martin-explained/">Trayvon Martin</a>, <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article9165083.html">Jonathan Ferrell</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-killing-of-renisha-mcbride">Renisha McBride</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/us/fatal-shooting-of-black-woman-outside-detroit-stirs-racial-tensions.html">Tamir Rice</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/experts/rashawn-ray/">sociologist and public health scholar</a>, I have studied physical activity and how it varies by race and social class. I know that the exact behaviors that are encouraged to extend life for all are the exact ones that can end the life of men like Ahmaud – in short, jogging while black can be deadly. </p>
<p>In 2017, I published a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2017.03.008">study on physical activity</a> – focusing on where and how people exercise, and breaking this down by race and gender. I surveyed nearly 500 middle-class black and white professionals around the United States. The research also included in-depth interviews, focus groups and observations of public spaces in cities with varying racial and class compositions including Oakland and Rancho Cucamonga, California; Brentwood, Tennessee; Bowie, Maryland; and Forest Park, Ohio. </p>
<p>I found that race and place significantly inform where people engage in physical activity: White men, white women and black women living in predominately white areas were significantly more likely to engage in physical activity in their neighborhoods. Black men living in predominately white neighborhoods, however, were far less likely to engage in physical activity in the areas surrounding their own homes.</p>
<h2>Good neighbors?</h2>
<p>Black men I interviewed who had jogged in white neighborhoods where they lived reported incidents of the police being called on them, neighbors scurrying to the other side of the street as they approached, receiving disgruntled looks and seeing the shutting of screen doors as they passed. Similar experiences have been documented in public places <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/shopping-while-black-yes-bias-against-black-customers-is-real">like stores</a>, <a href="https://www.phillymag.com/foobooz/2018/06/30/black-dining-philadelphia/">restaurants</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/02/us/starbucks-arrest-agreements/index.html">coffee shops</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial left at the site where Ahmaud Arbery was shot dead on a quiet suburban road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cross-with-flowers-and-a-letter-a-sits-at-the-entrance-to-news-photo/1212005350?adppopup=true">Sean Rayford/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Black men are often criminalized in public spaces – that means they are perceived as potential threats and predators. Consequently, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674238145">their blackness</a> is weaponized. Moreover, black men’s physical bodies are viewed as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095676?seq=1">potential weapons that could invoke bodily harm</a>, even when they are not holding anything in their hands or attacking. In fact, black people are <a href="http://rashawnray.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Why-Police-Kill-Black-Males-with-Impunity_Gilbert-and-Ray.pdf">3.5 times more likely than white people</a> to be killed by police in situations where they are not attacking nor have a weapon.</p>
<p>My research highlights that the <a href="http://rashawnray.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/What-If-He-Didnt-Wear-the-Hoodie.pdf">social psychology of criminalization</a> – the inability to separate concepts of criminality from a person’s identity or role in society – is important here. Often, physical features such as skin tone are used to guide attitudes, emotions and behaviors that can <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2332649214561306">influence interactions between people of different races</a> and lead to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103108000401?via%3Dihub">oversimplified generalizations</a> about a person’s character. For black men, this means that negative perceptions about their propensity to commit crime, emotional stability, aggressiveness and strength can be used as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103105000351?via%3Dihub">justification for others to enact physical force</a> upon them.</p>
<h2>Signaling or survival?</h2>
<p>Some black men attempt to make themselves less threatening. When it comes to jogging in white neighborhoods, some of the black men I spoke to wore alumnus T-shirts, carried I.D., waved and smiled at neighbors, and ran in well-lit, populated areas. </p>
<p>This is hardly surprising. Black men do this at work by thinking consciously about their attire, tone and pitch of voice, and behavioral mannerisms. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, many black men are going to great lengths to reduce criminalization by staying in the house, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/editorial/opinion--this-is-why-some-black-men-fear-wearing-face-masks-during-a-pandemic/2020/04/08/5a897b6a-78bf-4836-94cd-c3446dc06196_video.html">wearing colorful masks</a> and even forgoing masks altogether.</p>
<p>Sociologists call it a signaling process. Black men call it survival.</p>
<p>An irony in the case of Ahmaud Arbery is that it has set in motion a campaign that could see more black men putting on their running shoes. The #<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/us/ahmaud-arbery-run-support-demonstration/index.html">IRunWithMaud social media campaign</a> is encouraging people to jog 2.23 miles – a reference to the date on which Arbery was killed.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story was updated on May 7 following the arrests of Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rashawn Ray has received funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Brookings Institution. </span></em></p>
Research shows black men are less likely to exercise in white neighborhoods. Those who do jog report having police called and neighbors shun them.
Rashawn Ray, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/107253
2018-11-22T16:50:03Z
2018-11-22T16:50:03Z
50 years after Star Trek’s ‘kiss’, how have attitudes towards interethnic marriage changed?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246702/original/file-20181121-161644-14rtqai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The kiss' was probably the most memorable, if not the first, of early on-screen interracial embraces.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CBS/Paramount Pictures © 1968</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the long-running sci-fi serial Star Trek, the mission of the crew of the starship USS Enterprise is to “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdjL8WXjlGI">boldly go where no one has gone before</a>”. This was most often apparent in the crew’s discovery of new worlds and new beings in the course of the drama. </p>
<p>But the series pushed another new boundary 50 years ago when, having been subjected to “sadistic” mind control by aliens, Captain James Kirk (played by William Shatner) and Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (played by Nichelle Nichols) were compelled to <a href="https://theconversation.com/tvs-first-interracial-kiss-launched-a-lifelong-career-in-activism-101721">passionately kiss each other</a>. With Shatner a Canadian-born actor of European descent and Nichols an American-born actress of African descent, this became one of the earliest, and by far the most watched, scripted interracial kiss on US television. While the kiss is tame by today’s standards, in 1968 it was certainly somewhere few men or women in US television had gone before.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-interracial-kiss-on-another-planet-102546">An Interracial Kiss – on Another Planet</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The kiss occurred at a time when only a minuscule proportion of couples within the US married across racial or other ethnic boundaries. Estimates vary, but according to a <a href="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/19102233/Intermarriage-May-2017-Full-Report.pdf">2017 Pew Research Centre report</a> fewer than 3% of US marriages were interethnic in 1968 – just one year after the US Supreme Court had struck down the existing anti-miscegenation state laws against mixed relationships as unconstitutional in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/loving-v-virginia-exploring-biracial-identity-and-reality-in-america-50-years-after-a-landmark-civil-rights-milestone-77092">Loving vs Virgina case</a>. By contrast, in 2015 (the most recent year for which detailed statistics are available) around 10% of US marriages were interethnic, fuelled largely by newlyweds: 17% of all new US marriages were mixed marriages. </p>
<p>The change in the proportion of interethnic marriages in the US during the past 50 years is striking, although this still implies that around 90% of individuals continue to marry within their ethnic group. This is driven mostly by the tendency of non-Hispanic, European-descent individuals to marry among their own.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tvs-first-interracial-kiss-launched-a-lifelong-career-in-activism-101721">TV's first interracial kiss launched a lifelong career in activism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In the Pew Research Centre <a href="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/19102233/Intermarriage-May-2017-Full-Report.pdf">report</a>, authors Gretchen Livingston and Anna Brown credit the rise in interethnic marriage with a corresponding change in public attitudes across time. For example, as recently as 1990, a staggering 63% of those not of African descent expressed disapproval towards the idea of a family members’ marriage to someone of African descent. By 2016, that rate had tumbled to 14%. </p>
<p>For comparison, this rate of disapproval was substantially higher than the same perspective from the other side, that of non-white people disapproving of their family members marrying someone of a white background, which stood at 4%. Among those of Asian or Hispanic descent, the same disapproving view of intermarriage stood at around 9%.</p>
<p>So if the rise in interethnic marriage has led to a decrease in negativity among public attitudes toward interethnic marriage over the last two generations, can we also link this increasing interethnicity to increasingly positive attitudes on that topic? A recent addition to attitude surveys is the question of whether interethnic marriage is good for US society, and according to the report the news seems favourable. The proportion of respondents saying that interethnic marriage is a good thing for US society rose from 24% in 2010 to 39% in 2017. For comparison, around 9% said that interethnic marriage was bad for US society, and 52% said that interethnic marriage made no difference.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9KGE7HYEie0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>I believe that the authors were correct to identify the rise of interethnic marriage as having contributed to a decrease in negative attitudes, and increase in positive attitudes. But I also believe that, as Gordon Allport predicted in <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/caporaso/courses/203/readings/allport_Nature_of_prejudice.pdf">The Nature of Prejudice</a>, in 1954, it is necessary for government officials to lead the way in their words and deeds if interethnic couples are to be able to marry safely in the US. Civil rights-era shows such as Star Trek in 1968, alongside movies such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061735/">Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner</a> in 1967, both mirrored and helped contribute to changing public attitudes in their own way. </p>
<p>Has the “Trump effect” made a difference to attitudes? Based partly on trends I noticed while writing Identity and Interethnic Marriage in the United States, I suspect that some racists have felt increasingly emboldened in stating their opposition to interethnic marriage, especially towards couples comprised of black men and white women. Yet among the 70% of Americans who are not Trump supporters, the rise in interethnic marriage will not be a subject of major concern (and, in fact, the rate will continue to rise).</p>
<p>There is no comparable data to that from the Pew Research Centre that covers the UK, but as the political fallout over Brexit continues I would speculate that the UK has its own issues to address. For example, what will be the fate of marriages between EU residents and UK citizens once Brexit is fully implemented? Nevertheless, I would suppose that interethnic marriages in the UK will continue to rise as young people (in particular) increasingly marry without limiting themselves to “traditional” ethnic boundaries. </p>
<p>In any event, on either side of the Atlantic, 50 years and two generations on from “the kiss”, we can see how far we have progressed – and how far we still have to go.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stanley Gaines 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>
Star Trek’s groundbreaking interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura was 50 years ago today – how have public attitudes to interracial and interethnic relationships changed in the years since?
