How and why did the ‘new racism’ gain ascendancy in the 1980’s?

In order to answer this question, it is important to start by explaining what is meant by ‘new

racism’, as well as to set the socio-political scene of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s due to

the growth of ‘new racism’ in the 1980’s being embedded in the historical context of that

time. ‘New Racism’ is a theory coined in 1981 by the Marxist professor Martin Baker to

describe the structure of concepts that made anti-immigration policy formation possible

within Thatcher’s Conservative government (Barker, 1981). It focused on cultural differences

between race, rather than widely detested Neo-Nazi, Social-Darwinist views of biological

difference between races. The discourse of the time focused on scaremongering the general

public with imagined (Anderson, 1991) ideas of ethnic communities and immigrants.

Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister in 1979 following five years of Labour

leadership and implemented new economic and social policies, as well as immigration

policies akin to the ostracised Conservative MP Enoch Powell’s views in the 1960’s (Smith,

1994). A key aid in Thatcher’s rise to power was the ‘Winter of Discontent’ that had

occurred the winter before the general election and had rendered Callaghan’s Labour party

unpopular. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s striking was commonplace, unemployment

was high and inflation reached a peak of 20% in 1980 (Rodgers, 2005). Moreover Britain was

to become a net importer of goods for the first time as many unproductive industries were

closed. Thatcher’s ‘New Right’ policies included a move to free market economics that

culminated in the ‘Big Bang’ in the City of London (Clemons & Webber, 1990) and a move to

social authoritarianism. Establishing the social, political and economic situation of the

1980’s is important in understanding why ‘new racism’ grew the way it did as it was very

much borne from these contexts of the time, although it has adapted to the modern era and

is no longer ‘new’. This essay will argue that ‘new racism’ gained ascendancy because of the

racial discourse of the Conservative government that stated the British populations ‘genuine

fear’ of losing its ‘way of life’. This essay will examine New Right political views that sought

to justify the ‘inevitable’ difference between ‘us’ and racialised ‘others’ whilst implementing

a shift from pseudo-scientific biological explanations to cultural difference. Moreover the

historical link between economic hardship and discrimination will be explored as a theory to

why this discourse became popular at this time. Furthermore, the close ties between ‘New

Right’ politicians and influential media editors will be examined as a means of spreading

racial discourse, and finally how the representation of riots in the 1980’s as being highly

racialised contributed to the popularisation of ‘new racism’ discourse. This essay will also

contemplate whether this nationalist discourse, mixed with the much supported conflict in

the Falkland’s, was a smoke screen to the harsh economic cuts of the time.

In a debate at the House of Commons in 1976 Conservative MP in the opposition

William Whitelaw remarked:

The principles of the fair and tolerant society which we seek to uphold will be undermined if

individual fears and resentments are allowed to grow (Hansard cited in Barker, 1981, p.13)

He was making the point that the open, democratic, equal society of our land can only be

stretched or strained so far before an inevitable backlash from the British public. The

language used, as with many political speeches from Conservative MP’s at this time, is

predetermined and cleverly thought through. Through this language and racialised

discourse, terms such as ‘alien invasion’ and ‘swamped’ were used to label inward migration

from Afro-Caribbean countries or the Indian Sub-Continent – despite the fact that Britain

only experienced net migration gain in the 1990’s. These speeches resonated with much of

the general public and provided a concept of something to defend and therefore an

imagined threat that justifies the publics fears (Barker, 1981). It was this use of scare

mongering that constructed anti-immigration ideology in Britain. As with most racial or

racist discourse, the idea of ‘them’ being dangerous, bad, problematic by default meant ‘we’

are safe, good, saviours and helped nationalist views grow (Brubaker, 2009). Imagined

communities are presented both through the “imagined” Victorian values that members of

the New Right held and through the ‘imagined’ danger of the ‘invasion’ of immigrant

communities. Moreover Powell’s idea that it was whites who were being discriminated

against by immigrants rather than vice versa helped the impression of ‘genuine fear’ take

hold (Barker, 1981).

