Everyday racism and the importance of a cultural paradigm

Research on the relationship between racism and the mass media can be divided into three subfields. The first one is the study of the production of media messages and of institutions that preoccupy themselves with this task. The second theme is the content of the mass media. The third topic is the way people perceive these messages and make sense of them in their daily lives. For a summary of the research on these three topics, see Servaes and Schakenbos (1989) and Servaes and Tonnaer (1992: 50-59)

The conclusions from these specific studies are always more or less the same: racism and mass media are most of the time intertwined phenomena. Let’s provide three examples, each of them related to one of the above mentioned subfields. The first example has to do with the study of the production of media messages. We refer to a paper presented at the WACC-KUB conference on the theme ‘Migrants, Refugees and the Right to Communication: The EU, Exclusion and Citizenship’, held in April 1998 at the Catholic University of Brussels.

Flip Voets discussed the policy of the VRT, the Flemish public broadcasting company, on multiculturalism. He provides the following information about the composition of the staff of the VRT: ‘It employs about 2.500 people, almost all of them Flemish. The VRT broadcasts daily on two television channels and six radio stations. There are several reasons for the small number of people from immigrant backgrounds on its staff. One is undoubtedly that until recently Belgian nationality was a requirement for access to public service jobs. As a result, the VRT does not reflect the ethnic make-up of the Flemish population at all.’ Other studies on the composition of different staffs in the media production process give similar results.

Research also indicates that the not so favourable position of minorities in society is reflected in mass media content. Minorities are not present in mass-mediated representations, or they are represented in a negative way. Hassan Bousetta, for example, has remarked that certain crimes of people from the immigrant community get far too much media coverage in certain Belgian papers (1997: 52). This tendency towards racism in the description of crimes in the press is only one example of the way the content of the media is influenced by current power relations between the majority and minorities in Western societies.

Certain studies have not just considered the production or the content of the mass media, but also the way media messages are perceived by the public. This kind of study deserves a more important place in communication science. In traditional communication science the idea was that studying the production or the content of the mass media also meant that one gained some insight into the way people received media messages. The receiver was considered to be a passive receiver. Recent studies have indicated that receivers have a lot of psychological and cultural creativity. Therefore, the concepts of the ‘active viewer’ and the ‘active reader’ have become very popular in contemporary communication theory. One should be careful however in interpreting the ‘creativity’ of the viewer or reader. In practice, this ‘creativity’ could be very conservative. The creative receiver is one who interprets media materials in order to sustain their own psychological and cultural worldview. Maintaining racist ideas is, for example, a strategy of the ‘creative’ viewer.

We can make a distinction between three types of media content: explicit or implicit racist media contents, media contents with absolutely no reference to racist topics, and media contents with an anti-racist intention. In practice, we will see that receivers with a racist orientation could possibly make racist judgements in the interpretation of all these three types of media contents. The ‘creativity’ of the concept of the ‘creative receiver’ comes very close to the concept of ‘selective perception’. One sees what one wants to see, at least to a certain degree.

A fascinating example of this process can be found in the story of what happened with the television programme ‘All in the family’ (discussed in Servaes en Schakenbos, 1989 and Servaes and Tonnaer, 1992). This programme was intended to change racial prejudices by making fun of them. However, the unintended consequence was that those people who had prejudices made a selective interpretation, an ‘oppositional reading’ (Hall, 1973), of what they saw, and ended up seeing this programme as something they felt happy with.

Several studies in experimental social psychology have contributed to understanding this strange way of constructing social judgements. Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross wrote an interesting book on the strange but very common errors in the human thinking process. They discuss (1980: 170-172) an experiment during which some people were confronted with two studies on the deterrent effects of capital punishment towards potential murderers. One study said that capital punishment could have a deterrent effect, the other study denied this point of view. Among the people who were reacting to these stimuli, there were two groups: a group of people that supported capital punishment and a group of people that was against it. It turned out that both groups found the study that supported their own vision to be the better conducted one, and their opinion was always strengthened by the experiment.

