London-based media. publishers, screen and stage writers, advertisers and the rest seem to subscribe to the notion that Britain has become a multi-cultural society. Of course that is true but to what degree? There are many towns and villages in this country that remain as mono-cultural as Britain appeared to be in say the nineteen thirties.
Let me illustrate this by referring to "The New Inn" in the East Yorkshire village where I was born. I stayed there twice recently when visiting my brother Simon and transferring him to hospital.
On the Friday night, after a walk along Leven Canal, I returned to "The New Inn" for a couple of pints of beer and an evening meal. The place was buzzing. I would estimate there were a hundred and fifty people in there - some dining and some just drinking.
It was a great weekend atmosphere. I am sure I observed everybody who was there and do you know what? They were all white English - no doubt mostly Yorkshire-born and bred like me. There wasn't one black or brown face amongst them.
About four years ago, we attended a wedding in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. There were around two hundred guests at the reception and apart from me, they were all white Lincolnshire folk - again not one black or brown face.
You only have to study our country's current demographics to realise that the vast majority of our citizens are still white British with roots that go back generations.
That does not make those people racist or unwelcoming to folk from other ethnic backgrounds. But when they look at their televisions or their newspapers, they must sometimes feel that their reality is being sidelined or unacknowledged by those who prefer a politically correct and modish image of Britain as a rainbow, multi-ethnic nation.
It sounds an awful like rural America. You have to go to larger cities to see diversity.
ReplyDeleteI recently blogged about Lebanon KS and Stanley ND. Both little towns were almostly exclusively white.
DeleteThere are some states and areas like that in the U.S. also. Much of Montana comes to mind. Driving through and stopping at various places, we only saw white faces. The big cities are more diverse here--perhaps it's the same there?
ReplyDeleteYes you are right Margaret. London is a very diverse city with residents from all over the world. Sheffield is far less diverse.
DeleteA group which is made up of dominant demographic types: white, able-bodied, straight, cis-gendered etc etc does not need media/ artistic representation because it is already the dominant group. There is no need for "representation" when you already inhabit the dominant reality.
ReplyDeleteRepresentations of a more diverse group are important to all of the people who inhabit those minorities
I think that a nation's "stories" should reflect the demographic make-up of the nation. In Britain the white working class have always been under-represented in arts and media and yet now on a nightly basis they watch TV commercials that suggest a different world from the one they know.
DeleteI understand. My house and life certainly don't look like "Neighbours"
DeleteI think it depends on where you live. Edmonton is very multi-cultural, Sherwood Park is white. I prefer the multi-cultural, makes life more interesting:)
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly, people from other lands have brought precious contributions to the culture of these islands but proportion is important. They are still very much a minority in the country as a whole.
Deletehttps://worldpopulationreview.com/canadian-cities/edmonton-population
DeleteMuch the same here. In some areas you see different races. Our malls and downtowns show a big mix. Our schools are well mixed since I taught. Globalization has moved people around.
ReplyDeleteIt is much easier to travel and consider moving countries than it was in the fifties and sixties.
DeletePersonally, I find a lot of the advertising on TV now to be offensive in respect of how they portray people and families - do any of them show anything other than multiracial households? Where I have a choice I actively avoid buying any products advertised this way.
ReplyDeleteYou are sticking your head above the parapet there Will! But if the truth were to be known, millions of us feel the same way. We just think it is wisest to keep quiet about the obviously skewed representations of ordinary life.
DeleteIn the late 1970s my then employer sent me and a couple of colleagues on a training course at Bristol uni, where we met a couple of scientists from the company's Cincinnati R&D labs, one of whom was black. Talking to this guy was very interesting, as he had an inside view of the positive discrimination and quota laws sweeping across the US at that time. He was a very smart cookie, however he was sick and tired of always being treated as the token hire to meet a quota and could therefore be ignored/sidelined. He said how refreshing it was to come to the UK and be treated as a person in his own right. He was very much against all of the kind of minority rights culture that we are being forced to endure now, as he said that it dehumanised people like him - they become just boxes that have been ticked. On a different topic, we introduced our US colleagues to the delights of real scrumpy - after US beers this just blew them away!
DeleteSuch food for thought you had just through meeting the scientist from Cincinnati and it sounds as if the trip to Great Britain probably meant a lot to him too - not just in relation to his work.
DeleteI think it depends on the size of the place and the availability of work in the area. I live in a small cul-de-sac of 32 houses in London. I have just counted up six black families and two Asian families, so that is already a quarter not to mention quite a few mainland European families. Those with English roots probably number about 50%.