Stanley Gaines, Senior Lecturer In Psychology, Brunel University London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/96379
2018-05-10T10:02:42Z
2018-05-10T10:02:42Z
Childish Gambino: This is America uses music and dance to expose society’s dark underbelly
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218318/original/file-20180509-184630-1tg2s0s.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This is America.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY">Childish Gambino/YouTube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Childish Gambino’s new music video for his song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY">This is America</a> was viewed almost 50m times in five days. It is a remarkable artistic achievement given that it utilises finely-tuned choreography to satirise the role of the black man’s supposedly “joyous” song and dance routine. </p>
<p>The release of the video was particularly timely. Encountering the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2033604/">Hiro Murai-directed</a> promo brought some much-needed satisfaction – and sanity – to a week that had notably featured a Trump-endorsing Kanye West <a href="http://www.tmz.com/2018/05/02/tmz-live-kanye/">claiming slavery was “a choice”</a>. </p>
<p>After already amassing over 49m YouTube views, This is America has demonstrated the potential for an artist like Donald Glover – aka Childish Gambino – to use popular culture to critically address ongoing and deeply-ingrained issues surrounding race. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VYOjWnS4cMY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Not so ‘happy’ after all</h2>
<p>It achieves this while simultaneously criticising popular culture for placating audiences. It can be seen as the antithesis of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM">Pharrell Williams’s Happy</a> – a video that achieved its own constant rotation via more obvious feelgood escapism. </p>
<p>Glover’s hard-hitting cynicism can be pitched against Williams’ most buoyant song in a way that recounts Public Enemy’s 1990 citing of Bobby McFerrin’s similarly rose-tinted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU">Don’t Worry Be Happy</a> as little more than a distraction within their own call-to-arms, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PaoLy7PHwk">Fight the Power</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps most controversial of all, This is America appears to openly question the entertainment industry’s support for what amounts to a continuation of “minstrelsy” (the once highly popular 19th-century “blackface” tradition that relied on damaging racist stereotypes). This aspect was picked up by creator of the comedy <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5707802/">Dear White People</a>, Justin Simien, <a href="https://twitter.com/JSim07/status/993302602287792128">who observed</a> how Glover even contorts his body into the caricatured figure of Jim Crow – a slave archetype who was a mainstay of such performances.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218427/original/file-20180510-4803-n562n4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218427/original/file-20180510-4803-n562n4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218427/original/file-20180510-4803-n562n4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218427/original/file-20180510-4803-n562n4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218427/original/file-20180510-4803-n562n4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218427/original/file-20180510-4803-n562n4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218427/original/file-20180510-4803-n562n4.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Justin Simien on Twitter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/JSim07/status/993302602287792128">Twitter</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Utilising sharp choreography as part of his own bewitching performance, he leaves no misunderstanding about where he locates either the origins or the current role of the black man’s upbeat song and dance routine. </p>
<p>As a video, it immediately appears to have some kinship with Beyoncé’s Grammy-nominated <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZJPJV__bQ">Formation</a>. Both appear to pull us towards the motivation behind the <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">Black Lives Matter campaign</a> but, more than that, these are both examples of the music video as a politicised event. Formation is a fierce commentary on events from <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-black-lives-matter-movement-changed-america-one-year-later/">Ferguson</a> to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35248428">Sandra Bland</a> to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30350648">Eric Garner</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36494645">Freddie Gray</a>. The video marked Beyonce’s entrance into the political sphere while also ensuring that it is couched in mass appeal.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WDZJPJV__bQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>As cultural theorist <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/musicvideo-9781501313929/">Sunil Manghani identified</a>, these videos transcend the format of the music video itself, resulting in “a combined ‘object’ of music-video-news as it forms and reformulates through social media, news networks, and print journalism”. </p>
<p>Glover has now had a “moment” where he has dominated a cultural conversation by presenting work that is so fully formed in its complexity and accessibility. </p>
<h2>A satirical dance</h2>
<p>What is so remarkable about the way in which Glover used the form of the music video as a politicised event is in the layered and nuanced content with a direct message. Peppered throughout the video are the traces of various dance styles, from viral video moves to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t8Gies2Zps">Blocboy JB’s shoot dance</a>, to the South African <a href="http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/38824/1/rihanna-gwara-gwara-dance-grammys-wild-thoughts">Gwara Gwara</a>. Brought together, the differing origins form something that looks very American and which Glover appears to comment on directly.</p>
<p>Placing the choreography so front and centre seems to be saying that that mainstream culture is all America sees when they see the black community. The exaggerated facial expressions while dancing in the video, further pointing to the disparaging caricatures of the black man popularised in the Jim Crow era.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DzfpyUB60YY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The Sunken Place</h2>
<p>At the end of the video, Glover is seen running in semi darkness being chased by a group of what seem to be non-black people. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=this%20is%20america%20sunken%20place&src=typd">Like many on Twitter have theorised</a>, it is plausible to suggest that Glover is in fact running from the Sunken Place – a concept developed in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRfnevzM9kQ">Jordan Peele’s film Get Out</a>. </p>
<p>The Sunken Place represents a system that no matter how hard individuals and groups protest, it will silence them. <a href="http://www.indiewire.com/2017/11/get-out-jordan-peele-explains-sunken-place-meaning-1201902567/">As Peele explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You know when you’re going to sleep and it feels like you’re about to fall, so you wake up? What if you never woke up? Where would you fall? And that was kind of the most harrowing idea to me. And as I’m writing it becomes clear that the sunken place is this metaphor for the system that is suppressing the freedom of black people, of many outsiders, many minorities. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Glover in effect represents this concept through choreography and visual imagery in just four minutes and four seconds. Like Beyoncé, Glover has offered up a multi-layered political statement and one which the mainstream is now grappling with. If ever the music video had a moment, it is right now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96379/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>
Donald Glover’s music video is a multi-layered political statement which aims to kick its audience out of its complacency.
Daniel Cookney, Lecturer in Graphic Design, University of Salford
Kirsty Fairclough, Associate Dean: Research and Innovation, University of Salford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79627
2017-07-13T01:53:28Z
2017-07-13T01:53:28Z
Race, cyberbullying and intimate partner violence
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177745/original/file-20170711-13828-1sbom74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Though popular culture might suggest otherwise, cyberbullying isn't just a white problem.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-girl-using-her-mobile-night-510758131?src=SgsVzU0SITina_cEnh-gOg-2-64">tommaso79/shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past two decades, cyberbullying has become a major focus for parents, educators and researchers. <a href="https://www.stopbullying.gov/">Stopbullying.gov</a> lists several effects of cyberbullying, including depression, anxiety and decreased academic achievement.</p>
<p>Judging from popular culture, the narratives surrounding cyberbullying tend to have at least one of two themes. One, cyberbullying is a mob-like phenomenon: Television shows such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3488298/">“American Crime”</a> depict a group of teens preying on a vulnerable individual by using social media and text messaging. Second, the face associated with cyberbullying is often a white one. Both in the aforementioned “American Crime,” for example, and in the television movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1930315/">“Cyberbu//y</a>,” the victim is white.</p>
<p>Without discounting youth bullied by groups of their peers or young white men and women who have been cyberbullied, there’s a missing piece of this equation. As a researcher of technology usage and racial inequality, I am interested in the racial differences in cyberbullying.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177765/original/file-20170711-14468-13e5u9c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177765/original/file-20170711-14468-13e5u9c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177765/original/file-20170711-14468-13e5u9c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177765/original/file-20170711-14468-13e5u9c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177765/original/file-20170711-14468-13e5u9c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177765/original/file-20170711-14468-13e5u9c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177765/original/file-20170711-14468-13e5u9c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Cyberbu//y, 17-year-old Taylor Hillridge is pushed to the point of attempting suicide when she’s harassed by her classmates online.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC Family</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why study racial differences?</h2>
<p>Studies from the Pew Research Center have shown that African-American youth <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2010/07/07/mobile-access-2010/">own smartphones</a> at higher rates and <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/11/25/cell-phone-activities-2012/">use them more frequently</a> than youth of other backgrounds. My own research has shown that young African-Americans have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809341436">more positive views toward technology</a> than other segments of the population.</p>
<p>Their frequency of use and willingness to engage with new technologies suggest that black youth may frequently find themselves in contexts that can lead to cyberbullying – both as victims and perpetrators.</p>
<h2>Cyberbullying as intimate partner violence</h2>
<p>One of those contexts is in digital communication within a current or past relationship. Although much media attention has been paid to the mob characteristics of cyberbullying, there’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-016-9358-2">ample opportunity</a> for cyberbullying in one-to-one situations. In these scenarios, cyberbullying is a form of intimate partner violence, which the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/index.html">CDC describes</a> as physical, sexual or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177742/original/file-20170711-14423-1v7awfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177742/original/file-20170711-14423-1v7awfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177742/original/file-20170711-14423-1v7awfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177742/original/file-20170711-14423-1v7awfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177742/original/file-20170711-14423-1v7awfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177742/original/file-20170711-14423-1v7awfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177742/original/file-20170711-14423-1v7awfj.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Online harassment is likely to come from people close to the victim.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/smiling-teenage-black-girls-using-mobile-89886766">Samuel Borges Photography/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cyberbullying and race: The data</h2>
<p>I used survey data collected from <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/01/teens-technology-and-romantic-relationships/">September 2014 to March 2015</a> by the <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/">Pew Research Center</a> to explore connections between race and cyberbullying.</p>
<p>I focused on the 361 teens in that study who replied “yes” to the question: “Have you ever dated, hooked up with or otherwise had a romantic relationship with another person?”</p>
<p>These teens were then asked a series of yes or no questions about their experiences with cellphones in intimate relationships. Nine questions were about their partners attempting to control or harass them through cellphones. These questions measure cyberbullying victimization. Six questions were about how the respondents themselves attempted to control or harass their partners. These questions measured offensive cyberbullying.</p>
<p>My analysis showed that African-American youth as a group responded “yes” to questions about cyberbullying victimization and perpetration more than other groups. </p>
<iframe src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/gAVFM/3/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="570"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/33514331/African-American_Digital_Practices_and_Cyberbullying_Exploring_Cyberbullying_Victimization_and_Perpetration_Within_Relationships">More in-depth analysis</a> shows that common criminological and sociological explanations do not explain the racial differences.</p>
<p>For example, one common theory is that students who have unpleasant experiences (what are often called “strains”) <a href="http://cyberbullying.org/cyberbullying-and-strain">are more likely to lash out and bully others</a>. The Pew survey asked questions about unpleasant experiences online such as seeing people post events they weren’t invited to or feeling pressure to post things online that make you look good to others. However, African-American teens are more likely to be perpetrators and victims of cyberbullying – even when they report similar amounts of strain. </p>
<p>The difference in reported cyberbullying is also not a result of social class. Middle-class black teens are more likely to be perpetrators and victims when compared to their white middle-class peers. </p>
<h2>Why are there racial differences in cyberbullying?</h2>
<p>Given the relatively small sample size (361 teens), it would be unwise to jump to any major conclusions. Moreover, we don’t have sufficient data on Asian-American students, so African-American youth can only be compared to white and Hispanic youth. With these caveats, the results still warrant further explanation. </p>
<p>The CDC <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/Bullying_Factsheet.pdf">does not list</a> race as a risk factor in bullying in general, and academic research has been <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2013.822209">inconclusive</a> as to whether African-Americans are more likely to bully (or be bullied) than their white peers. </p>
<p>This suggests that the relationship between cyberbullying and race is not powered by a disproportional desire to bully per se, but instead by the interest and ease in using technology for social ends. </p>
<p>The high rates of cyberbullying among black youth are likely to be tied to a general cultural orientation toward using cellphones to navigate the ups and downs of a relationship. Black youth, because of their agility online, simply find technology more amenable to reaching their goals; they’re more likely to turn to technology when choosing to bully their romantic partners.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177761/original/file-20170711-13828-glit6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177761/original/file-20170711-13828-glit6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177761/original/file-20170711-13828-glit6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177761/original/file-20170711-13828-glit6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177761/original/file-20170711-13828-glit6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177761/original/file-20170711-13828-glit6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177761/original/file-20170711-13828-glit6h.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There is a correlation between rates of cyberbullying and frequency of technology use.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/male-high-school-student-by-lockers-198896987?src=xpFGV4LbSCi0vk2oIH9Nkg-1-26">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This unique adoption of technology appears in other aspects of life. The phenomenon of <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/black-twitter-contains-multitudes-20150716">“Black Twitter”</a> and its ability to influence the national dialogue is a prime example. My own research has identified several <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1335-2">digital practices</a> that distinguish African-Americans from other racial groups. For example, African-Americans are more likely to use social networking sites to make new professional contacts than other racial groups. </p>
<p>This explanation for greater rates of cyberbullying among African-American teens conforms most closely to the data. It also suggests positive recommendations. If black youth are simply more active in the digital environment, the answer for parents and educators may not lie in banning or restricting cellphone use. The answer instead may be to find ways to harness this interest and channel it in more fruitful directions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79627/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roderick S. Graham 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 recent Pew survey reported that young African-Americans are more likely to be both victims and perpetrators of cyberbullying. Why?
