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In the wake of the Scarman report (1981) why did television
become the focus for reforms designed to address racism and
racial disadvantage?
Snezhana Ilieva
Early April of 1981 in Britain was to prove an extraordinary few days. Violent and passionate,
on the streets of Brixton, ordinary Black people vented their frustration and anger over an
institutionally racist economy, which during the 1970s and 1980s, depended on the ‘widely
agreed upon narrative of national crisis in which Blacks, seen as an outside force, an alien
malaise afflicting the British society’ (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies; cited in
Mercer, 1994: 8) were the bearers of the crisis of British society. What was happening,
however, was not only seen as an onset of civil society’s conflict, but of a ‘crisis in the very
identity of the nation and its people’ (Mercer, 1994: 8) in which the role of media and its
credibility, television in particular, came under considerable inspection:
There is, however, one other factor (…) as figuring in the causation of the disorders
following upon Brixton – the ‘copy-cat’ element. This raises the question of the role of the
media, particularly the broadcasting media, in circumstances of major social disorder
such as those experienced in Brixton and elsewhere (Scarman, 1981: 174).
Indeed, the ‘epitome of what black people are like’ (Hall, 2013: 243) has gone through many
transformations, but the repertoire of racialised discourses formed by a set of binary
oppositions between ‘civilzation (white) and savagery (black)’ (Hall, 2013: 232) has never
entirely disappeared. Starting from the sixteenth century’s representations of Africa as ‘the
parent of everything that’s monstrous’ (Long; cited in Hall, 2013: 229), to eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries’ popular representations of colonial conquest, ‘slavery, ownership and
servitude’ (Hall, 2013: 234), ideological representations of race are still to be found in
contemporary society, especially in television. They have been portrayed in the form of what is
called the twentieth century’s ‘multi-cultural drift’ within which images of Black people figure
predominantly in the archive of popular culture, and remain invisible in the world of economic
power or diabolised in the ‘hard news coverage of crime and disorder’ (Hall, 2013:259- 269):
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Thus, while blacks can be celebrated within popular culture, the older forms of splitting
and denigration remain at work. Ashley Cole, can go from being a footballer star and
celebrity one minute to being denigrated as a money-grabbing, sexually-promiscuous
boy to the next. Made a hero one day and pulled down to the next (Hall, 2013: 269).
Drawing on the writings of many previous scholars, such as Derrida (1981), Dyer (1977), Said
(1978), and Hall (1982) who have underlined the primacy of ‘race and ethnicity as a marker of
identity’ (Awan, 2008: 1), this essay will examine television representations of race and
ethnicity, and how these stereotypical portrayals have contributed to our understanding of
racism and racial disadvantage. Initially, an analysis of how Black and Asian people have been
portrayed on television prior to and after the Scarman report (1981) will be made in reference
with a set of representational practices known as stereotypes used within various television
genres, such as documentaries, and news. This will be followed by an examination of the
various social reforms and regulations taken in response to television’s ‘racialized regimes of
representations’ (Hall, 1977: 245), and the impact they had on the development of a ‘more
mainstream awareness of Black Arts’ ( Malik and Hall, 2001: 161). Finally, I will identify some
of the main critiques of the idea of television as anti-racist and multi-cultural by drawing on
conflictual situations which occurred on reality TV shows, such as Celebrity Big Brother.
Television can be a very powerful and effective tool for the construction of ‘moral judgement
and consensus about community, citizenship and social inclusion’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 77).
Gramsci’s notion of ‘hegemony’ (2007) as a form of power based on the application of the
ruling group’s norms of their own world views, value system and ideologies on the others, so
that they appear natural and normal, is of particular importance in assessing television
programming as a central ‘knowledge system through which society’s common sense about
cohesion, inclusion and exclusion is produced, distributed and regulated’ (Malik and Hall,
2001: 77-91). Shared feelings and perceptions are vital to the construction of a sense of
community, and as such, they often appear to the public as natural, detached from ideological
representations, where ‘competing beliefs struggle to win our hearts and minds’ (Nichols,
2001: 142). Applied to television, the manufacturing of common sense along the lines of
nationalism, whether in the form of approval or disapproval of the already established
governments or cultures, played a crucial role in the early onset of documentaries. Through
the application of features that described individual’s behaviour as universal, or typical,
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documentaries have drawn our attention to the features of a culture as a whole. The statement
of Karl Marx (cited in Nichols, 2001) that the ‘dispossessed cannot represent themselves, they
must be represented’ (2001: 141), further turns our attention to the perfunctory reality
documentary films have depicted of those considered ‘victims of the documentary tradition’
(2001: 141), i.e. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, and Third World peoples. An
evidence of the habitual activity of placing audience features (individual characteristics)
within society (the nation), can be found in the documentary programming of the BBC during
the 1950s and 1960s. For instance, documentary programs, such as ‘Has Britain a Colour Bar?’