The research design of the experiment is in fact a bit more complex than what we have indicated here. It is also possible to explain a lot of similar experiments. But we do not intend to elaborate on social psychology. In fact, we do not even intend to go deeper into the field of classical communication science. These studies are not useless. The opposite is true. But they only give insight into rather small parts of the communication process. We would like to propose another frame of reference which is broader and more similar to fields of study such as anthropology, cultural sociology and the philosophy of culture. Such a perspective can also have the effect of gaining new insights into the relationship between mass media and racism. It has the advantage of making it possible to centralize the study of what can be called ‘everyday racism’ in the study of racism. This form of racism is less obvious than the more extreme manifestations, but it definitely occurs more frequently and it is the framework out of which extreme racism can emerge.

Towards a culturalistic research paradigm

Communication science has traditionally defended a mediacentric perspective on communication processes in human societies. During the last twenty years or so a more complex view has emerged and received prominence on the scientific agenda. Two examples of this paradigm shift are the plea for a more culturalistic approach to development communication (Servaes, 1999) and the idea of an anthropological escape route from mediacentrism (Lie, 1997). Both perpectives not only share an orientation towards integrated communication processes, in which the role of the receiver gets more attention. They also argue that the concept of ‘culture’ should have a central place in the study of communication. The idea that culture should be a central idea in communication science has our sympathy, although we do have one remark to make in this respect. One should not take this escape route from mediacentrism too far. Communication science has a specific objective: it is the study of mass communication processes. When this specificity is given up, communication science loses its legitimacy as an autonomous field of study. The focus should be (as in Servaes, 1999 and Lie, 1997) on a culturalistic communication science, not on a fusion of communication science and cultural studies.

Obviously, it is necessary to have a definition of culture in such a perspective. The Dutch anthropologist Johannes Tennekes (1990: 18-28) defines culture as a dialectical process whereby on the one hand people create cultural meanings and on the other people internalise certain meanings that can be found in reality. People are confronted with a world that is already meaningful but they do not assimilate these meanings entirely. They make sense of them in their own way. Mass communication processes can be seen as a form of culture. Media embody the dominant meanings of reality in a certain society, but the confrontation of a reader or viewer with these media is as much a creation of meaning by the receiver as it is an internalisation of the dominant views.

Towards a definition of racism

There are two opposing tendencies in the construction of social scientific theories: so-called subjectivism, a perspective that tends towards overestimating the role of individuals in the social construction of reality, and so-called objectivism, in which the role of individuals is neglected. The way Tennekes describes culture has the advantage that both perspectives are integrated. He has a dialectical theory of culture. We have already mentioned the role of mass media in this dialectical process. Now we want to focus on the relationship between mass media and racism in this perspective.

‘Racism’ is a cultural orientation that has a certain objectivity in our society. It is widespread and implicated in a lot of social institutions, including the mass media (recall our discussion of the three research topics). That’s why people are socialized to adopt racist views, and can even react in a racist way to institutions and communications that have no racist connotations. But there is also the possibility of creating a new view on racism in the reaction towards racist institutions. Reinterpretation of dominant meanings is always possible. But these reinterpretations do not emerge out of nothing. They also have their origins in a cultural framework with a certain objectivity: the cultural framework of anti-racism or multiculturalism.

We will make clear what our opinion is on the role of mass media in promoting multiculturalism, but it may be necessary to start with a definition of racism. This is a central concept in this article, and in that respect we cannot leave our understanding of it to be determined by common-sense knowledge. In the previously mentioned article of Servaes and Schakenbos (1989: 12) we find Memmi’s definition, who sees racism as a combination of three things. Only when each is present can we rightly use the concept ‘racism’. Racism means that there is a discursive construction of ethnic differences. A second dimension of racism is that these differences are evaluated. The constructed groups are not only different; some groups are in a certain way ‘better’ than other groups. Thirdly, this difference in evaluation has a social function. It helps to legitimate existing social inequalities between ethnic groups.

This last dimension is a very important one. In his book on culture (1990) Tennekes not only tries to give a satisfactory description of culture and cultural processes. He also discusses the relationship between culture and power. Culture is the interplay of internalisation of some meanings and externalisation of other meanings. But some groups in society can make their meanings more explicit, so that internalisation of those meanings becomes more probable for members of the society.