Roderick S. Graham, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Old Dominion University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80759
2017-07-10T15:12:02Z
2017-07-10T15:12:02Z
ANC conference: governing party blew chance to regain South Africa’s trust
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177546/original/file-20170710-5923-118ozlz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Jacob Zuma closing the governing ANC's policy conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 5th <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/5th-national-policy-conference-2017">policy conference</a> of South Africa’s governing African National Congress
started on an ominous note. The party’s stalwarts had opted to <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/politics/2017-06-29-anc-veterans-will-boycott-part-of-policy-meeting-focused-on-partys-health/">stay away</a> because they wanted the party to call a <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-07-06-anc-stalwarts-and-veterans-not-backing-down-on-call-for-consultative-conference/">consultative conference</a> first to focus on the organisation’s problems. The ANC’s leadership refused.</p>
<p>In fact, their call infuriated President Jacob Zuma. He mocked them in <a href="http://www.polity.org.za/article/zuma-lays-into-anc-stalwarts-at-policy-conference-2017-06-30">his opening address</a>. The stalwarts – who include luminaries such as <a href="http://afmcloud.co.za/office-bearers/afm-international-office-bearers/pastor-frank-chikane">Frank Chikane</a>, <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-02-19-between-the-lines-sipho-pityana-was-a-loyal-soldier.-the-anc-wouldnt-listen.-now-hes-an-activist-again./#.WWN5N4SGM9c">Sipho Pityana</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cheryl-carolus">Cheryl Carolous</a> – are viewed by some as the link to the progenitors of the liberation struggle. Could their stay away spell a curse? </p>
<p>By the end of the conference Zuma appeared buoyed, dubbing the conference a success in his <a href="http://m.news24.com/News24/SouthAfrica/News/live-ancpolicy-conference-closing-day-20170705">closing address</a>. But, a success in achieving what? This question is pertinent because the conference came amid growing public discontent about the way the country is run, intensified by adverse assessments of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-a-downgrade-means-for-south-africa-and-what-it-can-do-about-it-75704">rating agencies</a> as well as the fact that the economy is in <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-in-a-recession-heres-what-that-means-78953">recession</a>. </p>
<p>Are the outcomes of the conference likely to assuage the consternation about the future of the country? Can they in anyway contribute towards extricating the country from the morass it’s in? Or, are South Africans simply grasping at straws by asking these questions?</p>
<h2>Losing leadership of society</h2>
<p>The ANC appears to have lost claim to being a leader of society. Just before the 2016 local government elections, its own research pointed to an increasing “trust deficit”: less than 50% of respondents saw the ANC as a <a href="https://www.google.co.za/#q=http://www.power987.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/170630-0705-FINAL-Diagnostic">leader of society</a>. This is an ignominious indictment to a once glorious movement. Isn’t that perhaps where the focus should have been at the conference - regaining people’s trust by taking them along in the policy discussions? </p>
<p>An opportunity for this was missed as the policy discussion was contrived as an ANC affair. This is odd for a governing party. Its existence ought to be anchored in society and should always pursue the public interest. As the American senator Elizabeth Dole <a href="http://www.azquotes.com/quote/827008?=public%20policy">once put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The best policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The policy conference didn’t reflect this character. The ANC’s policy deliberations were held in closed sessions. The media wasn’t allowed in. Only snippets were presented to the public. Media reports depended on press briefings and interviews. The ANC was largely talking to itself.</p>
<p>Being a leader of society is a function of making people part of the process of how the party intends to lead. And it should always be amenable to the views that emanate from society, not only from its members. The ANC is not just a political organisation or a liberation movement. It is a governing party. How it responds to its responsibility of governing is the business of South Africa’s 55 million citizens. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177550/original/file-20170710-5923-e6tws3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177550/original/file-20170710-5923-e6tws3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177550/original/file-20170710-5923-e6tws3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177550/original/file-20170710-5923-e6tws3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177550/original/file-20170710-5923-e6tws3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177550/original/file-20170710-5923-e6tws3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177550/original/file-20170710-5923-e6tws3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A delegate at the ANC’s 5th National Policy Conference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An elitist approach to policy disengages society. Society only reacts to the outcomes of policy discussions if it’s not engaged in dialogue. This spawns antagonism as democracy is fudged in the process. </p>
<p>The consequence of this is a “trust deficit”. This is where the biggest danger lies. A “trust deficit” questions the very legitimacy of the ANC. </p>
<h2>Vacuous discussions</h2>
<p>The ANC’s gatherings are no longer moments to assert the significance of pursuing societal interests. As presidential hopeful Lindiwe Sisulu <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/sisulu-warns-on-two-horse-power-bid-10203448">put it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The (policy) conference was not about issues, it was about which side is pushing which issue.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Was it, therefore, choreographed machinations to gauge the preferences of the branches in the presidential race? One is inclined to think so, especially in the context of Zuma’s remarks at the end of the conference in which he proposed that whoever loses the race to be president should automatically become the <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/anc-divided-on-dlamini-zuma-ramaphosa-power-sharing-10117583">deputy president of the party</a>.</p>
<p>This proposal is outrageous. It accepts <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/04/27/ndz-vs-cr17-battle-for-the-anc-underway_a_22058354/">factionalism</a> as part of the ANC’s organisational makeup. It seeks to institutionalise and accommodate factionalism rather than expunge it. Is this perhaps what the president was referring to when he spoke of success? </p>
<p>The other disturbing part of the conference was that <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/Derek_Hanekom/status/883064545387962369/video/1?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjc18y&refsrc=email&iid=dae17404b2784f2e922fa44a8f96ac2a&uid=2953929718&nid=244+285282314">vulgarity held sway</a> while sanity was heckled and shouted down, scorned as proxy for <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2017/07/05/pravin-hanekom-heckled-in-anc-policy-conference-talks">white monopoly capital</a>.</p>
<p>The truth is that <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/white-monopoly-capital-not-the-enemy-anc-20170704">white monopoly capital</a> is a dishonest narrative. Coupled with the narratives garbled in rhetoric on the <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/radical-economic-transformation-zuma-vs-ramaphosa-20170502">radical transformation </a> of the economy and <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/zuma-calls-on-black-parties-to-unite-on-land-20170303">land reform</a>, white monopoly capital is nothing more than gesticulation of populism bereft of ideological context. In the meantime gluttonous politics is in ascendance. State power is contested for <a href="http://pari.org.za/betrayal-promise-report/">nefarious ends</a>. </p>
<p>Where does this leave the <a href="https://www.google.co.za/#q=http://www.power987.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/170630-0705-FINAL-Diagnostic">historical mission</a> of the liberation struggle which is about</p>
<blockquote>
<p>uplifting the quality of life of all South Africans, especially the poor, the majority of whom are African and female.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Joel Netshitenzhe, a member of the national executive committee of the ANC, came closest to providing an answer. He went to the subterranean dimension of the debate on the transformation of the economy in pointing out that “white dominance in the economy” is a manifestation of a problem, which is <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/white-monopoly-capital-not-the-enemy-anc-20170704">“monopoly capital”</a>. </p>
<p>To use the phrase “white monopoly capital” is to reduce the policy debate to polemics and to spawn untenable interventions. As Netshitenzhe <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/white-monopoly-capital-not-the-enemy-anc-20170704">further explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[the] relationship between the ANC and monopoly capital in particular, but also capital in general, is one of unity and struggle, or if you like, cooperation and contestation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This irked the proponents of the white monopoly capital narrative who responded by displaying vacuousness and a lack of analytical depth on policy matters.</p>
<p>It appears as if the contestations in the conference hardened attitudes instead of facilitating policy choices. They intensified policy stalemate. This is perilous to South Africa. Outcomes of the policy conference don’t offer much to write home about. What they did do was to set up the ANC’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/54th-national-conference">December 2017 elective conference</a> for an internecine and bruising jostling for power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80759/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mashupye Herbert Maserumule received funding from National Research Foundation for his postgraduate studies. He is affiliated with South African Association of Public Administration and Management(SAAPAM). He is the Chief Editor of its Journal of Public Administration.</span></em></p>
South Africa’s governing ANC appears to have lost claim to being a leader of society. This is clear from the outcome of its policy conference.
Mashupye Herbert Maserumule, Professor of Public Affairs, Tshwane University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/72919
2017-06-12T11:02:22Z
2017-06-12T11:02:22Z
Is there structural racism on the internet?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173174/original/file-20170609-4794-1e86c1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do people use the internet in ways that disadvantage nonwhites?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/horizontal-vector-illustration-big-number-people-491897284">magic pictures/shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The racial inequalities afflicting Americans and our society today are in many ways a result of <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2089_reg.html">the result of spatial segregation</a>. White people and nonwhite people tend to live in different neighborhoods, go to different schools and have dramatically different economic opportunities based on their race. That physical manifestation of structural racism has been <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/46131/invisible-man-by-ralph-ellison/9780679732761/">true historically in this country</a>, and is <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/220290/between-the-world-and-me-by-ta-nehisi-coates/9780812993547/">still the case today</a>.</p>
<p>Today’s internet is built on a similar spatial logic. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12190">People travel from website to website</a> in search of content in the same way they travel from neighborhood to neighborhood looking for stuff to do and people to hang out with. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39426-8_8">Websites accrue and compound value</a> as visitor traffic and site visibility increases.</p>
<p>But there is a crucial difference: Internet users have – more or less – complete freedom to travel where they choose. Websites can’t see the color of a user’s skin and police incoming traffic in the same way human beings can and do in geographical spaces. Therefore, it’s easy to imagine that the internet’s very structure – the social environments it produces and the new economies it births – might not be racially segregated the way the physical world is.</p>
<p>And yet the internet does appear in fact segregated along racial lines. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1206137">My research</a> demonstrates that websites focusing on racial issues are visited less often, and are less visible in search result rankings than sites with different, or broader, focuses. This phenomenon is not based on anything that individual website producers do. Rather, it appears to be a product of how users themselves find and share information online, a process mediated mostly by search engines and, increasingly, social media platforms.</p>
<h2>Exploring online racism</h2>
<p>Words like “racist” and “racism” are loaded terms, primarily because people almost always associate them with individualized moral and cognitive failures. In recent years, though, the American public has become increasingly aware that racism can apply to cultures and societies at large. </p>
<p>My work looks for online analogues of this systemic racism, in which <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Racial-Theories-in-Social-Science-A-Systemic-Racism-Critique/Elias-Feagin/p/book/9781138645226">subtle biases permeate society and culture</a> in ways that yield overwhelming advantages for whites, at the expense of nonwhites. Specifically, I am trying to determine whether the online environment, one completely constructed by humans, systematically produces advantages and disadvantages along racial lines – whether intentionally or inadvertently. </p>
<p>This is a difficult question to approach, but I begin by assuming that today’s technological systems have developed within a culture and society that is systemically and structurally racist. This makes it possible – even likely – that existing biases operate in similar ways online.</p>
<p>In addition, the historical geographical configurations that produced and perpetuated racial inequality provide a useful guide to investigating what systemic racism might look like online. The online landscape, and how people travel through it, are both important factors to understand this picture.</p>
<h2>Understanding online navigation</h2>
<p>First, I wanted to look at the map – how the web itself is structured by website producers. I analyzed what Alexa.com characterizes as the internet’s <a href="http://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/Society/Ethnicity/African/African-American">top 56 African-American sites</a> using a software program called <a href="http://uberlink.com/">Voson</a>. Voson crawls the web to identify what websites the source sites link to, and what sites link to the source sites.</p>
<p>Then I set out to determine the racial content, if any, of each of those thousands of websites, to begin measuring any inequalities that might exist in the online landscape.</p>
<p>Measuring spatial inequality offline typically involves measuring attributes of the people who live in a specific geographic location. For example, ZIP code 65035 designates a “white” neighborhood because <a href="https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/DEC/10_SF1/QTP3/8600000US65035">99.5 percent of the people residing there</a> (Freeburg, Missouri) are white, according to U.S. census data. By contrast, ZIP code 60619, an area in Chicago, would be considered “nonwhite,” because <a href="https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/DEC/10_SF1/QTP3/8600000US60619">0.7 percent of its residents are white</a>.</p>
<p>To make this type of distinction between websites, I relied on website metatags – website producers’ descriptions of the site coded to be picked up by and reflected in search engine results. I designated as “racial” websites with metatags including terms such as “african american,” “racism,” “hispanic,” “model minority” and “afro.” Sites without those terms in their metatags I designated “nonracial.” </p>
<p>By using website metatags, I was able to distinguish between racial and nonracial sites (and the segregated traffic between them) based on whether the site’s producers themselves define the site’s identity in racial terms.</p>
<h2>Understanding online navigation</h2>
<p>Once I had labeled each site as racial or nonracial, I looked at the links website producers created between them. There were three possible types of links: between two racial sites, between two nonracial sites, or between a racial site and a nonracial one.</p>
<p>How many of each type of link the data contained would reveal whether bias influenced website producers’ decisions. If there were no bias, the number of links would be proportional to the number of each type of site in the data set. If there were bias, the numbers of links would be disproportionately high or low.</p>
<p><iframe id="SL6kc" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/SL6kc/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>While I found slight differences between the ideal theoretical proportions and the actual number of links, they were not significant enough to indicate that any segregation in people’s internet behavior is caused by web producers. People who travel the web just clicking links on websites at random would not arrive at racial or nonracial sites substantially more or less than they should based on the number of such sites that exist. But people don’t just follow links; they exercise their preferences when navigating the web. </p>
<h2>Seeing segregation</h2>
<p>For my second inquiry, I wanted to find out how people actually move between websites. I looked at the same 56 sites as for the previous analysis, but this time used <a href="https://www.similarweb.com/">Similarweb</a>, a prominent web traffic metrics site. For each site, Similarweb produces data showing what websites people came from and what websites people navigated to next. I characterized those sites, too, as “racial” or “nonracial,” and identified three types of paths people took when clicking: between two racial sites, between two nonracial sites, or between a racial site and a nonracial one.</p>
<p><iframe id="UQjbw" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/UQjbw/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>In this analysis, the number of clicks between different types of sites would reveal whether bias influenced users’ decisions. I found significantly greater numbers of clicks between nonracial sites, and fewer numbers of clicks between racial and nonracial sites. That indicates that users are going out of their way to visit nonracial sites.</p>
<h2>Capitalizing on search engines</h2>
<p>This gets us closer to the whole story when it comes to segregated traffic patterns and potential inequalities along racial lines. My data also showed that nonracial sites rank significantly higher in search results, and therefore likely enjoy greater visibility, than racial sites. The racial sites are less visible, get less traffic and therefore likely reap fewer benefits from visibility (such as advertising revenue or higher search engine rankings).</p>
<p>It might be tempting to suggest that this merely reflects user preferences. That could be true if users knew what websites they want to go to, and then navigate directly to them. But usually, users don’t. It’s <a href="https://www.emarketer.com/Article/How-Much-Search-Traffic-Actually-Comes-Googling/1011814">much more likely</a> that people type a word or phrase into a search engine like Google. In fact, direct traffic accounts for only about one-third of the traffic flow to the web’s top sites. To quote a <a href="https://www.brightedge.com/sites/default/files/Cracking%20the%20Content%20Code.pdf">conclusion from search optimization firm Brightedge</a>, “overwhelmingly, organic search trumps other traffic generators.”</p>
<p>While more research is of course necessary, my work so far suggests that in conjunction with users’ preferred choices to navigate to nonracial sites more than racial sites, search engines do something with a similar effect: Nonracial sites rank significantly higher than racial sites. That can give racial sites less traffic and less financial support in the form of advertising revenue. </p>
<p>In both of these situations, people and search engines steer traffic in ways that give advantages to nonracial websites and disadvantages to racial sites. This approximates what, in the offline world, is called systemic, structural racism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlton McIlwain 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>
The physical world is racially segregated as a result of structural racism. A researcher examines whether similar problems exist online.
