Overexposed And Unseen

Last night, my partner said how he reckons that there are different kinds of racism against African Americans: “Whites think they’re better than Blacks, but Browns are scared of Blacks”.  I pushed against it to some degree, saying that a lot of people are just ignorant about history and continuing discrimination and just think that Blacks are just lazy or have an attitude problem and that’s why they are disproportionately in unpleasant socio-economic conditions.  My partner agreed that that would be true for some, but said that generally, that would be the case.  In this most rudimentary way of classifying people, he puts himself in the Brown category, and I put myself as mixed White and Black but socially am in the White category (as in, I live in that world with the privileges and most people just judge me as being White).  This means that I granted him his view of how a lot of Browns would view Blacks, and, from my short time in the US, general exposure to US media and historical knowledge, I agreed that a lot of Whites would think they were better than them (although perhaps now more for the reasons of ignorance, than some made-up genetic inferiority).

I got to thinking how people who came from another country and would likely have had no personal interaction with a certain group of people, would have such a negative and fearful expectation.  It is probably the same reason that a lot of people brought up in that  – still, to me – segregated country would have such warped views: the media and language.  The use of media and language to under-report and over-report using certain biases exists all over the world, and, although those often unknown “people at the top” are likely aware, people further down the chain are often either ignorant of this phenomenon, or don’t realise the real power that has on affecting people’s perspectives.

I remember when I was a teenager and my geography teacher took five people in class and said that if they represented the entire population, one would be Chinese and one would be Indian.  He then asked us how many of the five would represent Europeans.  The answer was not even a whole person but, in the world of models and advertising, four of those five people would be white European.  I looked at those people in the chairs and it seemed just so messed up that that should be the case.  Messed up and stupid, because beauty has nothing to do with the colour of your skin, and why wouldn’t you have models that represent the people where you live?

Like with anything that you’ve grown up with, unquestionning and unthinking, I started to notice and question.  Why were ads using light-skinned people so much?  Why did something luxurious have to be European?  And it’s not like most of the models were even that pretty.  There were so many beautiful people that they weren’t showing.

And I started to realise how invisible people can be in their own country.  And I started to think how that would make me feel.  Beautiful?  Valued?  Included?  Normal?

At the very least, whoever was making those ads, they wouldn’t value my business, but if nearly every ad excludes me, and I need to buy my stuff from somewhere, what can I do?

There’s the old adage that women should be seen and not heard, but in this case, it seemed that anyone who isn’t European shouldn’t be seen, either.  I couldn’t understand it.  The best person I’d ever known was my grandfather (not white) and most of my friends were either first-generation NZ or of mixed heritage, and my life had only been enriched by knowing them.  How could they be excluded by the media?  Well, they are, but they’re not… And this is where language comes in.

We all use language.  We learn it as we grow up and use it to build relationships with others, share ideas, learn, and get the things we want.  It becomes an automatic way to turn our feelings and ideas into conscious thoughts and to sort the world into categories so that it seems less of a random mess.  The tendency for our brains to label and sort is to simplify our lives, but it is flawed, because life doesn’t fit into boxes, and leads to stereotyping and prejudice.

So we use language to define our world, but if we just look at how language is used, it is a powerful way to exclude people.  The simplest example of this is using a language or jargon that not everyone in the group understands, but the more insidious way is to strategically use language so that certain words tend to carry more meaning or get changed to be used for a specific meaning, so that people become invisible, but in order to include them, you make them more visible.

Regarding why Browns should be scared of Blacks can be attributed a lot to how crime – and what type of crime – is reported.  In most cases, if you hear of a crime on the news and the person is White, you won’t hear any mention of ethnicity or skin colour.  You might be able to guess that the person is White, based on what you know, but because it’s not mentioned, it won’t be ingrained into your mind how many criminals are White.  (It also reinforces the fact that White is normal, because by not stating it, it implies that being White is the default.)  However, if you hear a crime by someone who is identified as Black, this WILL be part of the detail provided.  So the media will tell you to watch out for a Black person (no real description, other than Black, so not that helpful anyway?!) and, if you don’t have memories and experience that tells you otherwise, your brain will go *alert* to watch out for Black people, as your brain will link the two together, because it has no other reference, and there’s a clear link being made by the media.

This is aided by the fact that, because Blacks are otherwise unseen – unless they’re famous sportspeople or entertainers – in the media, the TV and news provide very warped views of who Blacks are; in fact, that don’t show you who they are at all, just what they are – or what a very small proportion of them are.  Happy families and people just trying to do the best they can, or people being turned down for a job just because of their skin colour – that’s not what makes the news…

The other issue with reporting of crime is that only certain crimes are reported: white collar crimes, those that involve business people and fraud, stealing money and ruining people’s lives, hardly ever make the news; blue collar crimes, on the other hand, are usually more exciting or fear-inducing – qualities that newsmakers thrive on.  When you add to that  racial profiling, the entrenched racism of the majority of cops, biases in jury and judge, and access to good legal representation, it’s not hard to figure out why certain groups are over-characterised in the media as criminals.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Blacks are scary and threatening – but there is something else in the States that is now normal and shouldn’t be: mass shootings.  And who is most likely to do that, according to government statistics?  Whites.  More than three times more likely than Blacks (see here)  I don’t know about you, but the thought of some random person on a rampage is way more scary than seeing a guy on the corner dealing drugs…  And worse, these crimes are often pure hate crimes, not crimes resulting from trying to feed a family or getting in with the “wrong” crowd.

Another thing that scares me is that people entrusted with protecting citizens will murder them.  At least, this time, the media are actually helping to shed light on the problems, the injustice that people face every day for no other reason than for what they look like, and the language being used is powerful.  This time, the exposure is just what is needed, and people are being seen for who they really are.  And they are the real role models.