The same definition is used in some recent interesting studies on racism and mass media, namely ‘Racisme op het spoor … De relatie tussen Oost-Berlijnse boulevardbladen en de leefwereld van hun lezers’ (‘In search of racism … The relationship between the commercial press in East-Berlin and the lifeworld of its readers’) by Gwen Versluis (1996: 100-101) and ‘Discours-analyse van alledaags racisme’ (‘Discourse analysis of everyday racism’) by Harry van den Berg (1997: 196). It is a useful definition indeed and it has the advantage of being a definition of everyday racism. As such, we can use this definition by studying racism as a phenomenon deeply embedded in our culture. We can really see the depth of it. But the definition of Memmi has a second advantage. It is also, in a certain way, a rather narrow definition of racism. Although it sees racism as being a part of everyday life, it also sees the specificity of it. We are in this way not confronted with the danger of seeing, for example, conservative liberalism as a form of racism. Conservative liberalism is a theory which wants to maintain existing inequalities, but a conservative liberal is not necessary a racist.

Researching culture, media and racism

We have made clear that we want to approach the relationship between media and racism from a broad cultural perspective. In this section we want to give an example of a study that uses such a perspective and that can be presented as an illustration of ideas referred to above. It is the study of Gwen Versluis.

Versluis did her research on the commercial press in East-Berlin in 1992, not long after the Western and the Eastern part of Germany were reunited again. This political evolution was not without consequences for the media sector, particularly for the media sector in the Eastern part of Germany, where the people were confronted with the phenomenon of commercial mass media after having been indoctrinated for a long time by a strongly regulated governmental media policy. Versluis has studied the interaction between these ‘new’ media and the cultural orientation of everyday racism.

Theoretically as well as methodologically the study of Versluis can be seen as an example of the perspective that we have introduced in this article. On a methodological level, we appreciate that Versluis has done research on the production context of some commercial mass media, on the content of these media and on the reception of these media. This means that she (implicitly) advocates an approach whereby the whole communication process is studied and not just an isolated process.

A broad cultural framework has also been used to make a theoretical interpretation of this methodological effort. She does not refer to the theory of Johannes Tennekes, but to another theorist who has tried to define culture and power and to transcend the dichotomy between subjectivist and objectivist tendencies in the social sciences. This theorist is Pierre Bourdieu (1980). After having introduced some other concepts of Versluis, we will show how she applies the theory of Bourdieu to the study of racism.

Versluis makes a distinction between the micro-level and the macro-level of society. The micro-level is the level of the individual, socialized into certain cultural conceptions and also producer of reinterpretations of existing cultural knowledge. The macro-level is the level of organisations. This is the level where policies are formulated and also the media are part of this level. The micro-level and the macro-level of society have a permanent influence on each other. Versluis has given a very clear example of these influences in her study on the commercial press in Berlin.

The publishers of commercial mass media are a part of the macrostructure of society. They have the right to choose an ideological orientation of their own, but they are also obliged to adapt their ideological orientation to what the public (situated at the micro-level) wants. As commercial mass media, they want to sell as much as possible. So when the public dislikes a certain ideological orientation, this orientation can not be maintained. That’s why the commercial mass media are a mirror of dominant opinions in society. This is what will sell best. In this respect, it is only logical that Versluis recognised racism in the German commercial mass media she studied.

Versluis interprets the role of racism in the production, content and consumption of commercial mass media as a strategy of the German habitus with the maintenance of the status quo in the field Germany as goal. ‘Habitus’ and ‘field’ are central ideas in the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu. A field is a structured space of social positions whereby on each field there is a competition between newcomers and those who posses power. The habitus is the more subjective dimension of the theory. An aspect of this habitus is that one feels no contradiction between one’s ideological opinion and the defence of the interests implicated in that position. One gains, as Bourdieu puts it, ‘the extra gain of seeing oneself as entirely without interests’ (Bourdieu in Pels, 1989: 178, our translation). It can be expected that people who vote for social-democratic parties are for example often people with a low social position, while people who vote for conservative or liberal parties most often earn more money. This correlation can probably be explained by the fact that people believe sincerely in ideologies that are also beneficial to their own social position.