This racist discourse was justified, however, through the assertion that prejudice

between different racial groups is natural and therefore inevitable. It is important here to

distinguish between ‘racist’ and ‘racialist’. Racism is the belief that the world is divided into

different racial groups and attributes of those groups make them less or more desirable or

inferior, superior. Racialism is the acceptance of different race categories through social and

cultural difference – without believing in inferiority or superiority of different races (Snyder,

2001). Extreme racist discourse was extremely unpopular amongst the majority of the

population following the pseudo-scientific approaches of the Nazi party and so implicating

cultural difference as a threat was used as a justification for the government and as a

catalyst for the implication of tough immigration policy. Huntington described the theory

that the source of conflict in the post-Cold War world would come from cultural and

religious difference in his book ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ (Huntington, 1996).

Historically there has been a link between recession and discrimination. As was

explained in the introduction, Thatcher’s new government’s monetarist policies that were in

place to lower inflation had driven the economy into recession. Patrick Taran, Senior

Migration Specialist at the ILO International Migration Programme states:

In time of economic insecurity migrants always seem to be among the first to be blamed

(International Labour Organisation , 2011)

This link has been seen during the most recent global recession and current economic

hardship. In 2007, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a controversial speech that

many regarded as racist. The focus of the speech was ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ and

received criticism from David Cameron as being far-right (Parkinson, 2007). Even more

recently is an example from Greece where immigrants are being used as scapegoats.

Opinion polls there are showing that the far-right ‘Golden Dawn’ party are now the third

most supported party in Greece (The Economist , 2012). This theory can be seen during the

mid-1970’s as the popularity of the National Front far-right party was at its highest.

However it is worth noting here that studies have shown both age discrimination (The

Guardian, 2012) and discriminatory hiring practices (Loya and Associates, 2010) also

increase during a recession and so caution must be taken in assessing how much the

recession was to blame for the ascendancy of ‘new racism’. Furthermore, recession in the

United Kingdom ended in 1982 and the economy was growing at a peak of 5% in 1988

(Rodgers, 2005), therefore this theory can only be used to explain the initial ascendancy of

‘new racism’ and cannot explain its continued popularity throughout the 1980’s. This essay

suggests that much of the anti-immigration discourse of Thatcher’s ‘New Right’ was an

attempt to capture less extreme electors who had swung their vote to the National Front

due to lack of other options on tough immigration.

Due to the observation that ‘new racism’ is a more subtle form than the ‘old’ variety

of slavery, lynching, and apartheid, many forms are ‘discursive’ (Van Dijk, 2000). They are

expressed as common-sense ideas and are found in everyday conversations, films,

propaganda, debates, think tanks, pressure groups, the media and many more (Van Dijk,

2000). This essay suggests that the political ideology of the ‘New Right’ was extrapolated

through the medium of the media and pressure groups to add ballast to the new racist

discourse and increase its popularity. Key figures in the ‘New Right’ included the editors of

the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times. As Barker (1981, p.15)

states, “The Daily Mail ... has had a far from small role in developing the ‘new racism’”. This

support from large media companies that had a wide outreach meant that the minority

resistance or ‘white dissidence’ became even more difficult and less vocal as support for the

new racist ideology grew (Van Dijk, 2000). Headlines frequently accused immigrants of

causing problems over other reasonable explanations such as the Daily Mail’s 1986 headline

‘Immigrants Paralyse Heathrow’. The government had introduced a system of compulsory

visas to Britain from certain Commonwealth countries and airport staff could not cope with

the increase in passengers trying to beat the introduction of this new law (Jackson, 1989).

The majority of people do not have time to check the legitimacy or bias of press reports, and

Barker states in his critique of the controversial ‘Newson Report’ that the story most people

remember is the one conveyed in the press and that ‘we are dependent on how the facts

are presented to us by the media’ (Barker, 1997, p.29).

This theme of media influence over the growth of new racism continues when

concerned with the ‘race riots’ in Brixton and Peckham in 1985. In September and October

1985 after the riots, 938 race related headlines were included in seven major newspapers.

This is equivalent to seven articles per paper per day over the two months. This can be

compared to 1989 where there were 974 race related articles in the same seven papers, but

this time spread over the first six months of the year (Van Dijk, 1991).

Another key factor in the ascendancy of ‘new racism’ in the 1980’s is the strong

nationalist feeling that Thatcher made resonate within the ‘ordinary’ British citizen. The

Prime Minister was at the height of her popularity after the invasion of the Falkland Islands

that helped reinforce nationalist feeling within the United Kingdom. It has been argued that

the scapegoating of immigrants and rallying of nationalist ideology and discourse was used

as a smoke screen to new economic policies of the time:

‘bitter tasting marketing economics were sweetened and rendered palatable by great

creamy dollops of nationalistic custard’ (Smith, 1994).