and ‘Special Enquiry’ which were the first television documentaries constructed to address the
challenges Black immigrants face. Their examination of tolerance towards race and
immigration, were in fact ‘carefully staged, with effects produced, scripts co-ordinated,
opinions rehearsed and reactions anticipated’ ( Malik and Hall, 2001: 38), thus creating an
imaginary reality of Black people’s experience in a natural way:
There were, for example, no vox pops in ‘Has Britain a Colour Bar?’ so that the ‘direct’
testimonies about racism were in fact, previously rehearsed and reactions anticipated
(Malik and Hall, 2001: 38).
The prevalence of White directors is another aspect to be considered central to the
common sense perception of race and racial difference. For example, prior to the
Scarman report (1981), the cultural difference between Our (White people) values and
Their (Black people) values was often highlighted in documentaries, always assuming
that ‘the norm did not apply to the racial ‘Other’’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 40). An example
of the emphasis documentaries had on cultural difference can be found in Racial
Discrimination – one of the most notable documentaries including Black people during
the 1960s – whose onset was marked with the following statement:
Good evening. I am White. Most of you watching this program are also White, which the
way things are in this country is fortunate for us (Malik and Hall, 2001: 40).
Consequently, these documentaries did not only address racial difference as a problematic
issue within British society, and thus ‘rationalized’ and confirmed the evidence of racial
discrimination towards Black people, but simultaneously disidentified themselves from any
form of racism, and thereby looked ‘scrupulously fair and dedicated to promoting equality’
(Malik and Hall, 2001: 35-39). The late 1960s, however, introduced a shift in the portrayal of
Black people and their experiences within documentaries; from the ‘ordinary, usually (semi3
skilled or skilled working class) Black people, situated as isolated cases, pushed to the margins
of the broader debate and located outside the dominant consensus (liberal, middle-class,
established values) of the programme’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 41-43), they have turned into the
illiterate, unhygienic, primitive, unable to cope with the civilized Western society people. For
instance, drawing on documentaries, such as ‘The Negro Next Door’, Black and White people
were always portrayed as fighting out and obstructing each other; a narrative discourse used
which often leads to ‘White’ point of view-audience induced empathy.
Similar to Black people’s ideological representations on television documentaries prior to the
Scarman report (1981), Asian people’s portrayals were also constructed within the same
Western ‘White’ ideological framework. They were often depicted as ‘overly moral, oppressive
( men) /oppressed (women), alien, confused and negatively bound by close-knit family
structures’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 43). In addition, just as the ideological representations of
Black people, Asian’s portrayals often involved emphasis on the cultural differences between
Asian and English people’s lives – a narrative framework used by documentaries’ filmmakers
in attempt to display the ‘nation’s sensibilities, and thereby ‘safeguard the victims of
discrimination’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 44). The gaze, however, as Malik and Hall (2001) agues,
‘was distinctly White, always judging the grounds of cultural acceptability, and (…) deflecting
the focus from British racism’ (2001: 44).