Racism in Germany (and racism as such - Germany is only a case study) can be explained by a similar social mechanism. Versluis considers immigrants and refugees to be the newcomers in the field Germany. Those who have the power (policymakers, media producers and ordinary German people alike) produce lay theories of a racist nature to defend their own position, without seeing the artificial character of their own theories.

International migration can be seen as a consequence of economic inequalities in the world-wide economic system. This system itself is the product of the expansion of capitalism and colonialism – the ‘foreign policy’ of capitalism – in earlier times. Of course, scholars in international economy and international politics will probably theorise this process much better. But this rough explanation is certainly closer to the truth than popular common sense. These theories say that people with another ethnic identity cannot claim a right to equality because of their racial or cultural backgrounds. By producing these theories, racist people gain the benefit of ‘seeing [themselves] as entirely without interest’ as Bourdieu puts it.

Because of their commercial role, commercial media are not the organisations that we may expect to create changes in the implicitly or explicitly racist nature of (parts of) the public opinion. Commercial media tend to reproduce meanings which the public likes in order to maximize their public, and as a consequence their appeal towards potential advertisers. Promoting multiculturalism is therefore a task of organisations with a public goal. We will now turn to a discussion of what we see as the necessary objectives of such organisations.

The importance of a multicentric multicultural movement

We have already mentioned that ‘racism’ is not the only existing framework that individuals could use in interpreting relations between different ethnic groups. There is also a cultural framework that can be called ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘anti-racism’. The anti-racist movement can be seen as an example of what has been called ‘new social movements’. Other examples are the feminist movement, the environmental movement, the peace movement, etc. These new social movements can be contrasted with the so-called ‘old’ social movements, which must be placed in the sociological framework of antagonistic interests. New social movements are not so well (or so rigidly) organised as old social movements, but it is possible to identify some of their unifying characteristics. This has been done very well in the text ‘Een toekomst voor de anti-racistische beweging ?’ (‘A future for the anti-racist movement?’).

This text contains many interesting recommendations, but we would like to mention only two of them here. The first is that there is not one ideal strategy to counter racism. The second is that the emphasis should be on positive values, rather than on expressing negative appreciations of racist people. The former recommendation can be seen as the logical policy implication of a communication theory that sees (mass) communication as a process that must be studied as an entire process and one that is embedded in the framework of culture. Mass communication forms part of a broader cultural context, and in that way one must try to use different strategies for changing public opinion. In practice, this means using different mass media (leaflets, audiovisual media, the press, the internet, etc.) using the educational sphere, creating a positive sphere towards multiculturalism in bars, sports clubs and other places where social gatherings take place. In an integrated way, many organisations could and should be involved.

The preferred organisational structure of this anti-racist movement is certainly not a central government which uses top-down propaganda techniques. Everyday racism is a feature of the social culture of the whole society in the contemporary West. Alternatives for this prejudiced worldview should also have multiple origins in such a social culture. These alternatives should be based on positive values, rather than on fighting against racist people. That is why we prefer the concept of ‘multiculturalism’ to the concept of ‘antiracism’. The latter concept seems to suggest a new form of racism which condemns racists as an ‘ethnic’ group with irrational motives.

Promoting multiculturalism: an empirical example

We have emphasised the need for the multicultural movement to be a multicentric movement. Moreover we want to focus on one specific type of media organisation with a lot of influence, namely public broadcasting. When we argue that this type of media organisation has a lot of influence, we do not want to return to ancient theories of communication science that saw mass media as almighty institutions that diffused knowledge in a linear way into the passive minds of receivers. We only intend to argue that certain media obtain a particular place in society.

An additional argument is provided by Paul Bottelberghs (1995) in his book on the role of multiculturalism in defining the goals of public television. Bottelberghs argues that a television system can be seen as a sort of pillar. Each television company has its own ideological and cultural paradigm, and the production and content of media messages is influenced by this paradigm. In fact, each company has its own organisational culture, but it is possible to distinguish three groups. The first group is the one with a political paradigm. A typical example is the classical BBC style. The second group is the group with an economic paradigm. These are the commercial broadcasters. The third paradigm is the so-called ‘cultural paradigm’, a more or less utopian paradigm, that has never been really implemented.

