Racism in cultural representation and the media

This piece is part of a series on systemic racism that’s a small part of Hive Learning’s Inclusion Works program. Here’s why we encourage you to see this content as a jumping-off point for your learning journey rather than the final word.

📌 We researched and wrote this series to try to make sense of systemic racism, an incredibly broad and complex topic. Our aim was to demystify this type of racism for the everyday person who doesn’t have time to read lots of books on the subject, let alone trawl through hundreds of pieces of academic research to really wrap their arms around it.

📌 We’ve curated 350 sources to give a flavor of how systemic racism emerges through a limited set of areas (housing, education, healthcare, criminal justice, media representation), introducing the barriers and injustices of these institutions using a single example from history and from the present day, and focuses solely on racism directed at Black Americans.

📌 We appreciate that there is much much more to say on this topic and we’d love to do that justice in future content. For now, take a look at the further resources linked to take your next step, start to question how the systems you’re a part of are propping up racism in our society today, and seek out actions you can take to dismantle it.

Nowadays, many see the arts and media as a utopia for diversity.

We know ‘making it’ in industries like film, theatre and television relies on a stroke of luck and a dose of nepotism.

But, actually, there’s more to it than that. Invisible structures and self-perpetuating attitudes exist in the media industry (and its audiences) that warp representation of Black people in media — with seriously damaging effects.

GIF by @georgieellen.

An example from history: blackface for comedy

In the 18th and 19th centuries, white actors often smeared themselves with burnt cork and played buffoon-like characters on stage. These productions were called minstrel shows. They gave white crowds great amusement to see Blackness portrayed as harmlessly inferior.

Minstrel shows commodified Black people, excluded them from choosing their own representation, perpetuated stereotypes and ideas of white supremacy and, no doubt, were deeply offensive, disturbing and annoying.

How did this set a lasting system in motion?

These caricatures took a firm hold of the American imagination, laying down expectations for Black people on and off stage. Everything from Black features to folk songs was appropriated and projected by this engine of entertainment and comedy.

💡 ‘Jim Crow’, for example, is a minstrel show character created when a white performer mimicked a shuffle dance jig to a folk song that originated in the Yoruba culture of West Africa.

Jim Crow from The New York Public Library (public domain).

Although Black people have always resisted victimization, many watched these shows and some even became performers to make a living.

Black performers in this position might don blackface literally or figuratively and play stage personas such as the gentle Uncle Tom, the salacious Buck, or servile maids and mammies.

This filtered a white supremacist narrative through their performance, their livelihoods, and the audience’s viewership.

Their identity was smeared by cruel racist stereotypes that they were lazy, simple, greedy, or overly sexualized. And, while minstrel shows died out by the First World War, this synergy between expectations and production of shows continued for decades.

An example from today: representation in Hollywood in the 2010s

In the 2000s and early 2010s, white casts dominated the theatrical film industry. Adding just one actor that was Black, indigenous or a person of color (BIPOC) to the lead cast resulted in earning 40% less box office revenue internationally. (Anomalies included Avatar, Life of Pi and Skyfall)

But game-changing movies like Black Panther, Get Out and Moonlight among others established that there is a clear market for films that cast and tell meaningful stories about Black people.

So, how close are we to fair representation in Hollywood?

Leads by race in Hollywood theatrical films, 2011-2017. (The grey line indicates U.S. ‘minority’ population.) Adapted from 2019 UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report.

The 2019 UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report suggests there has been a small but positive change towards representation in casting in recent years. Take a look — what do you think about the numbers?

However, the same cannot be said for talent behind the camera. White writers, directors and crew members are still overrepresented in the industry.

Breaking cast representation down, it seems that intersectional diversity is further behind still: representation of women of color and LGBTQ+ people of color can be described as, “an epidemic of invisibility” due to being so insufficient.

Pixar Tonko House GIF by @erickoh.

Can targets and standards help?

The British Film Institute introduced Diversity Standards in 2016. In 2020, they published their analysis of all the feature films that had tried to adhere to these standards.

The key finding was that improvements in casting alone do not mirror — and might mask — improvements elsewhere. Off-screen representation lags behind on-screen representation. And fair efforts to develop underserved audiences trail even further behind.

• 📺 50% of films met the race diversity standard for on-screen representation (which could be achieved with casting choices, storyline, locations, characters — this does not mean that 50% of leads were BIPOC)
• 🎬 40% of films met the race diversity standard for off-screen representation (creative team, crew)
• 👀 12% of films met the race diversity standard for developing underserved audiences (promotion, distribution, partnerships using specialist knowledge)

🎯 This suggests stories are still being shaped by and for white audiences — with underserved audiences being catered for in only very superficial ways.

Even when Black people are represented, they are often misrepresented

Unfortunately, casting a Black actor in a role or selecting a project with diverse characters doesn’t automatically pop the bubble of pervasive whiteness. Black representation in media is subject to tropes, stereotyping and whitewashing.

DW analysis of 6,000+ movies found that, while some racist Hollywood tropes have fallen out of favor, some are going strong and rubbing shoulders with new tropes.

Essentially, writers, producers, directors, acting coaches, casting directors, costume departments and all the other facets of media production continue to work on a narrative that centers white people.

Blackface may have been eradicated but Black characters are still often used to fulfill stereotypes and tropes,

From What Hollywood movies do to perpetuate racial stereotypes by DW.

Misrepresentation is more than just annoying. It can lead to something called symbolic annihilation. This is the narrowing of what counts as valid, ‘annihilating’ people that sit outside it.

As an anonymous contributor to The Qarawiyyin Project put it:

Rather than humanizing the masses, [mis]representation creates an acceptance of a specific personality and hinges upon the individual possessing certain celebrated traits, only approved if deemed the “model” Japanese citizen, the educated Black man, or the beautiful hijabi makeup artist.