In the same vein as documentary programs, television news media is essential to the
construction of public opinion and community consensus maintenance. Television news media,
however, just like documentaries ‘hides the actuality of editorial control and claims to operate
within the narcissistic framework of impartiality (that it is a fair, balanced, and complete
recording of reality)’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 77). Drawing on the late 1950s television news,
BBC Television News and Independent Television News, when there was a clear racial tension,
Black and Asian people had always played a secondary representative role; they were the
people the news only referred to or spoke about without directly involving them in its content
production. Their portrayal in the news wasn’t that different from the one used in
documentaries; they were often represented within a specific racial framework – ‘the street
criminal, the mugger, and the inner-city rioter’ (Hall cited in Malik and Hall, 2001: 85). In this
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sense, the riots in Brixton, were not an exception. In attempting to examine the reasons for
‘Black criminalty in a liberal and intrinsically humanitarian way’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 80),
dominant news narratives, in fact, reversed the reason for the Brixton’s disturbances back to
Black communities – ‘their lifestyle, family set-up or neighbourhood, and within the
ideologically-charged category ‘Black working class youth’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 85). What
was exceptional about the Brixton riots, however, was not the ideological representations of
cultural difference on the media, but the transformations that occurred in it in reference with
its broadcasting policy and regulation aftermath. Indeed, in the period between 1965 and
1975, there have been classic public broadcasts designed to help Asian immigrants and
Britain Black communities, such as ‘Apna Hi Ghar Samajhiye (Make Yourself At Home)’, ‘Parosi’,
‘Gharbar’ – programs, designed to integrate Black and Asian people, through the use of
primary tips on ‘health, hygiene, marriage, housekeeping, and careers advice’ (Malik and Hall,
2001: 57) – indicating the media’s efforts to address Non-English viewers. Drawing on Malik
and Hall (2001), however, despite the liberal position these programs were displaying, they
were also founded on an ‘explicitly integrationalist project’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 57) – a
perception according to which problems Black and Asian communities faced in Britain can be
solved by the assimilation of ‘Asiasness and Blackness into Englishness’ (Malik and Hall, 2001:
57). It was not until the urban unrest in Brixton in 1981, however, that documents, such as
Lord Scarman’s report (1981) concerned with how media narratives may reinforce a specific
repertoire of ideological representations or confront and play with Western ‘White’ cultural
concerns and aspirations related to race, were deemed as documents to:
...usher in fundamental change in the ways in which the issues of race were approached
in British society and widely referred to as watersheds and turning points (Neal, 2003:
57).
One of the most prominent reforms implemented, and thereby exemplifying television’s shift
from racial discrimination to multiculturalism, was the release of Channel 4 – the fourth UK
terrestrial television channel, and the first one to be ‘specifically appointed to commission
programmes for a non-White British audience’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 60). Drawing on the
former paragraphs, it has been examined that television is a powerful device for the
construction of society’s common sense of race and cultural difference as it reflects reality and
influences its viewers’ lifestyles. What has not been examined, however, was what it is that
influences television - it is the historical period within which it operates. In this sense ‘Channel
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4 stood at the pivotal place in the development of British television history’ (Hobson, 2008:
viii), as it triggered many of institutional changes which became part of the television
framework. Constructed in an attempt to respond to the needs and interests of a multi-cultural
society, Channel 4 produced specific programming framework ‘to cater for Black and Asian
communities’ (Malik, 2008: 344):
Over the years, it was primarily factually-based productions such as Eastern Eye (1982–
85), Black on Black (1983–85), The Bandung File (1985–91), Black Bag (1991–97) and
Devil's Advocate (1992–96) that became the leading examples of black programming,
focusing on issues that were seen to be directly relevant for black and Asian
communities (Malik, 2008: 344-345).
In addition, the abundance of released multicultural programs created new opportunities for
Black and Asian people to develop and display their acting talents, and thereby ‘breakthrough
in other genres’ (Malik, 2008: 354). For instance, drawing on Malik’s writings, the popular
comedy series ‘Desmond's’ (1988–94) allowed for many new writers coming from Black and
Asian communities, many of them women, to get introduced to the industry, thereby
underlying the Channel’s structural advantage in comparison to the other terrestrial television
channels, BBC2 in particular – ‘to find and develop new and untested talents and its ability
offer a new form of cultural support to Black and Asian filmmakers’(Malik, 2008: 354-355).
