{"id":35993,"date":"2014-03-06T04:44:28","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T04:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=35993"},"modified":"2014-03-06T04:44:28","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T04:44:28","slug":"the-racial-pecking-order-in-british-theatre-and-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=35993","title":{"rendered":"The Racial Pecking Order in British Theatre and TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Racial Pecking Order in British Theatre and TV<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Media Diversified: Tackling the lack of diversity in UK media and the ubiquity of whiteness<\/a>
\n2014-02-28<\/p>\n

Daniel York<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading a book recently by the American sociologist David T. Wellman with the frankly terrifying title Portraits Of White Racism<\/a>. <\/i>I say terrifying because it conjures all kinds of images of Aryan skinhead fascists with big boots and arm-bands. I find myself hiding the lurid green cover of the book so people won\u2019t see it when I\u2019m reading it on the tube.<\/p>\n

In fact the book isn\u2019t about skinhead fascists at all. Rather its premise is to refute the popular notion that all \u201cracism\u201d is born of ignorant prejudice. Instead Wellman\u2019s subject is<\/p>\n

\u201cculturally sanctioned strategies for defending social advantage based on race<\/i>\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course the very word \u201cracism\u201d is now so incendiary it actually seems to have become worse to call someone a racist than actually be <\/i>one. But leaving aside Wellman\u2019s terminology there is something clearly and fundamentally unequal in UK society and particularly in the industry I work in, that of screen and stage, something that black British actor and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah<\/a> recently referred to as \u201cstructural inequality\u201d .<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The book (written in the 1970\u2019s) features quotes\u00a0 along the lines of<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not opposed to mixed busing ;<\/em> I\u2019m opposed to the time it takes\u201d <\/i>and \u201cI can understand militancy but it\u2019s self-defeating\u201d. <\/i>My industry is full of these kind of rationalisations:-<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, there should be more opportunities for actors\/writers of colour.<\/em> But it won\u2019t happen overnight<\/i>\u201d (Why ever not?)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere should be more roles for actors of colour. But we need the writers from those communities to write roles for minority ethnic actors\u201d<\/em> (Well, a) You could commission some and b) Do we have to be from a separate and foreign \u201ccommunity\u201d?)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely need to put more training initiatives in place\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(In other word we\u2019re going to continue side-lining you now whilst we tick our boxes running workshops for people with no experience thereby diminishing your experience and expertise)…<\/p>\n

…Ethnic roles are often very clichedly \u201cethnic\u201d and badly written. They are also cast with a completely different criteria by people who are literally picking exotic flowers for their garden. The number of times I\u2019ve been told \u201cthey didn\u2019t think you looked Chinese enough\u201d (I\u2019m of mixed descent) is simply too often to be arbitrary. My agent was once told \u201cwe specifically do NOT want any Eurasians\u201d<\/em>. On the other side of the coin, I\u2019ve seen casting breakdowns calling for African-Caribbean actors requesting they not be \u201ctoo dark\u201d. In addition we\u2019re often expected to be de facto cultural \u201cexperts\u201d, to speak a range of languages and have all manner of physical \u201cskills\u201d at our disposal…<\/p>\n

Read he entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Racial Pecking Order in British Theatre and TV Media Diversified: Tackling the lack of diversity in UK media and the ubiquity of whiteness 2014-02-28 Daniel York I\u2019ve been reading a book recently by the American sociologist David T. Wellman with the frankly terrifying title Portraits Of White Racism. I say terrifying because it conjures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,16,1196,8,10],"tags":[17057,16878,16877],"class_list":["post-35993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-asia","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-daniel-york","tag-media-diversified","tag-media-diversified-tackling-the-lack-of-diversity-in-uk-media-and-the-ubiquity-of-whiteness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}