Culture was conceptualised as a dialectical process whereby people internalise meanings and also give to some meanings a reorientation. Culture is thus a process whereby meanings circulate in society. In this respect it is important to bring multicultural meanings into circulation. Public broadcasting can fulfil an important role in this respect. Public broadcasting should be multicultural. Moreover Bottelberghs (1995: 50-51) claims that multiculturalism cannot be confined to ethnic multiculturalism. Although this link has not been explored in this article, it makes sense to relate ‘anti-racism’ to a broader project on promoting cultural diversity, that also has as its objective in promoting mutual understanding of diverse, not ethnically defined, subcultures. Ethnic plurality should not be stigmatised as a problem area but has to be treated as a regular dimension of everyday plurality in contemporary complex societies.

Having said that, it is interesting to refer again to the previously mentioned text of Flip Voets. He discusses the relationship between the VRT and ethnic minorities with a special focus on the television programme ‘Couleur Locale’ (‘Local Colour’). This programme was intended to promote multiculturalism, but it was broadcast on the less popular second channel of the VRT. As a result, the audience remained relatively small. Another disadvantage of the programme implied the task of promoting multiculturalism to the broadcasting of specific programmes. We agree with Voets that multiculturalism should be recognizable in the whole output of the public broadcasting company.

Bottelberghs (1995: 60) provides a good example of how public broadcasting should not work. He writes that at a certain moment the television programme ‘TV TAM TAM’ was the only programme at the VRT with no racist or sexist connotations at all. But it was decided to stop broadcasting this programme because it was expensive, although it had more viewers than the hit parade of VTM, the Flemish commercial broadcaster, which was broadcast at the same time. In this way the only differences between public and commercial broadcasting are financial differences, the former being paid by tax money, and the latter by advertisers. Gwen Versluis said that social change cannot be expected from commercial media because they cannot produce contents that are controversial, because of the danger of losing the audience. Nowadays, public media are confronted with the same danger because it does not make much sense to bring multicultural meanings into cultural circulation when almost nobody watches television programmes with this intention. But public broadcasting has one advantage that in this case has not been followed. The constraining force of commercial logic can be weaker. Thus, it is a shame when economically oriented broadcasting policies become the norm for publicly financed broadcasters.

By way of conclusion: multiculturalism and communication science

In our review of existing studies on ‘media and racism’, we have clearly identified our preference for studying the communication process as a whole and for using a theory of culture. Two studies have been given particular attention: the one by Gwen Versluis and the one by Paul Bottelberghs. The study by Versluis is a good example of an analytic approach. Bottelberghs makes a plea for social change, focusing on the field of public broadcasting, whereby the cultural paradigm should be made more important.

An important question in this respect is: what is the role of communication science in promoting social change? Bottelberghs is rather optimistic. He claims that his new type of public television requires a form of permanent evaluation, and that this evaluation should not be too difficult. He agrees that the goal of ‘promoting multiculturalism’ is more difficult to measure than the goal of maximizing the number of viewers, but again this should not be a major problem. I quote: ‘The development of sophisticated measurement techniques is perfectly possible and is an interesting challenge for a department of communication sciences’ (1995: 64, our translation).

We agree with Bottelberghs that communication science has a role to play in this respect. However, this role should not or should not just be situated at the level of creating measurement techniques. The role of communication science is broader than that. Communication science should stimulate public discussion about important social themes. Priority should be given to a discussion of communication processes as complex wholes integrated into the social culture as a whole, not a specific discussion of detailed aspects of media production or media content. This does not mean that we defend a utopian view of the role of science in society. The creation of multiculturalism must be the work of a multicentric movement. Communication science or science in general is only one voice in this respect, but certainly a voice that the scientific community has to develop through further reflection and further research on the interrelation of mass media and multiculturalism.

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Stefan Mertens studied Political and Social Sciences (Communication Science section) at the University of Antwerp and Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Catholic University of Leuven. Afterwards he obtained a grant from FWO-Vlaanderen (Fund for scientific research-Flanders). He is a PhD student, under the guidance of Prof. Jan Servaes and Prof. Marie-Claire Foblets, in the research and documentation centre ‘Communication for Social Change’ (CSC) at the Catholic University of Brussels.