ReplyDeleteThat is London for you where all of the key decisions about TV and representation are made. I live on a street of 205 houses where there is one British-Pakistani family and one British-Caribbean family.
DeleteThe place in England I know best is Ripon. By no means a big town, it sometimes may seem as if it is mainly inhabited by elderly people; going to the market on Thursdays, you will see mostly silver-haired folk about. Later, once schools and many work places close for the day, the heterogenity becomes more obvious. There are many who originally are from Eastern European countries, and one also sees black and brown faces.
ReplyDeleteStill very different from my hometown, where young men from Syria and North Africa make up a large part of the people you see in the streets, last but not least because many are not (yet) allowed to work and therefore are out and about for good part of the day (and night).
The largest immigrant communities in my part of Germany are Turkish, Italian and Greek. On buses and trains, you will find signs not only in German but often also in Turkish.
A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that 74% of the German population are white Germans but that figure is dropping with each passing year. The known Turkish residents amount to 3.5% of the total population.
DeleteThere was a good article in the Times on this recently, effectively arguing that our determination to be inclusive (in say TV drama and advertising) is actually unrepresentative. Only 14% of the UK population is from ethnic minorities of which only circa 3% is of African / Caribbean origin. It also varies hugely by region - where I live in West Wales the figures are miniscule. I tend to think that some positive discrimination in the way we represent our society is actually a good thing - we need to encourage inclusivity - but overdoing it can be counter-productive (and somewhat clunky) and we should perhaps be less afraid to recognise that large parts of the country are still much as they have always been.
ReplyDeleteI agree that over-doing can be counter-productive, stirring up grievance and in some quarters racism unnecessarily. Nice to see you back in Blogland Mark!
DeleteCould this be because most of the immigrants gravitate to the larger cities where they might find work more easily?
ReplyDeleteYes you are right River but still only 14% of Britain's inhabitants hail from different ethnic groups e.g. black or Asian.
DeleteI once asked an American blogger in Houston about how often she came into contact with and or had black friends. Zero, zilch.
ReplyDeleteWe've had too Indian friends in the past. Now our only exotic friend is Malaysian and he is here in Melbourne now and we will catch up with him for dinner.
But otherwise our society is as you describe. It takes at least one generation if not two for integration.
Re an earlier comment, it is a fine line in advertising. We do need to 'others' in life in advertising, but it can't go too far.
Race always interests me.
Very often people avoid such subjects for fear of being labelled racist themselves. That cannot be healthy.
DeleteI think that immigrants tend to stay where there are other immigrants. It makes learning the ropes of a new country easier if you have others who speak your language who can help you. We offered a house to Afghan refugees, but it was not accepted because there were no other Afghans in our community. Our demographics are just as homogenous as Lincolnshire.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, when I was working in a town north of us which is larger and contains a more ethnically diverse population, I was quite surprised to find that the black population avoided my neck of the woods due to racist incidents. Some of them were quite blatant and shocking to me.
In thinking about things, what I come up with is this. If one sees a commercial or program, and the fact that it is racially diverse is perceived as 'offensive', I would say that one needs to wonder why that would be so...and then pay close attention to the answers that come from such a line of thinking.
Offering a house to Afghan immigrants proves you are not an asshole Debby! However, I don't really understand the point you are making in your last paragraph. Occasional racially diverse ads would be good, healthy and reflective of demographics but when almost EVERY ad contains an element of multicultural virtue signalling you know that something is amiss. As Mark (Bike Shed) suggests this fashion could in fact be counter-productive.
DeleteTruly not trying to be an asshole here, but I guess that I am going to have to speak plainly. People who notice and complain about diverse races in media need to take a very close look at why it bothers them. The product is being advertised. Who appears in the ad is irrelevant.
DeleteYou are expressing an opinion and I disagree with it. I can assure you that I do not need to take a very close look at myself in this regard. After all, this is the first time I have raised this topic which I know bothers a lot of my fair-minded fellow citizens.
DeleteI'm not exactly sure what your point is here. That there is too much diversity in ads which does not reflect reality? And this is wrong, why? Should there be different ads for the areas in which the population is almost 100% white while the ads directed to more urban/mixed areas reflect that reality? People are people. Do you really think that seeing more people of different ethnicities in ads is unsettling and perhaps causing racism? I really don't understand.
ReplyDeleteTo begin with, I wasn't just thinking about ads but focusing on them, in my opinion, the actors who populate ads should more or less represent proportionately the ethnic make up of that society. What we have in Britain is companies virtue signalling to an extent that the impression is given that white Britons represent less than 50% of the total population. That is a very false impression.