New racism, therefore, is a theory that was very much borne out of the historical contexts

of the time. Britain was coming out of a recession and nationalist rhetoric was entwined in

political and media discourse. The ‘ordinary’ British citizen was indoctrinated with negative

ideas of ‘imagined’ communities through the use of shrewdly chosen political language that

convinced them they had a ‘genuine fear’ and must act on this fear. The justification of this

ideology as natural and inevitable helped gain support amongst the more politically central

citizens, whilst the ideology itself gained support amongst swing voters shifting towards the

extreme right. The case must be put forward that the nationalist rhetoric and discourse was

a sharp marketing ploy to distract electors from the cut backs, closures, and job losses that

were harming the economy. It may be useful that the extent of the popularity of ‘new

racism’ may be hard to quantify as a coordinated media and political drive of the ideology

meant those who disagreed had little chance of procuring support. New racism is no longer

‘new’ and can adapt, such as in the ‘British jobs for British workers’ speech of Gordon

Brown’s in 2007. Another legacy of the New Right today is the dangers of close ties between

the press and politicians that have been most recently observed during the ‘Leveson Inquiry’

into Press ethics in the British media. However, as always there may be two sides to ‘new

racism’. Is it really racist or is it protectionism? Some believe that a country has a right to

protect its own ethno-culture without being branded as racist. Furthermore, is it in fact

racist to create a threat to the home nation’s culture with continued immigration and lack of

assimilation? (See Landsburg, 2005 and Buchanan, 2005)

Bibliography

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Barker, M., 1981. The New Racism. London: Junction Books.

Barker, M., 1997. The Newson Report: A case study in 'Common Sense'. In: M. Barker & J. Petley, eds. Ill Effects: The Media/Violence debate . London: Routledge, pp. 27-47.

Brubaker, R., 2009. Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism. The Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 35, pp. 21-42.

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Clemons, E. & Webber, B., 1990. London's Big Bang: A case study of information technology, Competitive Impact, and Organisational Change. Journal of Management Information Systems, 6(4), pp. 41-60.

Huntington, S., 1996. The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster.

International Labour Organisation , 2011. World of Work: Racial Discrimination and the Global Economic Downturn, Turin: ILO .

Jackson, P., 1989. Maps of Meaning: An introduction to Cultural geography. London: Routledge .

Landsburg, S., 2005. Xenophobia and Politics. [Online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0328/046.html[Accessed 20 November 2012].

Loya and Associates, 2010. Discriminatory hiring practices appear to increase during a recession. [Online] Available at: http://knowledgebase.findlaw.com/kb/2010/May/98143.html[Accessed 30 10 2012].

Parkinson, J., 2007. What does 'British Jobs' pledge mean?. [Online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7097837.stm[Accessed 30 10 2012].

Rodgers, W., 2005. Government Under Stress: Britain's Winter of Discontent 1979. The Political Quarterly, 55(2), pp. 171-179.

Smith, A. M., 1994. New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality: British 1968 - 1990. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Snyder, L., 2001. The idea of Racialism: Its Meaning and History . In: E. Cashmore & J. Jennings, eds. Racism. London: SAGE, pp. 91-97.

The Economist , 2012. Immigrants as Scapegoats. [Online] Available at: http://www.economist.com/node/21564261[Accessed 30 10 2012].

The Guardian, 2012. Recession hits middle-aged woman worst, new research finds. [Online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/08/recession-hits-middle-aged-women-hardest[Accessed 30 10 2012].

Van Dijk, T. A., 1991. Racism and the Press. London: Routledge.

Van Dijk, T. A., 2000. New(s) Racism: A Discourse Analytic Approach. In: S. Cottle, ed. Ethnic Minorities and the Media. Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. 33-49.

How does an understanding of the social construction of race critically challenge media representation? Use a political event, film, advertisement, or other case study to

demonstrate your argument.