Charlton McIlwain, Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/72703
2017-02-15T15:00:07Z
2017-02-15T15:00:07Z
The new editor of British Vogue must make diversity fashionable
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156916/original/image-20170215-19598-1js20wh.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/london-august-8-2014-vogue-magazine-435760864?src=fhkrUPscCclB-JB6OO-qaA-1-0">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After 25 years at the helm, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/alexandra-shulman-british-vogue-editor-leaves-fashion-magazine-25-years-resigns-a7545116.html">Alexandra Shulman announced</a> in January 2017 that she will be stepping down as editor of fashion bible British Vogue. Her decision prompted mixed reflections on the achievements of the magazine’s longest serving editor. For some, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/25/alexandra-shulman-british-vogue-uk-fashions-chief-advocate-and-its-vocal-critic">Shulman represented</a> a “real leader” in the fashion industry. Others claimed her tenure will be remembered for its <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/02/alexandra-shulmans-reign-vogue-will-defined-mediocrity-idiocy-flip-flops/">mediocrity</a>. </p>
<p>In Vogue’s <a href="http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/alexandra-shulman-editor-in-chief-leaving-vogue">official statement</a>, the boss of its publisher, Condé Nast Britain, hailed Shulman as the most successful editor in the magazine’s 100-year history. He added that it was “impossible to sufficiently express the contribution she has made to Vogue, to Condé Nast and to the British fashion industry”.</p>
<p>Fashion and cultural commentators will probably agree that it is impossible to express, or rather measure, her specific contribution. A wide range of external factors – social, economic, political – have transformed the industry in the last two-and-a-half decades. Yet most would agree that both Vogue and Shulman have played an important role in shaping our understanding of fashion, and by extension, our culture and identity. </p>
<p>Shulman began her career in journalism writing for Over-21 magazine, before moving on to Tatler in 1982 and from there to The Sunday Telegraph. Her CV also boasts a two-year stint as editor of GQ magazine before assuming the role of editor-in-chief of British Vogue in 1992. In her autobiographical account of Vogue’s 100th year, Shulman positioned herself as a custodian of the magazine, refusing to claim an authorial role. She wrote: “It’s Vogue’s voice, not mine.” </p>
<p>In contrast to her late father, the journalist Milton Shulman, who <a href="https://www.shrimptoncouture.com/blogs/curated/vintage-news-alexandra-shulman-on-100-years-of-vogue">reportedly</a> loved having a “soapbox”, Alexandra Shulman never wished for Vogue to serve as a vehicle for her own personality. Such a position perhaps conveniently absolves Shulman of any responsibility for the controversies that have surrounded the publication during her time as editor. That said, she <a href="http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/Vogue-Alexandra-Shulman-100-years/index.html">did acknowledge</a> that she gets “a choice in what that voice says”. For some, that voice could have been used more effectively to challenge the institutional racism of the fashion world. </p>
<p>Vogue has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/black-model-british-vogue-naomi-campbell-racism">long been criticised</a> for failing to represent a diverse population, but in 2013 it was under particular scrutiny. When well-known models Naomi Campbell, Iman and Bethann Hardison wrote an <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2013/09/fashion-icons-naomi-campbell-iman-demand-diversity-on-racist-runway/">open letter</a> asking for designers to diversify their catwalks. Since August 2002, Vogue had featured only three black models on its 146 covers. </p>
<p>Shulman attempted to explain this using market logic. She <a href="http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/alexandra-shulman-joins-the-race-debate">claimed</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In a society where the mass of the consumers are white and where, on the whole, mainstream ideas sell, it’s unlikely there will be a huge rise in the number of leading black models.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such a response reduces Vogue and Shulman’s culpability. Here, the media is a simple reflection of society. Vogue is not racist, it is the product of a racist society. </p>
<h2>A model publication?</h2>
<p>But this position denies the media’s powerful role in constructing and perpetuating societal norms. Plus, it is a position that Shulman feels able to “opt out” of when it comes to the media representation of fuller figured and ageing women. In the January 2017 issue, Vogue featured model Ashley Graham (British size 16) on the cover. In her editor’s letter, Shulman openly criticised designers who refused to lend clothes for the photo shoot. <a href="http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/vogue-editors-letter-january-2017-issue">She wrote</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It seems strange to me that while the rest of the world is desperate for fashion to embrace broader definitions of physical beauty, some of our most famous fashion brands appear to be travelling in the opposite – and in my opinion, unwise – direction.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similarly, she credits herself for introducing the “Ageless Style” issue (typically the bestselling issue of the year) which provides a platform for women of all ages, representing those frequently ignored by the fashion and media industries. And while such an endeavour is admirable, it is difficult to understand how someone who claims impotency when it comes to addressing the racial inequalities in the fashion industry, can simultaneously function as a public champion of ageing and fuller figured women. </p>
<p>When reflecting on Shulman’s legacy and celebrating her achievements, one must also reflect on the work still to be done. Vogue remains a powerhouse in print journalism and has at least an opportunity, if not a responsibility, to represent all communities in society. Shulman’s successor may do well to look to its sister publication, Teen Vogue, whose recent coverage of <a href="http://www.teenvogue.com/story/support-the-black-lives-matter-movement">Black Lives Matter</a>, <a href="http://www.teenvogue.com/story/half-of-people-killed-by-police-have-disabilities">disability</a> and <a href="http://www.teenvogue.com/story/forced-sterilization-transgender-people-europe-france">LGBTQ rights</a> reminds us that fashion is not the exclusive practice of the privileged few.</p>
<p><em>This article originally said: “Shulman was forced to respond to the fact that, since August 2002, Vogue had featured only white models on its 146 covers.” This has been corrected.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72703/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Warner 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>
Glossy magazines have a serious role to play.
Helen Warner, Lecturer in Cultural Politics, Communication and Media Studies, University of East Anglia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67688
2016-11-07T11:00:37Z
2016-11-07T11:00:37Z
Violence has long been a feature of American elections
<p>The 2016 American presidential campaign has renewed concerns about the specter of violence in American electoral politics. The campaign has been marked by tense – <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/02/a_list_of_violent_incidents_at_donald_trump_rallies_and_events.html">and occasionally violent</a> – altercations between supporters and critics of Republican nominee Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Trump encouraged his supporters to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzYv5foyAS8">“knock the crap”</a> out of protesters, and even suggested he would <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/13/donald-trump-says-he-may-pay-legal-fees-of-accused-attacker/?_r=0">pay the legal fees</a> of followers who assaulted his critics.</p>
<p>By <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-wont-commit-to-accepting-election-results-if-he-loses/2016/10/19/9c9672e6-9609-11e6-bc79-af1cd3d2984b_story.html">refusing to commit</a> to accepting the results of the election, he has confirmed the <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/poll-41-percent-of-voters-say-the-election-could-be-stolen-from-trump-229871">doubts among his supporters</a> about the integrity of American elections. Thereby, he has increased the risk of <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/10/donald_trump_is_setting_a_time_bomb_for_racial_violence_on_election_day.html">possibly violent</a> resistance by hard-core Trumpists.</p>
<p>It would be comforting to conclude that the menace of violence surrounding the 2016 presidential election is unique. But my research on the history of voting rights in the United States suggests that this is far from the case. Indeed, the threat and execution of violence around elections has a long, sad history in American politics. </p>
<p>Somewhat like the 2016 election – which has revolved around issues of race and immigration – efforts by disadvantaged (and often nonwhite) citizens to secure greater political influence have been met with violent repression by those already enjoying power (usually more affluent whites) throughout American history.</p>
<h2>History of violence</h2>
<p>Violent conflict surrounding elections goes all the way back to the beginning of American history. The Founding Era – often portrayed as a period dominated by outstanding, level-headed statesmen who set the United States on a course toward inevitable greatness – was actually a chaotic period.</p>
<p>Political violence was <a href="http://thebaffler.com/ancestors/reflections-violence-united-states">a constant threat</a> in that period. And, occasionally, a reality. </p>
<p>In 1804, Aaron Burr, vice president and <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/history/thomas-jefferson-aaron-burr-and-the-election-of-1800-131082359/">an aspirant for higher office</a>, killed Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s former secretary of the treasury, in a duel. Doubting Burr’s judgment and patriotism, Hamilton had <a href="http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/hamilton/essays/understanding-burr-hamilton-duel">worked to deny</a> Burr the governorship of New York. Burr was <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300097559/affairs-honor">outraged over</a> <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300097559/affairs-honor">Hamilton’s efforts</a> to deny him the political success he craved. </p>
<p>The period between the 1820s and the onset of the Civil War was marked by a substantial increase in ethnic and religious diversity. This period was also notable for an increase in violent conflict surrounding politics and elections. </p>
<p>In a precursor of today’s politics, these clashes stemmed from <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religion/article/the-know-nothing-party-three-theories-about-its-rise-and-demise/BD58CBD14E86886C4B5FF93DED133162">heightened anxieties</a> among native white Protestants about the consequences of Irish and German Catholic immigration for American identity and social harmony.</p>
<p>Of particular note was the rise of the virulently nativist, anti-Catholic “American Party” (better known as the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/nativism-and-slavery-9780195089226?cc=us&lang=en&">“Know-Nothing” Party</a>) in the 1850s. For some Know-Nothings, violence against recent immigrants was an acceptable means to preserve the rights of native whites.</p>
<p>The Know-Nothings were hardly a fringe movement: By 1854, they <a href="https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2016/09/trump-throwback-know-nothing-party-1850s">had elected 52 of the then 234 members of Congress</a>, as well as the mayors of several major cities. The rise of the Know-Nothings triggered serious conflicts between native white Protestants and those who had recently immigrated. </p>
<p>In a particularly horrifying 1855 event known as <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-05/anti-immigrant-political-movement-sparked-election-day-riot-150-years-ago">“Bloody Monday,”</a> 22 people – mostly recent German and Irish immigrants – were killed, and many more were injured, in an Election Day riot in Louisville, Kentucky. </p>
<p>In a disturbing precedent given Trump’s request that his supporters monitor polls in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/us/politics/donald-trump-voting-election-rigging.html?_r=0">“certain locations,”</a> an immediate precursor of the riot was an <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-05/anti-immigrant-political-movement-sparked-election-day-riot-150-years-ago">effort by armed Know-Nothing supporters</a> to prevent eligible immigrant voters from casting ballots.</p>
<h2>The deadliest conflict</h2>
<p>It also bears remembering that the Civil War was sparked by the refusal by southern states to accept the results of the 1860 election. </p>
<p>That unusual contest, which had featured four major presidential candidates, had been won by Republican standard-bearer Abraham Lincoln despite the fact that he secured only <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showelection.php?year=1860">39.9 percent of the vote</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144589/original/image-20161104-27947-1qelvjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144589/original/image-20161104-27947-1qelvjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144589/original/image-20161104-27947-1qelvjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144589/original/image-20161104-27947-1qelvjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144589/original/image-20161104-27947-1qelvjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144589/original/image-20161104-27947-1qelvjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144589/original/image-20161104-27947-1qelvjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civil War graves at Arlington Cemetery, Virginia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjbos11/11875209906/in/photolist-j6nybo-gbpGUT-33LWf-9XCUp2-a3UgyH-pcvoq7-8XGLHr-935LTq-bC4ewf-mvmcQn-bQXTTB-bC4gpE-bQXWCp-bQXXg4-pYfNd-5QRThN-anprtX-cHfPj1-B4zjGC-qc1rVz-2aCVb5-eWMTUQ-6XABQ5-qnaswX-7HQLnB-6oTyqx-acsMTN-8Uk2rh-a3Ujnp-4mfGLf-79AS1d-eUQBHN-9qFFPz-9jvyXT-aEzYaE-9qJK4w-9dvxEu-9XCSMz-56LPEo-9BfU8Q-afBPaV-8bvBYG-935Mgw-9eqb5S-A3u5KW-9XFKoA-h8ttkm-eZV3B7-a3X8U5-dqGPWe">Mike Boswell</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Lincoln <a href="http://www.asjournal.org/53-2009/abraham-lincolns-attitudes-on-slavery-and-race/">did not support</a> the immediate emancipation of African-American slaves, southern leaders believed he intended to destroy the southern slave system. They sought to exit the Union in order to prevent that from happening. </p>