DeleteHoo boy. You are courting controversy with this post, aren't you?! LOL!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're correct that many parts of the country -- particularly villages and rural areas -- remain fairly "monocultural" (if that's a word). But as you know, in London and in most other big and even medium-sized cities in the UK, you will see a rainbow of humanity and hear lots of different languages. According to the British government, 82.9 percent of England's population lives in an urban area, so I suspect many people feel the multicultural images they see on television reflect life pretty accurately -- even if they personally aren't hanging out in a very multicultural crowd (i.e. your wedding reception).
Having said that, if businesses are trying to exhibit openness and support for minority communities, which of course is wise because it broadens their customer base, that is necessarily going to lead to some overrepresentation in media -- because virtually every ad is going to include some multicultural element. Which is basically what we see on TV. It's a function of advertising strategy, not a reflection of the population.
Interesting response Steve. While demonstrating support and openness for minority communities, the profit-focused companies are therefore demonstrating degrees of disdain and disrespect towards the majority "host" community.
DeleteI don't see the disdain and disrespect. How does it disrespect white Britons to have people of color in their advertisements? Surely you can see how that is a fundamentally troubling assertion.
DeleteI think it's interesting that people are watching commercials on television through a racial lens. Why?
I stick to my belief that the people who populate TV commercials should more or less reflect the demographics of this country. It's troubling that there are people out there who refuse to recognise the justness of that belief. Yes, that is what is troubling.
DeleteWell, I don't recognize the "justness" of that belief, that's true. White people are not being persecuted by having to see minorities on their televisions, even in higher proportions than they may see when they look out their window. That's a disturbingly nativist, us-versus-them way of watching advertising.
DeleteOn a purely practical level, how would demographically representative ads even work? How would advertisers coordinate their ads to reach a certain level of participants? Is it measured by hour? By day? What should they do if there's only one person in the ad? Would these levels have to vary by community, as Ms. Moon said? It just makes no sense, to be honest.
Commercials are not a documentary about your community or your country. They're just meant to sell you (and your multicultural neighbors) something.
We will just have to beg to differ then. I certainly don't understand your argument in this regard but what I do know is that many "native" people bristle at the advertising bias. This is to do with the companies and the advertising agencies - not the ethnic minorities.
DeleteFYI, here's my source on that 82.9 percent figure -- under item no. 3:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gov.uk/government/publications/trend-deck-2021-urbanisation/trend-deck-2021-urbanisation
We have an interracial, international family so I like that an effort is being made to show more variety on TV and in commercials. What is wrong with seeing different combinations of people? It is nice to see that we have a lot in common.
ReplyDeleteYes it is nice to see that sometimes but in Britain it is now as if every TV commercial seeks to demonstrate diversity and show a picture of our people that is not accurate by any means.
DeleteYou are spending too much time noticing differences instead of noticing how we all want the same things. People that do not look like you can still give you information in a TV commercial.
DeleteThat is your opinion Ellen.
DeleteI think house prices determine where people live. Social class still seems to be in England and future prime ministers still seem to be educated at Eton.
ReplyDeleteCameron and Johnson both went through Eton but May did not because she is a woman.
DeleteI too, have noticed how racially diverse TV ads have become over recent years. I find them unrealistic, for no reason other than it's not a true representation - in reality not every UK family is of mixed race. A foreigner seeing most of these adverts would assume Britain is a country with no purely white families, or those who are purely Asian or Caribbean.
ReplyDeleteYou have captured the essence of my complaint very well Carol.
DeleteFor interest - I believe that the most disadvantaged demographic in the UK is the young white heterosexual male from a poor background. Statistically they will achieve poorer outcomes than any of the so-called minority's like black/Asian etc.
ReplyDeleteThat has been proven to be true.
DeleteI understand what you say about tv adverts not being representative of a particular demographic but ithink they are not tryingto be representative of an England or wales or uk. What they ARE showing is the diversity of our culture and not just ethnically but gender specific , sexuality, disability , ability , etc etc
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion they have gone too far with it all. Many liberal citizens are bristling about the manipulation and that includes people of colour.
DeleteHope this makes sense
ReplyDeleteWhat?
DeleteWhen I pass our nearby Primary School, either at opening time or closing time, I see a majority of dark faces. When my youngest attended another nearby Primary School, he and his friend were the only two in his class with two parents. Times change.
ReplyDeleteYou are right Cro. They do. But folk should not forget that Britain remains very largely an Anglo-Saxon land.
DeleteI live in Hawaii and the TV commercials very much represent our mixed ethnic make up. Intermarriage is usual so our kids are even more mixed race. Sometimes I am at a wedding or funeral and suddenly realize that I am the only white person there but it feels Hawaii normal and comfortable in our country town.
ReplyDelete