Race, crime and culture

Reporting on race and crime

• 19th and early 20th viewed race as a biological determinate with clear and fixed differences between racial groups

  • Goldberg (1993, p.3) ‘one of the central conceptual inventions of modernity’

• Notions of racial hierarchies marginalised by the mid-twentieth century

  • Broad acceptance of the sociology of race

• Race like crime is a social construct

  • Race does not exist

1. Race is constructed in particular spatial and temporal contexts

2. Racialised debates in local contexts draw upon, and contribute to, historical discourses of race

3. Racialised discourses intersect with other constructs like gender, youth and deviance (Malik, 2002)

“When we examine the process of racialisation we find that our beliefs about races and race relations have more to do with the attitudes, actions,
motivations and interests of powerful groups in society; and less to do with
the characteristics, attitudes and actions of those who are defined as
belonging to ‘inferior’ races” (Small, 1994 p.34)

• Racialised narratives of deviance are a window into social relationships

• Race and racism must be understood in relevant cultural contexts

• ‘Race’ and ‘crime’ are therefore inherently mediated concepts

• Race has been Newsworthy for over 250 years

  • A vast store of cultural knowledge, both racist and anti-racist

• During the 18th century the press was key in facilitating debates around race and slavery

  • Frequent advertisements for slave auctions and rewards for the capture of run away slaves

  • Justifications for the trade based on the inability of the ‘Black Man’ to look after himself (Law, 2001)

  • Africans as dehumanised ‘others’

• By the 19th Century discourses of race were increasingly linked to the ideology of empire

  • Racism was a feature of all cultural forms

  • Used to reinforce social hierarchies

• Racism centred on notions of Englishness

  • Enforcement of white [English] hegemony

  • Non-English as folk devil

• The Irish were frequently characterised as brutish morons ‘between the gorilla and the negro’ who talked ‘a sort of gibberish’ (Law, 2001 p. 13)

• Chinese immigration during the 1980s and 1890s generated very hostile press coverage with immigrant communities linked to both crime and sexual impropriety

  • Persistent references to the ‘yellow peril’

• Jewish communities were also subjected to sustained attacks, particularly from the left-wing press

  • Persistent references to the ‘alien flood’

  
  

• Racial stereotyping was clearly evident in UK press reporting during the 1960s,1970s and 1980s

  • Overt racism is on the decline in mainstream media

  • Racialisation of crime and deviance remains

• Street crime, anti-social behaviour, narcotics and violence are recurrent features of media representations of BAME communities

  • The ‘black crime problem’

• Policing the Crisis (Hall et al., 1979)

• Racialisation of street crime

  • ‘Black mugging’ moral panic

• Press reporting of ‘mugging’ emerged in 1972 and framed the offence as an alien import

  • Connections to USA

  • Black Power

  • Civil rights movement

  • Urban unrest

• Ideal victims and ideal offenders followed Christie’s archetypes

• Chibnall (1977)

  • The coded racialised discourses of street crime

  • Locations, language and cultural markers

• Construction of an ‘Irresponsible black social world’ (Law, 2001 p11)

  
  

• Such narratives are disproportionate (Malik, 2002)

  • Relative absence of BAEM groups from ‘non-crime’ news

  • Absence of substantive discussion of BAEM issues

• Such narratives evidence racialization of social issues (Williams, 2001)

• Such narratives suggest a normalisation of racism

  • Understandable response to the ‘challenge’ of ethnic minority culture which is constructed to be ‘at odds’ with British values

Problematising of British Asian Communities

• Traditionally Asian communities constructed as ‘model’ migrant populations

• Clear shift in narrative post 2001

  • Emergence of the ‘angry Asian youth’ stereotype

• Narratives of cultural dysfunction and alienation

  • Muslim communities as holding extra-national loyalties

  • ‘Cultural scepticism and self-imposed segregation of Muslim migrants’ (Modood & Ahmad, 2007 p188)

  • A ‘problem community’

Key points

• Longstanding recognition of the ‘newsworthiness’ of race

• Historic reporting mirrored and reinforced existing racial stereotypes and assumptions

• Overt racist reporting is evident in the press but gradually decreases as the 20th century progresses

• However ‘racialised’ narratives that connect minority groups to crime and deviance remain a feature of news discourse

Race and crime in popular culture

• ‘Black on Black’ violence focus on subcultural explanations

  • Constructed as distinct from mainstream cultural problems

  • Constructions centred on family breakdown, welfare dependency, immorality

• Impact is reducing young black male to a stereotype

  • Also true of white male youth but a range of other tropes are available

• Disproportionate representations of black crime and black ‘dangerousness’

• Clearly evidenced in US ‘Ghetto Cinema’

  • Genre depiction of an endless cycle of African American violence (Covington, 2010)

  
  

Incompetent Black Mother

• Black single motherhood linked to drugs, promiscuity and neglect

Absent Black Farther

• Absent as a result of family desertion, death or incarceration

  • Such absence is constructed as causal in the cycle of black on black violence

  • Black masculinity constructed as criminogenic

Lawless Black Youth

• Uncontrolled by parents and uncontrollable by the wider disorganised community

  • Complete absence of adult authority and control

  • Dominance of criminal culture and criminal control

• Gang as surrogate family

  • Black youth dependent upon criminal subculture for status

  • Black adults dependent for subsistence

• Little space to explore non-criminal ghetto identities

• Problematic because representations are disproportionate

  • In 2019 FBI estimates 6,318 male African American perpetrators of homicide

  • In 2019 US Census places the male AA population at 21,000,000

  • So 20,993,682 African American males not involved in homicide (FBI, 2019)

• Disproportionate focus marginalises discussion of mainstream black identity

• Reinforces white privileged narratives surrounding crime (Covington, 2010)

Young Thug

• Jeffery Lamar Williams [Young Thug]

  • 2.5 million albums

  • Charged in 2022

• "I never killed anybody but I got something to do with that body… I told them to shoot a hundred rounds.“ (Young Thug, 2018)

• 500 criminal cases around the US over the past 20
  years

  • Increasing seen in recent years

• Stock lyrics with no one should reasonably associate with reality

• “ I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”

• Reference and perpetuate existing stereotypes about the criminality of young black men (Nielson and Denis, 2019)

Key points

• Violence by black and white youth is often represented differently in popular culture

• Both white and black youth crime is problematised but how the problems are constructed differs dependent upon racialised stereotypes

• Hollywood in particular has employed racialised narratives that serve to ‘other’ African American cultures and communities