<p>When Lincoln refused to accept southern secession, the result was the Civil War – still the <a href="http://prospect.org/article/american-war-dead-numbers">nation’s deadliest conflict</a> in terms of total casualties.</p>
<h2>Racialized election violence</h2>
<p>But violence directly linked to elections arguably reached a fever pitch in the decades following the North’s victory in the Civil War. The national Republican Party’s attempts to enfranchise African-Americans and strengthen Republican Party organizations in southern states were contested strenuously – and often violently – by southern whites. </p>
<p>In the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, armed groups of newly enfranchised African-Americans and their white Republican supporters <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Two-Reconstructions-Struggle-Enfranchisement-Political/dp/0226845303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1477324613&sr=8-1&keywords=The+two+reconstructions">repeatedly squared off</a> against white supremacist paramilitary organizations in states throughout the South. </p>
<p>In one of the worst single episodes of violence – <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/07/what_was_the_colfax_massacre/">the Colfax Massacre of 1873</a> – a group of white vigilantes killed somewhere between <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1873-colfax-massacre-crippled-reconstruction-180958746/?no-ist">62 and 150 African-American men</a>. African-American Republicans had occupied the Grant Parish, Louisiana courthouse in order to preserve the results of the 1872 gubernatorial election, which had elevated a Republican to the governorship. Three whites were also slain in the battle, which had featured the use of trenches and cannon.</p>
<h2>A long history</h2>
<p>The threat – and repeated <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/civil-rights-memorial/civil-rights-martyrs">execution</a> – of violence remained important features of efforts by white supremacists to suppress African-American (and Latino) registration and voting all the way up until enactment of the <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/bending-toward-justice">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a>, which strengthened federal voting rights protections and authorized federal monitoring of election rules in states with records of racial discrimination in voting.</p>
<p>Indeed, the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Protest_at_Selma.html?id=n6OL9LyhoG4C">immediate impetus</a> for enactment of the Voting Rights Act was widespread public outrage following the nationwide broadcast of images of the brutal police suppression of a peaceful voting rights march in Selma, Alabama. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ik9kL92A7ho?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Broadcast of images of suppression in Selma.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And the subsequent <a href="https://transatlantica.revues.org/7437">expansion of the Voting Rights Act</a> to protect the rights of non-English-speaking Americans was shaped in no small part by reports of the <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/giveustheballot/ariberman">violent intimidation</a> of prospective Latino voters, especially in southwestern states.</p>
<p>Just a few years after enactment of the Voting Rights Act, the 1968 Democratic National Convention was famously marred by the <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo5826735.html">violent suppression of anti-war demonstrators</a> by the Chicago police. Demonstrators explicitly portrayed American involvement in Vietnam as the <a href="http://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=3501#.WBDY_uErJAY">continuation</a> of American imperialism and suppression of nonwhite peoples. The clash represented another example of racialized violence surrounding elections.</p>
<p>As a general matter, elections in more recent decades have been characterized by greater civility. However, the long history of violence in American elections should caution citizens against undue optimism about the continuation of this recent favorable trend. </p>
<p>Trump’s incitement of violence and denigration of the integrity of American elections do, in fact, risk the resumption of ugly historic patterns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jesse Rhodes has done contract work for Demos, a progressive think tank.</span></em></p>
In America’s past, efforts by disadvantaged citizens to secure greater political influence have been met with violent repression.
Jesse Rhodes, Associate Professor, Political Science, UMass Amherst
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67993
2016-11-02T04:14:22Z
2016-11-02T04:14:22Z
What is racism - and is Bill Leak a ‘controversialist’ or a racist?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144152/original/image-20161102-27224-ggo6ga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What does it take to be rightfully described as a racist?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Studio Araminta/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A policeman tells a drunken Aboriginal father to take responsibility for his child. But the man can’t even remember his son’s name. Predictably, Bill Leak’s now infamous cartoon published in The Australian on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day, brought <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-04/cartoon-an-'attack'-on-aboriginal-people,-indigenous-leader-says/7689248">accusations of racism</a> from many quarters. </p>
<p>Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion condemned the cartoon for its <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/4075032/indigenous-affairs-minister-nigel-scullion-condemns-racist-bill-leak-cartoon/?cs=12">racist stereotyping</a>. The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-04/cartoon-an-'attack'-on-aboriginal-people,-indigenous-leader-says/7689248">NSW Aboriginal Land Council</a> also called it racist and filed a complaint with the Press Council. A complaint has now been lodged with the <a href="http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/15/11/14/cartoon-investigated-for-racial-hatred">Human Rights Commission</a> about the “hateful and derogatory material specifically relating to indigenous Australians” in Leak’s cartoons. </p>
<p>Leak claims to be <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-20/bill-leak-'singled-out'-for-racial-discrimination-investigation/7952590">bewildered </a> by the accusations. He regards his cartoon as a legitimate response to the Four Corners revelation of the mistreatment of children at the Don Dale detention centre. Leak says: “It comes back ultimately to the parents.” </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144153/original/image-20161102-27231-1itqw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144153/original/image-20161102-27231-1itqw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144153/original/image-20161102-27231-1itqw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144153/original/image-20161102-27231-1itqw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144153/original/image-20161102-27231-1itqw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144153/original/image-20161102-27231-1itqw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144153/original/image-20161102-27231-1itqw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Malcolm Turnbull: Leak is a ‘controversialist’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Peled/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to Malcolm Turnbull, Leak is a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/oct/28/malcolm-turnbull-declares-bill-leak-is-not-a-racist">“controversialist”</a>, not a racist. Our prime minister’s parsing of this distinction raises the question: what does it take to be rightfully described as racist?</p>
<p>Philosophers and sociologists have <a href="https://www.academia.edu/5594539/Theories_of_Race_and_Racism">theories about racism</a> but even they aren’t in agreement about what it is. Some emphasise beliefs. A racist, they say, is someone who thinks that character is determined by race or who believes that other races are inferior. </p>
<p>Others emphasise behaviour rather than beliefs. A racist denigrates or attacks people of other races. </p>
<p>Others find racism in common, often unthinking, assumptions. The writer Benjamin Law, for instance, sees racism in the words of <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/good-weekend/adult-education/benjamin-law-the-race-question-20161013-gs1b7f">a cosmetics saleswoman</a> who once told his (Chinese) mother that she wouldn’t be able to afford her products. </p>
<p>Some think that racism is revealed in involuntary behaviour – for example in the fear felt by some white women when they encounter black men on the street. Others think that racism is found not so much in people’s attitudes and beliefs but in the institutions of society.</p>
<p>These competing perspectives show that racism has no precise meaning and what a person does to deserve the label is often not clear. Leak is not alone in feeling bewildered. Lack of clarity also encourages promiscuous use. According to some conceptions of racism – those that emphasise attitudes or unconscious reactions – almost every white person is a racist.</p>
<p>The problem of lack of clarity is aggravated by the fact that “racism” is a serious accusation and those so called are likely to react in a defensive and angry way. Use of this label is not conducive to a dialogue about proper social behaviour.</p>
<h2>Using the dictionary definition</h2>
<p>In my opinion, we should adhere to the commonsense definition found in most dictionaries. A racist is someone who both believes that people of a particular racial or cultural group are inferior or inherently bad and who deliberately and persistently attacks them verbally or physically, or seeks to denigrate, expel or eliminate them.</p>
<p>This definition enables us to distinguish racism from lesser wrongs in racial relationships. Those who wanted to rid Australia of Aborigines and their culture by taking away their children were racist.</p>
<p>Those who supported the policy because they were concerned about the welfare of Aboriginal children had mistaken beliefs about Aborigines and were blind to the harm caused. But they weren’t racists.</p>
<p>The saleswoman described by Law and the women who fear black men have false beliefs but they don’t deserve to be called racists. </p>
<p>On the other hand, those who <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-casual-racism-30464">casually</a> but persistently insult or denigrate others because of their race are usually racists. But sometimes they are simply bullies who believe that their society has given them a licence to attack people of a certain kind.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144142/original/image-20161102-15783-52vlrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144142/original/image-20161102-15783-52vlrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144142/original/image-20161102-15783-52vlrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144142/original/image-20161102-15783-52vlrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144142/original/image-20161102-15783-52vlrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144142/original/image-20161102-15783-52vlrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144142/original/image-20161102-15783-52vlrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daisy Bates pictured in 1921.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia images.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Daisy Bates (1863-1951), who is famous for her efforts to improve the welfare of Aborigines in Western Australia and the Northern Territory and to publicise the wrongs done to them, believed that they were an <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bates-daisy-may-83">inferior race doomed to die out</a> (but she didn’t engage in racist behaviour.) She also thought they were cannibals. She had mistaken beliefs, which she shared with most people of her times, but it would be inaccurate and unfair to call her a racist.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144137/original/image-20161102-15814-1ymn7pr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144137/original/image-20161102-15814-1ymn7pr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144137/original/image-20161102-15814-1ymn7pr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144137/original/image-20161102-15814-1ymn7pr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144137/original/image-20161102-15814-1ymn7pr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144137/original/image-20161102-15814-1ymn7pr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144137/original/image-20161102-15814-1ymn7pr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144137/original/image-20161102-15814-1ymn7pr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bill Leak pictured in 2000.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dean Lewins/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is no reason to believe that Bill Leak regards Aborigines as inferior or inherently bad. There is no reason to think that he is denigrating them because of their race. But this doesn’t mean that he is innocent of racial misdemeanors. By contributing to a stereotypical and largely false view about Aboriginal parents he can be accused of insensitivity. </p>
<p>This demeaning stereotype caused many people to respond to the cartoon by pointing out that <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/08/indigenousdads-heartfelt-images-shared-counter-leaks-cartoon">Aborigines are often caring fathers</a>. If the cartoon had been about a drunken white man and his child no one would have felt the need for this response.</p>
<p>Leak is also wrong to suppose that all the troubles of Aboriginal youth can be blamed on the failure of their parents to take responsibility.</p>
<p>Turnbull is right. Leak is not a racist. But this does not mean that the complaints against his cartoon are without foundation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67993/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janna Thompson 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>
A lack of clarity around the meaning of ‘racism’ leads to the word being used promiscuously.
