Why Aren't We Talking About Race Anymore?

I teach a class on critical media theory to students at a private school and we have been focusing on race and discrimination for the past few weeks. I was looking for a quiz they could take on-line that would challenge their assumptions about stereotypes and/or highlight the subtle ways that discrimination can take place. These students are relatively liberal and do not see themselves as being prejudiced and I wanted something that would help them understand the ways they see the world, and how their discrimination may be unnoticeable to them because they live in such a privileged and secluded world.

I was surprised that this type of quiz is much harder to come by than I had initially assumed. I had thought that many quizzes would have been developed and waiting on the amazing internet to help instructors like me. I was wrong. It turned out that I had to use Google.uk to find a quiz that I thought would be helpful. I found two quizzes; one was British, the other Australian. The scarcity of quizzes led me to thinking and then to some research.

From my research, it seems to me that the conversations about race and ethnicity are much more out in the open in the UK and Australia, than they are here. This is not to say that there is not discrimination and prejudice in these other countries, just that they seem to be talking about it a lot more. This got me thinking to the way the television shows are cast. I watch a lot of BBCAmerica and the BBC, in particular, is very careful about the way they cast their shows using a more diverse cast that represents a wide variety of ethnicities. Now, Americans might argue that Keeping Up Appearances, and Time Goes By, two staples of BBC comedies shown on PBS, are not at all diverse. But those are not modern shows. I am thinking of Torchwood, Doctor Who, and Hotel Babylon. These are programs where the cast is diverse and in a really natural way.

The diversity seen on BBC programs makes me think about how segregated our casts have become. There is always a spectrum, and I am not certain why we are swinging in this way. Are we confident that as a country we have overcome racism and discrimination and refuse to see it when it exists, or are we just tired of the battles and are hoping they will go away and things can go back to the way they were? You know, when everything was perfect and money was flowing from the taps and children were always polite, those halcyon days of yesteryear that we all hearken back to as we get older.