The urgent need to tackle hidden
racism and unconscious bias
Racism is everywhere, in everything we say and think and teach, ingrained at a subconscious level from a young age and left to influence our reactions as we get older. The subliminal nature of this racism can make it difficult to pinpoint, which in turn makes correcting this into a more open, accepting mindset even harder. Think about your primary school art lessons, learning to draw stick figures and colour them in – how many times would you, when asked for “skin colour”, would pick up the peach-coloured pencil, or leave the paper white?
Now, this may have changed in more recent years, especially in urban schools where diversity is, let’s face it, an actual thing compared to the white crowds of the rural south-east. However, evidence of racial bias can be seen at a deeper level, one explicitly linked to society’s moral coding. Think of the words “good” and “evil”. For years in literature and visual arts, the concept of “evil” had been portrayed using dark colours, creating a subconscious reaction that light equals good and dark equals bad. If you ask someone to draw a monster, how likely is it that they will draw something as far removed from a human figure as possible, then colour it in with black? This bias can be seen in highly consumed media, especially in the western world. Think of “the Dark Side” in Star Wars, used to show the corruption of the seemingly perfect, inherently good “Light Side” as well as providing the driving force behind a destructive Empire. Harry Potter’s infamous villain Voldemort is referred to first as “The Dark Lord”, despite being essentially a white supremacist. The concepts of “white magic” as a healing force and “black magic” as a violent, destructive, and untrustworthy power to be shunned is key to many modernised pagan practises, as well as forming the foundation for many fantasy concepts.
These colour connotations are used as a shorthand in visual arts, both revealing and reinforcing subconscious racial bias. When this connotation is reversed, the viewer is unsettled and shocked. For example, in the film adaptation of The Hunger Games, the “Peacekeepers” – a task force decimated to maintaining law, usually through violence, and armed with automatic weapons to discourage social disobedience (sound familiar?) – wear white suits and dark visors. This is a visually striking image, initially only due to the harp contrast between the Peacekeepers and the impoverished surroundings, but at a deeper level, the viewer’s colour connotations have been reversed in order to increase shock factor and highlight the differences between Suzanne Collins’ dystopia and our own world. If a brutal police force is an indication of a violent and oppressive dystopia, one has to wonder about the state of our current world affairs. Additionally, these colour connotations will have the greatest influence over western audiences as the image relies on western beliefs and reinforces them. This article suggests the impact of colour connotations across other cultures – for example, many Asian colours use white as a symbol of mourning and death; in the west, white is seen as an almost undoubted symbol of purity and goodness, where white is the dominant race.
Another, less overt use of colour connotation can be seen in the colours of film settings. In western film making, a yellow tinge is often added to scenes set in more eastern, urban areas in order to indicate a primitive state of living, again playing the viewer’s racist ideas of an inherently impoverished east (an in-depth analysis can be found in this brilliant article.)
Early film making was used as tool to explicitly reinforce racist ideas, especially in America. The 1915 silent film Birth of a Nation is an overtly racist piece using blackface and sickening caricatures to emphasise the racial divide. Its focus on a white woman being ‘hunted down’ by an animalistic man in blackface is a disgusting piece of cinema that became the longest and most-profitable film then produced, and hailed as the landmark creation that cemented film as a respected medium. It is also seen as one of the influences reviving the Ku Klux Klan after the film portrayed the cult as the glorified saviours of post-Civil War America. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, was delighted by the film and claimed “It’s like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true” – actively supporting the racism in the film and the concept that black people are naturally violent against whites. More analysis of the impact of Birth of a Nation can be found in this article.
Entertainment media is designed to use our subconscious as a shorthand to make the piece more time-effective and allow the viewer to form judgements and opinions faster. However, the more this shorthand is used, the more those negative, racist connotations are reinforced. It is this subconscious basis that has made reversing the racism taught, consciously or not, to us from so early on in life an incredibly difficult task, especially when those ideas are reinforced in the media around us. When this thought pattern is challenged, the instinct is to defend it or to deny it – however, the subconscious racial bias is not the same as active racist thinking and action. The bias affects everyone, taught to people of colour and white people at the same time, encouraging white privilege at a subliminal level.
Reversing these thought patterns is also hindered by the basic human need for validation, and the desire to surround yourself with like-minded people. In any situation, with any set of beliefs and values, this creates an isolated environment where one set of ideals is cemented as fact and any outside opinion becomes easily disregarded as wrong. This encourages a judgemental, fixed mentality, alienating other influences entirely and attacking those that challenge the accepted belief. The racism ingrained into our subconscious is a result of decades of black and coloured oppression that has gone accepted and ignored, because acknowledging it challenges the white privilege built into modern society. Noticing it in the very basis of our language connotations and visual media is a key step to undoing it, and recognising the existence and harmfulness of white privilege. Increasing the representation, diversity, and own-voices able to speak freely about experiences, is another way to undo this isolated view as they highlight the true extent and impact of this subconscious racism inexperienced by white people.