Janna Thompson, Professor of Philosophy, La Trobe University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/56085
2016-03-14T04:23:45Z
2016-03-14T04:23:45Z
South African ‘born free’ students see the world through the prism of race
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114684/original/image-20160310-26246-1xt5qwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racial tensions are becoming increasingly common among South African university students.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>F A university rugby match degenerated into <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/watch-ufs-rugby-supporters-clash-with-student-protesters-on-field-20160223">on-field brawls</a> between black and white students. White Afrikaans-speaking students and black students <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/racial-strife-at-tuks---pics-1988326">traded blows</a> over the University of Pretoria’s language policy. </p>
<p>Some people are astonished that this is happening nearly 22 years after the end of formal apartheid and that such clashes often involve the so-called <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34570761">“born frees”</a> – young South Africans who were born after <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/unit.php?id=65-24E-6">apartheid ended</a> in 1994. But the country is undergoing a massive transformation. Race lies at the heart of this process, just as it lay at the heart of the apartheid state. </p>
<p>Between 2013 and 2015 a group of colleagues from various universities and I conducted research about students’ views on political culture, values and voting; their perceptions of government policy and quality of life; and their impressions of race relations. All were “born frees”.</p>
<p>Our key finding was that university students often fall into the <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en">“single story”</a> trap: they tend to ignore the experiences of other individuals or groups when constructing an understanding of the country’s political realities. </p>
<p>Political realities are, by their nature, <a href="http://www.discourses.org/OldArticles/Political%20discourse%20and%20political%20cognition.pdf">constructed</a>. In understanding the political discourse of race, then, the “single story” becomes salient. People construct their political knowledge based on their experiences and ideas about individuals and groups. This in turn structures group thinking – or single stories – around specific political issues and actions. On campuses, this would include language policy in higher education or the idea that universities must be decolonised.</p>
<p>Our research shows that students’ realities are built on single stories of “the racist”, continued exclusion and stereotypes. Their sense of nationhood, of being one, is very fragile. Their political reality is full of contradictions: integrated, yet separated; united, yet unreconciled; free, yet oppressed; equal, yet unequal. </p>
<h2>Constructing political realities</h2>
<p>The data was gathered from about 1,500 students across faculties and disciplines at six universities. Some are historically white institutions, one catered exclusively for black students during the apartheid era and others were created during a <a href="http://www.actacommercii.co.za/index.php/acta/article/viewFile/175/172">merger process</a> in the early 2000s. Participants were all given a survey featuring both closed-ended and open-ended questions. On some campuses, these surveys were supplemented with focus groups. </p>
<p>So what are the “single stories” that university students tell themselves about race? </p>
<p>Students place a high value on democratic values like freedom, inclusion, equal rights and equal treatment. Concomitantly, there are also high levels of intolerance across racial lines based on students’ perceptions of other race groups’ access to wealth, better education, jobs and greater privilege.</p>
<p>Across the racial board, participants told a “single story” of exclusion as their lived political reality. White participants said they felt excluded by the country’s <a href="http://www.labour.gov.za/DOL/legislation/acts/basic-guides/basic-guide-to-affirmative-action">affirmative action policies</a> and measures of redress. They feel they are being excluded from the job market. They talked about “reverse apartheid” being directed at white South Africans.</p>
<p>Black students talked about the country’s racialised patterns of poverty and inequality, which they view as a continuation of apartheid oppression. Their political reality was one of oppression as seen through the slow pace of substantive transformation and a lack of access to quality health care, education and basic services.</p>
<p>These “single stories” of exclusion and access exacerbate racial tensions. </p>
<h2>Getting along?</h2>
<p>When it came to relationships with people of different races, many students said they took hope from their own cross-racial friendships and the number of interracial romantic couples they know. They believe that non-racialism is based on the idea of tolerance. But many said that improving relationships across races would be a generational fight, as they believe that post-apartheid South Africa is built on a racist culture.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sahrc.org.za/home/21/files/Reports/Investigation%20into%20racial%20stereotype%20in%20th%20emedia.pdf">Stereotypes</a>, an unwillingness to interact and continued discrimination fuel racial intolerance. </p>
<h2>Moving beyond the ‘single story’</h2>
<p>As long as the “single story” of exclusion is the main narrative describing post-apartheid citizenship, the racial dividing line that separates South Africans will persist. A divide created by apartheid will remain at the heart of South African citizenship.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>has received funding from the National Research Foundation and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung</span></em></p>
University students in South Africa tend to fall into a “single story” trap, ignoring other individuals’ experiences to construct an understanding of the country’s political realities.
Joleen Steyn Kotze, Associate Professor of Political Science, Nelson Mandela University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43899
2015-07-24T17:34:25Z
2015-07-24T17:34:25Z
Candidates are ignoring race’s crucial role in determining who thrives, struggles
<p>Last Saturday, presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley were booed and heckled by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/us/protesters-confront-candidates-on-race-at-netroots-nation-conference.html?emc=edit_th_20150719&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=28708558">liberal</a> activists at a town hall discussion at the Netroots Nation annual conference. </p>
<p>Why would attendees at a gathering of left-leaning progressives commandeer the microphone on stage and shout down Democratic White House contenders? Because Sanders and O’Malley, like the rest of the candidates, have built political platforms that largely ignore race.</p>
<p>The activists at the Netroots meeting were angry because Sanders and O’Malley have failed to respond to racial criminal justice issues, largely ignoring recent high-profile cases – such as the death in police custody of <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sandra-bland-said-she-was-depressed-attempted-suicide-jail-records-n396886">Sandra Bland</a> – and police misconduct involving blacks. Instead, the candidates have focused on economic reforms. But those platforms ignore race too.</p>
<p>Sanders eventually <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/07/22/bernie_sanders_becomes_the_first_candidate_to_speak_out_on_sandra_bland_we_need_real_police_reform/">denounced</a> the circumstances surrounding the Sandra Bland arrest and has called for police reforms, and Hillary Clinton now <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-yes-black-lives-matter">appears</a> to have embraced the Black Lives Matter movement. </p>
<p>Still, none of the White House hopefuls has publicly discussed the role that demographics – particularly race – play in determining who will thrive, and who will struggle, in today’s economy.</p>
<h2>Cookie-cutter platforms</h2>
<p>Sanders, who is a socialist and the most progressive candidate in the presidential race, has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/16/bernie-sanders-on-americas-grotesquely-unfair-society/">characterized</a> the well-documented wealth and income gaps as “grotesquely” unfair. His proposed solutions, though, are generic and race-neutral ones, like raising the minimum wage or creating jobs in low-income neighborhoods. </p>
<p>Likewise, Hillary Clinton’s recently announced economic policy <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/12/politics/hillary-clinton-economic-policy-speech/">platform</a> largely steers clear of race and instead focuses on stagnating middle-class wages.</p>
<p>Few Republicans have discussed racial justice issues either, and Jeb Bush has now <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/jeb-bush-calls-black-lives-matter-slogan">dismissed</a> the <a href="http://blacklivesmatter.com">Black Lives Matter movement</a> as merely a “slogan.” </p>
<p>But, about eight months before he <a href="http://time.com/3773964/rand-paul-presidential-campaign-launch-speech-transcript/">launched</a> his presidential campaign, Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican, wrote an <a href="http://time.com/3111474/rand-paul-ferguson-police/">op-ed</a> that discusses the racial disparities in the criminal justice system. The opinion, written in response to the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police shooting death of Michael Brown, argues that “[a]nyone who thinks race does not skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention.” </p>
<p>Since announcing his candidacy for president, though, Rand has largely avoided discussing racial criminal justice issues. While his official <a href="https://randpaul.com/issue/criminal-justice-reforms">web page</a> refers to an “unjust criminal justice system,” his campaign has not focused on how the criminal justice system disproportionately harms black Americans. </p>
<p>Likewise, rather than focusing on police misconduct as a cause for the recent riots in Baltimore, he instead <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/04/29/what-rand-paul-used-to-say-about-criminal-justice-just-a-few-months-ago-and-what-he-says-today-they-dont-sound-quite-the-same/">suggested</a> that they resulted from a breakdown in family structure, a lack of fathers and the lack of a moral code in society.</p>
<p>While Republican candidate Rick Perry <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/02/us-usa-election-perry-idUSKCN0PC2OU20150702">mentioned</a> black poverty in a recent speech, his <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rick-perry-lays-out-his-economic-plan/video/bc-4334883923001">response</a> was also a race-neutral one that focused on giving people at the bottom of the economic ladder a chance to climb.</p>
<p>For the most part, the candidates’ proposals to address income and wage inequality are generic and nonracial: raise the minimum wage, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/us/politics/hillary-clinton-offers-her-vision-of-a-fairness-economy-to-close-the-income-gap.html?emc=edit_th_20150714&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=28708558">expand</a> social security, <a href="http://time.com/3955359/hillary-clinton-economy-2016-presidential-election/">tax</a> the ultra-rich or <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/02/us-usa-election-perry-idUSKCN0PC2OU20150702">increase</a> the earned income tax credit. None of the proposals acknowledges that, because of the widening wealth gap, race and ethnicity have now become almost decisive factors in determining whether a family will thrive or struggle financially.</p>
<h2>Who thrives and who struggles</h2>
<p>The authors of a series of <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/household-financial-stability/the-demographics-of-wealth">essays</a> recently issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis show that race remains a powerful, if not conclusive, predictor of whether you will be a financial “thriver” or “struggler.” </p>
<p>After analyzing data collected in the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances from 1989 to 2013, the authors found that about a quarter of American families are financially thriving, while the other 75% are struggling.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/%7E/media/Files/PDFs/HFS/essays/HFS-Essay-1-2015-Race-Ethnicity-and-Wealth.pdf">Thriving</a> families are middle-aged, white or Asian college graduates who have above-average incomes and have amassed enormous amounts of wealth. In contrast, strugglers are young, black or Hispanic, are less educated, have little or no wealth and work in low-wage jobs. The essays reveal that income – and particularly wealth – gaps among whites, blacks and Hispanics are staggering.</p>
<p>Average income for blacks and Hispanics is 40% lower than for whites. Even worse, average wealth held by Hispanic and black families is 90% lower. While the presidential candidates’ proposals to increase the minimum wage might help close the income gap, a little more take-home pay would do little to close the staggering wealth gap.</p>
<p>The essays also reveal that wealth patterns for racial groups have changed little over the last 25 years and, except for Asian families, may now be permanent. For example, from 1989 to 2013, white families have consistently held the greatest amount of wealth, followed by Asian, then Hispanic, and finally black families. Although Asian family wealth has steadily increased over the 25-year period because of higher college completion rates for young Asians, financial patterns have remained virtually unchanged for whites, Hispanics and blacks.</p>
<h2>Race-neutral solutions won’t address the roots</h2>
<p>Increasing college graduate rates for blacks and Latinos or making colleges free (as Sanders has <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/16/bernie-sanders-on-americas-grotesquely-unfair-society/">proposed</a>) are race-neutral solutions that could ostensibly close the wealth gap. But, even if more young blacks and Latinos receive college degrees, the wealth gaps won’t go away.</p>
<p>The Fed researchers considered whether education, rather than race, was the main cause for the wealth gap. They <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/%7E/media/Files/PDFs/HFS/essays/HFS-Essay-1-2015-Race-Ethnicity-and-Wealth.pdf">found</a> that age and education play only small roles in explaining the gaps. Racial and ethnic differences in financial well-being remain even after accounting for the age and educational attainment of the head of the family.</p>
<p>In the last decade, the US population became more racially and ethnically <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-113.html">diverse</a> than it has ever been. If political leaders continue to ignore widening wealth inequality, the gaps may become permanent, and that could be destabilizing both politically and economically. It will be harder to boost the economy in the future if blacks and Latinos are permanently relegated to an economic underclass that has little wealth.</p>
<p>It is not particularly surprising that the presidential hopefuls shy away from saying that race may determine a family’s financial well-being. Though a recent New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/us/poll-shows-most-americans-think-race-relations-are-bad.html?emc=edit_th_20150724&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=28708558&_r=0">poll</a> now shows that most Americans think race relations in this country are generally bad, making such a statement in a political climate that purports to be colorblind might quickly end the candidate’s presidential aspirations.</p>
<p>Until politicians are willing to admit that whether you thrive or struggle financially may be influenced by your race, however, the United States will remain racially split into groups of a few haves – and a lot of have-nots.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43899/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Last Saturday, presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley were booed and heckled by liberal activists at a town hall discussion at the Netroots Nation annual conference. Why would attendees…