Indeed, the argument of Channel 4s explicit impact on Black and Asian communities is not
straightforward and has received criticism on a wide range of issues. An example of which can
be drawn from the writings of Malik and Hall (2001) on Channel 4’s ‘Devil’s Advocate’ series in
which the prominent columnist Paul Johnson is asked to express his views on repatriation
Despite its initial attempts to ‘juxtapose different opinions on what the Black subject is’ (Malik
and Hall, 2001:65), most of the series portrayed Black people in a rather negative way,
emphasizing the:
...fear that Black programmes were devisive, and ( …) pushed the limits of acceptability
and public service too far (Howe; cited in Malik and Hall, 2001: 65).
Another criticism, found in the writings of Malik and Hall (2001), is related to the locating of
Black programming and audiences within fragmented slots:
The fact that we still have Black Christmas (1995), Indian Summer (1997) and Caribbean
Summer (2000) seasons are indicative of how poorly integrated Black programmes are
in the mainstream schedules across the television year, an add-on mentality which best
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reflects itself in the appalling scheduling of Black programmes in ‘graveyard slots’ , or
against prime-time audience pullers’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 65)
Another problematic issue is the uncertainty related to the actual contribution of Channel 4’s
multicultural departments to the positive perceptions of race and cultural differences and
development of new talented Black and Asian filmmakers. Drawing on Malik and Hall (2001) ,
‘the individual tastes, policies, attitudes of commissioning editors, (…) the types of narratives
and the formats broadcast (…) have often differed from the ideal of expanded diversity’ (2001:
66).
Drawing a comparison between the late part of 1980s and nowadays, there is an evident
decrease in ‘television’s commitment to on-screen innovation and diversity’ (Malik and Hall,
2001: 70). Turned into a commodified entity, the type of liberal freedom to be found today,
however, is not focused on enhancing cultural differences, but on profit; on:
...market liberalism- the economic freedom to do as well as one can, leaving the broader
contextual questions to market forces –addressed only if they meet the needs of a
profitable cultural marketplace (Malik and Hall, 2001: 73).
Indeed, today’s multiculturalism makes it impossible to speak of direct discriminatory
televisual practices, but the problem of ‘racialized regimes of representation’ (Malik and Hall,
2001:70) within television is still ongoing in the public sphere. An example of these
contemporary ideological representations which can be found in 2013’s Celebrity Big Brother
reality show. Initially released at a time when the ‘global nature of television culture seems to
be both celebrated and loathed’ (Aslama and Pantti, 2007: 51) Big Brother’s cast has always
been considered as multicultural, but rarely racial discrimination has been a subject of debate,
partly because of the directors’ perceptions that the ‘reality show will be considered successful
only when members of a minority group are present – a scenario they have frequently avoided’
(Caramanica, 2013: 1). Coded within popular discriminations, however, the 15th season of
Celebrity Big Brother clearly revealed some of the contemporary popular representations of
cultural difference, working within the framework of linguistics; the old division between
culture (White) and nature (Black) has now been replaced by the divisions between strong
(White) and weak (Black), Lovers (White) and Sexually Promiscuous (Black), Calm (White)
and Aggressive(Black), Disunited (White) and United (Black). These can be exemplified by
comments, such as:
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Candice is on the dark side becuse(sic) she’s already dark’, ‘Be careful what you say in
the dark, might not be able t see the bitch’,’ (...) Blacks stick together and they are tokens
in the house’, ‘(...) she is aggressive, her black side is coming out’ (Christopher, 2013: 1).
Drawing on these comments, we can conclude that the splitting of good and bad black subjects
is still ongoing, thus further exemplifying what Hall has called:
...multi-cultural drift – an emphasis on the idea that change has taken place , but the older
forms of splitting and denigration remain at work (Hall, 2013: 269).
To summarise, drawing on the writings of both Malik and Hall, (2001) and Hall, (2013), Black
and Asian communities have acquired great visibility in contemporary societies. Their
representations, however, are both ‘vague and arbitrary’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 174), thus
making it difficult to identify the new seemingly natural ideological representations. In this
sense, if Black and Asian people have become visible within the realms of music, fashion and
entertainment, they have remained less visible within the realms of corporate power, thus
leaving ‘marked limits to their representation and participation in the centres of cultural and
economic power’ (Hall, 2013: 269). Therefore, in order to escape the grip of ideological
representations, we need not to be fascinated by representations which seem truthful, but by
the ones which are more ‘diversified, innovative and informative’ (Malik and Hall, 2001: 186).
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