By Eva Jeffery, Year 13
Now, this may have changed in more recent years, especially in urban schools where diversity is, let’s face it, an actual thing compared to the white crowds of the rural south-east. However, evidence of racial bias can be seen at a deeper level, one explicitly linked to society’s moral coding. Think of the words “good” and “evil”. For years in literature and visual arts, the concept of “evil” had been portrayed using dark colours, creating a subconscious reaction that light equals good and dark equals bad. If you ask someone to draw a monster, how likely is it that they will draw something as far removed from a human figure as possible, then colour it in with black? This bias can be seen in highly consumed media, especially in the western world. Think of “the Dark Side” in Star Wars, used to show the corruption of the seemingly perfect, inherently good “Light Side” as well as providing the driving force behind a destructive Empire. Harry Potter’s infamous villain Voldemort is referred to first as “The Dark Lord”, despite being essentially a white supremacist. The concepts of “white magic” as a healing force and “black magic” as a violent, destructive, and untrustworthy power to be shunned is key to many modernised pagan practises, as well as forming the foundation for many fantasy concepts.
These colour connotations are used as a shorthand in visual arts, both revealing and reinforcing subconscious racial bias. When this connotation is reversed, the viewer is unsettled and shocked. For example, in the film adaptation of The Hunger Games, the “Peacekeepers” – a task force decimated to maintaining law, usually through violence, and armed with automatic weapons to discourage social disobedience (sound familiar?) – wear white suits and dark visors. This is a visually striking image, initially only due to the harp contrast between the Peacekeepers and the impoverished surroundings, but at a deeper level, the viewer’s colour connotations have been reversed in order to increase shock factor and highlight the differences between Suzanne Collins’ dystopia and our own world. If a brutal police force is an indication of a violent and oppressive dystopia, one has to wonder about the state of our current world affairs. Additionally, these colour connotations will have the greatest influence over western audiences as the image relies on western beliefs and reinforces them. This article suggests the impact of colour connotations across other cultures – for example, many Asian colours use white as a symbol of mourning and death; in the west, white is seen as an almost undoubted symbol of purity and goodness, where white is the dominant race.
Another, less overt use of colour connotation can be seen in the colours of film settings. In western film making, a yellow tinge is often added to scenes set in more eastern, urban areas in order to indicate a primitive state of living, again playing the viewer’s racist ideas of an inherently impoverished east (an in-depth analysis can be found in this brilliant article.)
Early film making was used as tool to explicitly reinforce racist ideas, especially in America. The 1915 silent film Birth of a Nation is an overtly racist piece using blackface and sickening caricatures to emphasise the racial divide. Its focus on a white woman being ‘hunted down’ by an animalistic man in blackface is a disgusting piece of cinema that became the longest and most-profitable film then produced, and hailed as the landmark creation that cemented film as a respected medium. It is also seen as one of the influences reviving the Ku Klux Klan after the film portrayed the cult as the glorified saviours of post-Civil War America. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, was delighted by the film and claimed “It’s like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true” – actively supporting the racism in the film and the concept that black people are naturally violent against whites. More analysis of the impact of Birth of a Nation can be found in this article.
Entertainment media is designed to use our subconscious as a shorthand to make the piece more time-effective and allow the viewer to form judgements and opinions faster. However, the more this shorthand is used, the more those negative, racist connotations are reinforced. It is this subconscious basis that has made reversing the racism taught, consciously or not, to us from so early on in life an incredibly difficult task, especially when those ideas are reinforced in the media around us. When this thought pattern is challenged, the instinct is to defend it or to deny it – however, the subconscious racial bias is not the same as active racist thinking and action. The bias affects everyone, taught to people of colour and white people at the same time, encouraging white privilege at a subliminal level.
Reversing these thought patterns is also hindered by the basic human need for validation, and the desire to surround yourself with like-minded people. In any situation, with any set of beliefs and values, this creates an isolated environment where one set of ideals is cemented as fact and any outside opinion becomes easily disregarded as wrong. This encourages a judgemental, fixed mentality, alienating other influences entirely and attacking those that challenge the accepted belief. The racism ingrained into our subconscious is a result of decades of black and coloured oppression that has gone accepted and ignored, because acknowledging it challenges the white privilege built into modern society. Noticing it in the very basis of our language connotations and visual media is a key step to undoing it, and recognising the existence and harmfulness of white privilege. Increasing the representation, diversity, and own-voices able to speak freely about experiences, is another way to undo this isolated view as they highlight the true extent and impact of this subconscious racism inexperienced by white people.
By Eva Jeffery, Year 13