The contested idea of ‘race’ has been constructed, developed, and questioned since its

pseudo-scientific beginnings in the nineteenth century where it was used as a justification

for colonialism and slavery. In its early stages media representation of ‘race’ was mostly

crude and exploitative, and based on inferiority or superiority. Since the end of the Second

World War, however, the theory of biological difference and racial hierarchies have been

greatly debunked in scientific practice; so why is the myth of ‘race’ still prevalent in its

representation from media sources? Representation, or literally re-presentation is present

within all media sources as it is, by definition, a new presentation of the reality seen around

us. Every source in the media from a newspaper article to a magazine are representations of

someone else’s ideas and are codified into a set of signs and symbols to be read by the

target audience. The media are particularly important as they produce, reproduce and

transform different ideologies (Hall, 2003).The title of this essay is ambiguous as it does not

specify a time scale, and representations of ‘race’ in the media have morphed and altered

over time. Moreover, racialized images in the media are intrinsically ambiguous as they may

hold contradictory or multiple meanings in the eye of the viewer. This essay aims to briefly

explain the changing paradigms of ‘race’ studies from its early stages to the present day, as

this will seek to explain why ‘race’ has been represented in certain ways. This section will

also aim to explain that representation of race in the media is embedded in the historical

context of that time. With regards to the present day representation of ‘race’ in the media

this essay will discuss how both positive and negative images should viewed with scepticism

and why the difference between the denotations and connotations of these images are

more important in debating this issue. The use of stereotyping as a signifying practice within

media representation will also be discussed within this essay. A Daily Mail article with the

headline ‘White men can’t run, apart from this one’ will be used as a case study to

demonstrate how ‘race’ is represented as real and quantifiable, and not a social construct –

and this will be caveated with recent research into explaining the facts behind the monopoly

of African-American and Afro-Caribbean sprinting success. This case study is also useful in

linking back to issues of stereotyping in the media.

It is widely believed that ancient civilizations knew nothing about race. Instead,

another variable was used: civilized or barbaric - it was possible to be both white and

barbaric, or black and civilized (Nayak & Jeffrey, 2011). The study of racial difference has its

roots within empire building and imperialism. ‘Race’ was a scientific ‘fact’ at the time that

aimed to divide the people of the world in a hierarchy. Arthur de Gobineau stated in his

1853-55 ‘Essai sur l'inegalité des races humaines’ that the world was divided into three clear

types of human: white, black and yellow with the ‘negroid variety..the lowest, and stands at

the bottom of the ladder’ (Puzzo, 1964). The paradigm at this time was white supremacist

and based on pseudo-scientific connections between man and the environment. The

methods used would be anthropometric techniques such as craniometry, and would be

linked with other tests such as intelligence testing. Representations of race in the media

during the 19th century, therefore, were unsubtle and crude, such as the ‘pear’s soap’

advertisement that featured a black baby washing himself ‘white’ (Fig.1). The

representation is clear: black is a result of uncleanliness, and simply by washing you can

become white, pure, and everything associated with purity – black is unhygienic and dirty.

Figure 1 - 'Pear's Soap' Advertisement

These advertisements are seen as overtly racist today, however at the time many believed

in the hierarchical nature of races and these were typical of the white supremacist

advertisements of the time. For example, there is similar advertisement by ‘Fairy’, showing a

white child asking a black child ‘Why doesn’t your mamma wash you with Fairy soap?’ A lot

of the advertisements during times of western imperialism seemed to irrationally force the

Wests idea of modernity universally. As can be seen from these examples, the

representation of race in the media in the 19th century appears to be focused on Africa and

as black being barbaric, uncivilised, primitive and unclean – not only this but white appears

to be represented as the answer and saviour to the uncivilised world, for example as seen in

‘The White Man’s Burden’. These representations of the great white European explorer and

his adventures with the exotic world of the black African ‘other’ were popular as they were

the sole form of imagery and imagination of imperial conquests for the domestic audience

(Hall, 1997). This shows how the representation of race in the media has been embedded in

its historical context.

Since the end of the Second World War, however, belief in a biological difference of

races has been largely debunked and fell out of favour with many anthropologists and

geographers due to its connotations with Nazi Germany. Since the 1960’s there has been a

paradigm shift from scientific, biological study to empiricist, race relations, and social

constructionism (Bonnett, 1997). This, combined with the decolonisation of many empires,

led to media representations of race being less overtly discriminatory against the ‘other’. It

could be described as a more subtle form of racism (Van Dijk, 2000). Many connotations can

be drawn from the representation in the media and there is no ‘answer’ to the image – what

the image is trying to represent is in the eye of the beholder. However, a racialialised

difference is still represented within the media, despite the fact ‘race’ is now largely proved

to be a ‘myth’. Although race representation in more modern times is less overtly racist, a

few recent advertisements have appeared to represent racial difference in a backward

fashion, with images appearing to portray ‘the other’ in an inferior way. An example of this

is Intel’s advert that showed six black sprinters in the starting position normally adopted

before a race, with a suited up white man standing in the middle of them (figure 2). This

advert faced criticism after parallels were drawn between it and plantations and slavery.