Mechele Dickerson, Professor of Law, The University of Texas at Austin
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/35889
2015-01-20T11:04:08Z
2015-01-20T11:04:08Z
What’s behind racial differences in restaurant tipping?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68726/original/image-20150112-23792-1q3gupx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racial disparities in tip size can't be explained by discriminatory service.</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=tn8o7hv9PfUgTvGpgfLMnQ&searchterm=restaurant%20tip&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=15630616">Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Within the US restaurant industry, blacks are generally considered comparatively poor tippers. <a href="http://tippingresearch.com/other_tipping_links.html">One recent survey</a> of roughly 1,000 restaurant servers from across the nation found that 34% thought blacks were “very bad” tippers. Another 36% thought they were “below average” tippers. In contrast, 98% of those surveyed believed whites were “average” or “above average” tippers. </p>
<p>This widespread negative perception of blacks’ tipping practices cannot be attributed solely to racism because it is consistent with a substantial body of empirical evidence. A number of <a href="http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/articles/38/">different studies</a> that use different methodologies and different geographic samples have all found that, on average, blacks <em>do</em> indeed tip less than whites in US restaurants. </p>
<p>Some readers may assume that such differences in tipping simply reflect <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/21/news/economy/black-white-inequality/">widely documented differences</a> in disposable income across the two groups. Given that tips are purported to reflect the quality of service that customers receive, others may argue that black patrons tend to tip less than their white counterparts because they are, on average, given comparatively inferior service. </p>
<p>However, <a href="http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/articles/97/">studies</a> have consistently observed a reliable black-white tipping difference even after controlling for consumers’ socioeconomic status, including income and education, and after controlling for perceptions of service quality. This race difference in tipping is also observed regardless of whether the server is <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soin.12056/abstract">white or black</a>.</p>
<p>How, then, do we account for this difference in tipping? Why do blacks tip, on average, less than whites? </p>
<p>The answer to this question would satisfy more than simple intellectual curiosity. Racial differences in tipping create numerous problems for all the parties involved. Most notably, the observed black-white tipping difference has been linked to the delivery of <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278431912000825">relatively inferior service</a> to <a href="http://jbs.sagepub.com/content/43/4/359">black customers</a>. In fact, in the previously cited national survey of restaurant servers, over half of the respondents admitted that they don’t always give their best effort when waiting on blacks. </p>
<p>While black diners’ perceptions of service quality – and the tips they leave – may not be sensitive to such discrimination, they’re still not receiving the same level of service as they otherwise would (and should) in the absence of this interracial tipping difference. </p>
<p>Race-based service discrimination not only compromises blacks’ typical dining experiences, but also renders restaurants vulnerable to <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-12-16/news/1994350042_1_denny-restaurant-flagstar-discrimination">costly litigations</a> and undermines their bottom line by discouraging black patronage. </p>
<p>Additionally, employers’ ability to attract and retain waitstaff is largely predicated on the amount of tipped income that can be earned in their establishments. Therefore, restaurants with a large black clientele may have a difficult time attracting and retaining wait staff, which increases costs, lowers profits, and ultimately makes black communities less attractive places to locate full-service restaurants. Understanding why blacks tip less, on average, than whites would help solve these problems, and could inform efforts to reduce the racial differences in tipping.</p>
<p><a href="http://cqx.sagepub.com/content/56/1/68.full.pdf+html">Our research</a> indicates that blacks tip less because they believe servers expect lower tips, and they underestimate the tip amounts that others leave. Whereas roughly 70% of whites identify the customary or expected restaurant tip to fall within 15-20% of the bill, only about 35% of blacks do. In addition, blacks, on average, believe that the typical restaurant customer tips about 13.4% of the bill, while whites believe that the typical restaurant customer tips about 14.5%. Together, these differences in perceptions of “what is expected and typical” explain about half of the black-white difference in tipping. </p>
<p>These findings are important: they suggest that black-white differences in tipping could be sizably reduced by publicly promoting social expectations regarding how much consumers should and typically do tip their servers in restaurants (typically 15-20% of the bill). </p>
<p>As important as public awareness campaigns about the restaurant tipping norm are, they are likely to only reduce the black-white difference in tipping by one-half. The complete elimination of this tipping difference requires a more complete understanding of its causes. </p>
<p>To date, these additional causes remain elusive. Nevertheless, what we do know is that this interracial tipping difference exists – as do the negative, downstream effects of such differences: server prejudices and discriminatory behaviors. Failing to acknowledge and openly discuss this issue will only perpetuate a status quo that harms businesses and consumers alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35889/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 organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Within the US restaurant industry, blacks are generally considered comparatively poor tippers. One recent survey of roughly 1,000 restaurant servers from across the nation found that 34% thought blacks…
Michael Lynn, Professor of Food and Beverage Management, Cornell University
Zachary Brewster, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Wayne State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/31666
2014-09-17T16:35:05Z
2014-09-17T16:35:05Z
Belaboring the Big Black Brute
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58937/original/34xdstbj-1410575426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58937/original/34xdstbj-1410575426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58937/original/34xdstbj-1410575426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58937/original/34xdstbj-1410575426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58937/original/34xdstbj-1410575426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58937/original/34xdstbj-1410575426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58937/original/34xdstbj-1410575426.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was a matinee screening in a small town in Massachusetts.</p>
<p>I’d stayed for the credits, feeling an odd need to confirm that I’d heard <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnrswAX5qFo">Dido</a> on the soundtrack. </p>
<p>Only one other person had been in the cinema. A man with a phlegmy cough seated somewhere behind me. And he’d waited in the vacated foyer.</p>
<p>“What did you think?” he asked. My dad’s age, maybe older. White.
“That it was horribly racist,” I said. He flinched. </p>
<p>I’d actually lived in this part of Massachusetts before. Politically small-L liberal but also very white. So white in fact that the day prior I was tentatively approached at a bus stop and asked, “Ma'am, do you speak English?” </p>
<p>The phlegmy bloke conceded that seeing the film in the midst of the <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/5/23/5744964/ray-rice-arrest-assault-statement-apology-ravens">Ray Rice</a> scandal was “troubling”. I agreed and left it at that. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G5VeowxERwM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer - <em>No Good Deed</em>.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I actually hadn’t previously heard of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2011159/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">No Good Deed</a>. Elba as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1474684/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_13">Luther</a> however, and as the sexy handyman in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515193/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_20">The Big C</a>, seemed like solid reasons to hand over $6. </p>
<p>Rookie mistake.</p>
<p>Elba plays Colin. A con denied parole so he handles his disappointment the way that his flared nostrils and barely-concealed-psychosis hinted he would: he shoots his way out of the prison van. </p>
<p>Colin celebrates his “release” by going on a deranged and vengeful killing spree ultimately taking a feisty - if harried - mother, Terri (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0378245/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">Taraji P. Henson</a>), and her kids hostage. </p>
<p>Imagine the worst, $4-budget, 1990s made-for-TV midday movie. <em>No Good Deed</em> makes that film look like an Oscars gem.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59032/original/k7r2vg5q-1410779337.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59032/original/k7r2vg5q-1410779337.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59032/original/k7r2vg5q-1410779337.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59032/original/k7r2vg5q-1410779337.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59032/original/k7r2vg5q-1410779337.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59032/original/k7r2vg5q-1410779337.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59032/original/k7r2vg5q-1410779337.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Idris Elba - who happens to be wet throughout the film - as Colin in <em>No Good Deed</em></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Colin is a hulking, often dripping (be it with sweat or water), black man brute. He intimidates, uses his bulk to threaten, to assault. He kills mostly whities, although he’s an equal opportunity terrorist. And one too many times his sex appeal is a precursor to an act of violence making the presentation troubling to say the least.</p>
<p>Perfectly in-synch with the constant - if gratuitous - coverage in the US of the Ray Rice story - and in fact, illustrative of the black-man-as-villain stereotype rampant throughout the media - <em>No Good Deed</em> presents us with only two black male characters: Elba’s thuggish Colin and Terri’s smarmy and adulterous husband (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005431/?ref_=tt_cl_t5">Henry Simmons</a>), cheating with a lighter skinned woman. Of course.</p>
<p>Because it seemed so heavy-handedly racist, I did try hard to look for other angles. Were there other ways to read a film that surely couldn’t <em>possibly</em> be as heinous as it seemed?</p>
<p>Can we look, perhaps, at Colin as just one character who just happens to be a man, just happens to be black and just happens to be a brute and enjoy the film as disconnected from narratives we like to relegate to an unfortunate past?</p>
<p>Personally, I’m very bad at such delusions.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59030/original/fbqskpbt-1410779001.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/59030/original/fbqskpbt-1410779001.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59030/original/fbqskpbt-1410779001.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59030/original/fbqskpbt-1410779001.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59030/original/fbqskpbt-1410779001.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59030/original/fbqskpbt-1410779001.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/59030/original/fbqskpbt-1410779001.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So what about the capacity for a demographics reading? Here’s an American film largely starring black people: perhaps it’s targeting a black audience?</p>
<p>While this seems tricky to ascertain given the nationwide release in the US, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1347153/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Tyler Perry</a> for example, has made a fortune doing just this: making films about black people for black people, many of which on the surface often seem tremendously racist. I recently watched Perry’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDfTwu2CgDY">Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor</a> (2013) for example. The strange casting of a Kardashian in it aside, the film was all fire, all brimstone, and <em>all stereotype</em>. White women from Australia however, were not the target audience and perhaps aren’t for <em>No Good Deed</em> either.</p>
<p>I buy this explanation a little more. If you’re Chinese, say, and are watching a film about Chinese people made for and by Chinese people, you’re probably not pointing to the male Chinese villain and thinking he’s stereotyped. More likely, you’re considering the film - and the ensemble cast - <em>as a whole</em> and evaluating the film that way.</p>
<p><em>No Good Deed</em> however, wasn’t made by African Americans at all. Hell, Elba himself is from bloody Hackney! <em>No Good Deed</em> was directed by a white guy, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0589284/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Sam Miller</a>, and it was written by a white woman, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1350938/?ref_=tt_ov_wr">Aimee Lagos</a>. Sure, white people can make intelligent films about black people and vice-versa. This however, isn’t one of that. </p>
<p>I can’t locate an Australian release date. Probably for the best. The Blaxploitation genre offers many alternatives; most much less offensive than <em>No Good Deed</em>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4I8pneJkxBY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“No Good Deed” - Wicked soundtrack.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
It was a matinee screening in a small town in Massachusetts. I’d stayed for the credits, feeling an odd need to confirm that I’d heard Dido on the soundtrack. Only one other person had been in the cinema…
Lauren Rosewarne, Senior Lecturer, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/25296
2014-04-10T11:56:22Z
2014-04-10T11:56:22Z
TV reinforces racial stereotypes in history and fantasy alike
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46019/original/drkc9gs6-1397059128.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Diverse...</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’ve seen the launch of BBC1’s new WW1 drama <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01tlxzb">The Crimson Field</a>, as well as the return of <a href="https://theconversation.com/review-game-of-thrones-season-four-opener-25295">Game of Thrones</a> to our screens. So whether it’s the field of the Somme or the far flung landcape of Westeros, the arena of war dominates television. At the heart of both these dramas are strong women who influence and contribute to their respective wars. </p>
<p>The Crimson Field tells the story of the VAD, the Voluntary Aid Detachments, who alongside nurses administered the front line hospitals of WW1. The women of Game of Thrones lead armies, give Machiavelli a master class in manipulation, and hold their own against their male counterparts. </p>
<p>But it may be too early to declare a golden age of diversity in drama, for lacking in these are strong characters from ethnic minorities – and those that do appear reinforce historical stereotypes.</p>
<p>Set in the western front of World War I, The Crimson Field seeks to portray the horror of the trenches from the perspective of its four female leads. Their wounded patients are both middle class officers and the working class. So the class portrayal of the war may be accurate, but the British Army consisted of more than just white soldiers and officers. </p>