As this essay discussed earlier, negative images of race were frequently used during the era

of British colonial conquests. However, does this mean that positive images of race and

identity help with issues surrounding racial difference? Stuart Hall critiques this theory by

suggesting that black politics can no longer be conducted through the role reversals of a

good black subject and a bad white subject. This is because by saying that all black people

are good, is equal to saying that all black people are the same (Hall, 1993). This appears to

Figure 2 – Intel Advertisement

suppress the heterogeneity of identities and cultures present within the black community

(Hall, 1993). Moreover, by changing the role that a black subject appears to have in a media

source only changes the image itself and the denotation of the image rather than

challenging the politics of representations within the image. Another issue raised here is

that by no individual can be representative of an entire community and therefore an

argument could be that the personality, culture, identity of a character in the media could

be taken on by the audience to be ‘true’ and therefore helps to mould a stereotype relating

to that subject.

The case study that this essay is using to back up the arguments in this essay is an

article written during the London 2012 Olympics for the Daily Mail. The headline for this

article is ‘White men can’t run, apart from this one: Lemaitre running in 200m against Bolt

and Co’. Firstly, I will start with the issues surrounding this headline. By the sweeping

statement ‘white men can’t run’ it could be suggested that this infers ‘black men can run’ or

‘non-whites can run’ which could be further analysed to ‘all black men can run’ and so on.

Furthermore, by singling out Lemaitre, the sole white sprinter and adding ‘Bolt and Co’ it

simplifies and reduces the black athletes into a single entity – almost ‘Lemaitre and the

black guys’. The paper goes on to describe research into the ACTN3 gene that is alleged to

be more commonly found in people of West African decent than European decent. This

gene appears to prove a biological theory of race difference and be flirting with the

historical and dangerous line of scientific and biological reasons for racial difference.

Furthermore, this article references a documentary by former America sprinter Michael

Johnson that looked into the taboo subject of black superiority in sprinting. This is when the

article refers to the slave trade and a possibility of the hard manual work and ‘survival of the

fittest’ that equipped black athletes for success on the track. Either the author was unaware

of the connotations ‘survival of the fittest’ had within the race relations of the past – a major

contributor to British colonialism and Nazi Germany was this social Darwinism attitude to

‘survival of the fittest’ attitude and the organic growth of states.

The representation of race in the media has been around for many years, from its

overtly racist roots of white supremacy and the inferiority of the ‘other’ to promote various

‘exotic’ products, to the ambiguity of representation and the politics of the images relevant

in the media today. It is not about looking at positive and negative images that are

represented in the media, but far more useful to look at the politics of representation and

the codes, images, symbols, and signifying practices that are prevalent within the source.

Stereotyping is common in reducing a community or communities into a few, essential,

simple characteristics which are represented as fixed. Seeing as ‘race’ is a social construct,

any characteristic given to a particular ethnicity through the medium of the media can be

seen as either stereotyping or misrepresentation because a single person of small group of

people can never be representative of a larger community.

Bibliography

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De Gobineau, A., 1915. The inequality of Human Races. London: G.P Putnam's Son's.

Hall, S., 1993. New Ethnicities. In: J. Donald & A. Rattansi, eds. Race, Culture, and Difference . London: Sage, pp. 252-259.

Hall, S., 1997. The Spectacle of the 'Other'. In: S. Hall, ed. Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. London: Sage, pp. 223-291.

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Mcevoy, J., 2012. White men can't run, except for this one: Lemaitre running in 200m against Bolt and Co. [Online] Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2185692/London-2012-Olympics-White-men-run-apart-Christophe-Lemaitre.html[Accessed 26 November 2012].

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Van Dijk, T., 1991. Racism and the Press. London: Routledge.

Van Dijk, T. A., 2000. New(s) Racism: A Discourse Analytic Approach. In: S. Cottle, ed. Ethnic Minorities and the Media. Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. 33-49.