<p>All over the world, soldiers from colonised countries were recruited to fight on the front line on both sides of the war. The Western Front for example, where the Crimson Field is set, saw soldiers from the British Caribbean volunteer to join the war efforts. </p>
<p>Over the course of both wars <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/10/first-world-war-colonial-soldiers-racism">more than four million black and Asian soldiers volunteered</a>. It is estimated that by the end of the World War I, <a href="http://www.blackpresence.co.uk/category/black-history/black-soldiers-black-history/">15,500 West Indians</a> had experienced battle. These men were assigned the worst of jobs: digging trenches, loading ammunition and the like, and often faced racism from officers. And, of course, black women were also used as auxiliary nurses and experienced field action.</p>
<p>There was <a href="http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/41209">a campaign</a> to posthumously award Walter Tull, who was one of the first black officers, the military cross. And <a href="https://greatwarlondon.wordpress.com/tag/black-history-month/">some attempt</a> is being made to highlight the role of black soldiers, such as John Williams, who people called the Black VC. But despite this, in fictional portrayals like The Crimson Field, such heroes are generally ignored.</p>
<p>There has only been one episode of this drama, and whilst a war drama with women at its heart is rare, I’d like to see some depiction of the stories of black and Asian soldiers, too. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46115/original/7smxm3wc-1397128898.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46115/original/7smxm3wc-1397128898.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46115/original/7smxm3wc-1397128898.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46115/original/7smxm3wc-1397128898.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46115/original/7smxm3wc-1397128898.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46115/original/7smxm3wc-1397128898.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46115/original/7smxm3wc-1397128898.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Missandei, with her 19 languages, provides hope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sky Atlantic</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what of the fantastical narratives? Surely here, where we are less constrained by historical inequalities, we should see more racial diversity on our screens?</p>
<p>Game of Thrones may introduce us to new claimants for the Iron Throne each season, but we are yet to see a serious contender of colour. Westeros under the Lannisters is overall a white place with little cultural diversity. And up at the wall, The Nights Watch doesn’t fare much better. Ironically, it seems that to “take the black”, you can be a former criminal, a bastard son, anything – as long as you are white. </p>
<p>But surely over the sea in the world of the “feminist icon” Daenerys Targaryen we can find a strong ethnic minority character? <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/45777/game-of-thrones-season-3-6-life-lessons-every-girl-should-learn-from-daenerys-targaryen">It has been argued</a> that she saves the Dothraki brethren from racism, and frees slaves, but these are story arcs that reinforce cultural stereotypes. </p>
<p>The Dothraki are a nomadic horse-riding clan who <a href="http://io9.com/george-r-r-martin-answers-our-toughest-song-of-ice-and-886133300">George Martin acknowledges</a> are based upon amongst others on the Mongols and the Huns. In both the books and the series (where they have a Middle Eastern colouring) they are seen by those in Westeros as savages, and portrayed as such. Their wedding celebrations include public killings, and unlike those from Westeros and the North have no evidence of high learning, as in the Maesters of Westeros. This is of course contrasted by the history of the regions of Asia from which the clans that they are based on emerge, whose seats of learning provided the base for modern philosophy. </p>
<p>After the death of Khal Drago, Daenerys is abandoned by the Khalsar, but with dragons in tow, she seeks to conquer her own kingdom. And so we come to the sight of Daenerys freeing the black slaves of Astapor. And now Daenerys is surrounded by a sea of “freed men” who refer to her as mother. </p>
<p>But freedom under Daenerys does not equal empowerment. They are portrayed as nameless and incapable of decision – it is only Daenerys’s action that allows them to break out of their chains. </p>
<p>But Game of Thrones has only just begun its latest season, and The Crimson Field its first ever episode. There’s still hope, right? </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shahnaz Akhter 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>
We’ve seen the launch of BBC1’s new WW1 drama The Crimson Field, as well as the return of Game of Thrones to our screens. So whether it’s the field of the Somme or the far flung landcape of Westeros, the…
Shahnaz Akhter, PhD Candidate PAIS Warwick, University of Warwick
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/23777
2014-03-03T06:26:42Z
2014-03-03T06:26:42Z
The Academy Awards and racial diversity – what are the odds?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42936/original/pddsmgdk-1393826060.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C52%2C668%2C497&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lupita Nyong'o won Best Supporting Actress at the 2014 Oscars. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Buck/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Oscars nominations and winners this year offered an unparalleled level of racial diversity. In the headline categories, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2143282/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Lupita Nyong’o</a> won for Best Supporting Actress, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0190859/">Alfonso Cuarón</a> was the first Mexican to be nominated and the first Latino to win Best Director, for <a href="https://theconversation.com/gravity-lends-weight-to-cinema-and-always-has-19157">Gravity</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-life-more-terrible-the-women-of-12-years-a-slave-21936">12 Years A Slave</a> was the first film with a black director – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2588606/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Steve McQueen</a> – or producer to win Best Picture. </p>
<p>In addition, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0252230/?ref_=tt_cl_t1">Chiwetel Ejiofor</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5831542/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Barkhad Abdi</a> were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.</p>
<p>But looking back over <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-oscars-22215">the history of the Academy Awards</a> reveals an industry that is dominated by white men. Minorities are badly under-represented in the “top six” categories of Best Actor and Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Picture, and Best Director.</p>
<h2>Who makes the best pictures?</h2>
<p>Cuarón was the first winning Latino in the Best Director category. Steve McQueen would have been the first black man to win, had he done so. Of the four Asian directors, all male, who have received nominations, only Ang Lee has won. Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win the category in 2008, and only the fourth nominated. Given these figures, it is perhaps not surprising that no woman of colour has ever been nominated.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42922/original/fn9k6sk2-1393823183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42922/original/fn9k6sk2-1393823183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42922/original/fn9k6sk2-1393823183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42922/original/fn9k6sk2-1393823183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42922/original/fn9k6sk2-1393823183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42922/original/fn9k6sk2-1393823183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1079&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42922/original/fn9k6sk2-1393823183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1079&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42922/original/fn9k6sk2-1393823183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1079&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Steve McQueen, director of 12 Years a Slave.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Facundo Arrizabalaga/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No film with a female producer of colour has been so much as nominated for Best Picture. Only four with either a male black producer or director have ever been nominated, including 12 Years a Slave.</p>
<p>In the gender-specific acting categories, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0567408/">Hattie MacDaniel</a> was the first black woman to win Best Supporting Actress in 1939 for Gone With the Wind. It took 51 years until the next: Whoopi Goldberg for Ghost (1990). </p>
<p>Halle Berry was the first, and to date only, woman of colour to win Best Actress, in 2001. </p>
<p>Black men entered the Best Actor winners list much later, with Sidney Poitier in 1963 for Lillies of the Field, although they have had more success overall with three later winners. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42904/original/ss86nrss-1393821773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42904/original/ss86nrss-1393821773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42904/original/ss86nrss-1393821773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42904/original/ss86nrss-1393821773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42904/original/ss86nrss-1393821773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42904/original/ss86nrss-1393821773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42904/original/ss86nrss-1393821773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42904/original/ss86nrss-1393821773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alfonso Cuaron, Best Director winner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Nelson/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This year is the 86th time that the Oscars have been awarded. This snapshot given makes for stark if not necessarily startling reading. </p>
<p>The numbers of women and people of colour who are nominated and win reflect the composition of Academy – and the industry it represents – far better than they do the movie-going public. A 2012 Los Angeles Times <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/moviesnow/la-et-mn-diversity-oscar-academy-members-20131221,0,6955164.story#ixzz2tzOeBKzZ">report</a> found that 94% of Academy members were Caucasian, and 77% were male. In the past two years, the Academy has made moves to improve the diversity of its membership. </p>
<p>In 2013, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3723795/">Cheryl Boone Isaacs</a>, an African American woman, was elected president. She has been <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/02/27/283481445/new-academy-president-pushes-for-more-diverse-voting-members">quoted</a> as saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the Academy has really pushed forward, and I know my election is part of this … a recognition of the diversity that has been able to rise. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the Oscars, Boone spoke of the future of the Academy, mentioning its “increasingly diverse and global membership.” According to an update of the Los Angeles Times <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/moviesnow/la-et-mn-diversity-oscar-academy-members-20131221,0,6955164.story#ixzz2tzOeBKzZ">study</a>, the members in 2012 and 2013 were more diverse than in earlier years: 69% in both years were male, with median ages of 50 and 49 respectively, while 87% in 2012 and 82% in 2013 were white. Overall, membership is still 93% Caucasian and 76% male, while the average age increased from 62 to 63.</p>
<p>Host Ellen DeGeneres joked at the start of this year’s ceremony: “Possibility number one: 12 Years A Slave wins. Possibility number two: you’re all racists,” before announcing “our first white presenter”.</p>
<p>It would be overly simplistic, and unfair, to suggest that the overwhelming dominance of white male winners and nominees can be explained by white male Academy members consciously and deliberately vote for other white males. Rather, what these figures show is that America is, in reality, far from the equitable post-race society it likes to see itself as. </p>
<p>Women and racial minorities do not, overall, have the same opportunities that white men do. Breaking into a highly competitive industry is never easy, but when that industry is historically white and male it is easier if you are both. </p>
<p>Awards such as the Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs claim to recognise the “best” cinematic offerings and contributions of the year. But “best” is always a subjective judgment, as Cate Blanchett acknowledged in her <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tUsX2U-dPA">acceptance speech</a> for Best Actress, and it ignores the structures of culture and industry which exclude minorities. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42920/original/3qh9ygk4-1393823060.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42920/original/3qh9ygk4-1393823060.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42920/original/3qh9ygk4-1393823060.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42920/original/3qh9ygk4-1393823060.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42920/original/3qh9ygk4-1393823060.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42920/original/3qh9ygk4-1393823060.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42920/original/3qh9ygk4-1393823060.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/42920/original/3qh9ygk4-1393823060.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Steve McQueen, Lupita Nyong'o and Chiwetel Ejiofor arriving for the premiere of ‘12 Years a slave’ during the 57th BFI London Film Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Facundo Arrizabalaga/AAP </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Oscars and the Academy that awards them are a product of US culture, society, and history, but they are global news, and have lessons for us whether or not Australians win, as Cate Blanchett and Catherine Martin did this year. </p>
<p>Australian screens are dominated by Hollywood products, and the Oscars are much bigger news here than any local award ceremony. Australians, like Americans, want to see their country as a place of equal opportunities, where talent and determination count for more than an individual’s race, gender, class, or religion when it comes to fulfilling one’s dreams.</p>
<p>Nominations, and successes such as those of Nyong’o, Cuarón and 12 Years A Slave are important, not only because they recognise the talents of the individuals, but also because they are beacons of hope for the future. But taken out of context they can mask underlying issues. </p>
<p>Looking again at the nominations in this year’s top six categories, only Cuarón and Abdi were not part of 12 Years A Slave. Without that single movie, the picture would be very different. </p>
<p>At the end of her acceptance speech, Nyong’o said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>let this little statue be a reminder to me and every little child, that no matter where you are from, your dreams are valid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Everyone’s dreams are valid, but the history of the Oscars is a reminder that not everyone faces the same hurdles fulfilling them.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p>See <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/oscars-2014">further Oscars 2014 coverage</a> on The Conversation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Young 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>
Oscars nominations and winners this year offered an unparalleled level of racial diversity. In the headline categories, Lupita Nyong’o won for Best Supporting Actress, Alfonso Cuarón was the first Mexican…
Helen Young, Postdoctoral Fellow in English, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.