Another response to Victoria Coren

Our good friends over at We Left Marks have written this:

Last week the Washington Post published the results of a phone survey of 1900 adults, on a range of issues, with individuals identified by gender and race. This weekend’s Observer published a follow-up article by Victoria Coren giving her interpretation of these findings. The general thrust was:

1. According to this poll’s results, American black women tend to have higher self-esteem are more career-focussed, romantically independent, less stressed and more religious than white women.


2. It must be because there are so few black models featured in magazines that black women “have managed to not get screwed up”.


3. Black women should continue to be disconnected from and under-represented in the evil media, for their own good.

While I have a lot of respect and time for Victoria Coren, and I’m sure this was written with the best intentions and possibly with a tongue firmly in cheek, I feel she has deeply misunderstood, reduced and misrepresented a multitude of black women’s voices. Aside from the problem of a white woman telling black women how lucky they are to be excluded from mainstream society, the leap of logic exhibited in the piece is frankly a bit dodgy.

The survey methodology

“Black women…hold all the secrets to a happy and ambitious life”

Coren has single-handedly decided that the lack of BME (black and minority ethnic) models in the mainstream media is the sole cause for black women tending to have greater self-esteem.

For a start, the respondents weren’t even asked why they felt good or bad about themselves. As the research is clearly not qualitative, that’s understandable. However to use the absence of further information to ascribe speculation to the results is a little reductive.

I’m no sociologist, but presumably any given individual’s self-esteem arises from a combination of various factors such as ethnicity and culture, family, romantic relationships, school experience, education, role models and others. There’s no one simple answer.

For the full post, please continuing reading at We Left Marks.

Less is Not More When It Comes to Black Women and the Media

In today’s Observer newspaper Victoria Coren kindly lets it be known that following from her readings of an article headlined ‘Black women ‘more confident in their bodies’ that, as a result, we are ‘300 miles further down the road of liberation than [our] paler sisters’. It is admirable that she is clearly such a fan of the strength and determination exhibited by ‘darker sisters’, however her analysis of the figures in the article above demonstrate that it is probably best for black women themselves to tell the world about their issues around self esteem. White middle class women, whose analysis of purely statistical data fail to recognize the complexity of our experiences, are not best placed to give a nuanced analysis.

In her piece Coren sites the fact that ‘in the survey, 67% of "overweight" black women said they had high self-esteem, compared with only 41% of "average-sized or thin" white women’. This is chalked up as evidence of the fact that black women need not ‘complain’, as we have been doing for so ‘long’, about the near lack of representation of us in the beauty industry. Despite bemoaning the fact that not enough black female figures are used in the ‘women’s market’, she tells us that ‘the bigotry in fashion, cosmetics, advertising, TV and Hollywood hasn’t damaged black women, it’s saved them!’ That is truly a bold statement to make, especially by someone who has no real experience of what she is writing about.

Any black person will tell you that the skin lightening industry is alive and kicking both here and abroad. Walk into any cosmetics retailer specializing in products for black people and you will find a wealth of creams declaring they will make you the lighter, brighter you, you have always wanted to be. And sadly, for far too many black people, that statement is in no way ironic. In India alone, the skin whitening market is growing at a rate of 18% a year. The nation’s leading research organization, AC Nielsen, believes that this figure will rise to 25%, making the market worth approximately £272 million. Globally the market is set to reach an estimated £6.3 billion by 2015. Yet, for Coren, black women are ‘mad to keep campaigning for greater visibility in Vogue or light entertainment, now it's clear that absence has made a lovely free space for them to form their own healthy self-image.’ Wishing that you are whiter and being willing to risk your health for the sake of doing so is not my example of a ‘healthy self-image’. Declaring to the world that it is a petty and ridiculous desire of black women to link our lack of representation in the media to these deeply harbored and negative self-images is, ever so slightly, annoying. It’s like someone adamantly insisting you’re absolutely fine when you know you’re not.

Coren goes on to argue that the fact that 68% of black women say it is ‘”very important’ to have a successful career’ as opposed to 45% of white women is testament to our ultimate well being. Not a second thought is given to the fact that this figure might be related to class. Could it possibly reflect our understanding that as women from, predominantly, working class backgrounds we recognize that financial independence is of paramount importance? The precedent being set by many of our mothers who continued to work as a necessity when their white counterparts could afford to stay at home. Therefore, could we just possibly take it, not as a token of our adamantine ability to emerge unscathed by prevailing beauty norms? Is it more a marker of how we have been triply disenfranchised through race, class and gender, recognize this and are resolute in doing something about it?

Neither does Coren understand the fact that though 62% of black women consider it ‘very important’ to have ‘free time to pursue other interests – compared with …55% of white women’, this does not necessarily mean that we are unbound from assiduously trying to reach the very distant ideals of white beauty shoved down our throats on an hourly basis. Ask any black woman with straightened hair, that’s many, Victoria, if you didn’t know, and you will see that in fact, we are OBSESSED with Western notions of beauty. The truth is that many of us, in order to retain the mystique of long, straight white hair, will forgo activities we love, like swimming, for the sake of maintaining a beauty myth that insists on perceiving our natural hair, out for all to see, as a sign of rebellion or attitude, rather than just another hair style.

As a white woman, Coren in what is well intentioned, wants to reassure us, in the way often, only white people can do, that black women really do need to stop complaining, things aren’t as bad as we think they are. Well, my answer Victoria is that I think we’re the better judges of that. We need more black women in the media affirming the fact that black is beautiful and intelligent and all other positive adjectives you can think of that we are never readily attributed to us.

by Lola Okolosie

Black women need more good, not less, media representation

Hi Victoria Coren,

I think I might be one of the black women you are talking about in your article.

I’m a black British Caribbean woman. I’m not overweight, but I do feel confident in my body. However, this is not because women of my ethnicity are seldom represented in magazines, media, public life. I think having some sort of (broad and diverse) representation would help people to make sense of me and stop my having to make all sorts of declarations, and overtures to show and prove things about myself, because it’s so tiring and I don’t particularly want to have to disavow elements of my culture to do that. I wish there was a black girl in the media who liked reggae music and hip hop AND also went to uni and had a professional career afterwards and had white friends. I think the media plays a role in explaining that is possible, but instead I have the responsibility of showing that. Therefore, the media is doing a disservice to us. It creates a void of representation that can be misappropriated and is therefore disempowering. A very recent Guardian piece showed ‘models breaking the mould’. One black woman was featured, for her skin colour. That was it, for her skin colour. The white models could be older, plus size, and feminist. The black model could be black. I would like to see black models who are also older, feminist and plus size. I would like us to be mainstreamed in all of our glory and not constantly marginalised.

I do feel quite confident in my body, but this is despite the lack of discourse that highlights me as being attractive. I feel that lack acutely, actually. There is harm done to black women because of the conspicuous lack of acknowledgement that we are attractive beings. I was born in the 80s, but as a child I felt just as those children did in the 1950s experiments that showed black children of 3 and 4 despising black dolls and complimenting white ones. At aged six I was wishing for other things, too, to look like the girls on the cover of Sugar magazine, to be called Shelley, to have hair that blew in even light wind.

After reading your article Victoria, I felt as though you were pushing the message that white women are the victims and that black women somehow had it good BECAUSE we are marginalised. I find that hard to swallow.

That is always going to be a difficult, and patronising, argument to make. If we must look at things with sanguine specs on, I would say that instead, those particular stats suggest maybe that black women are trying to adjust themselves in incredibly hostile environments and a proportion of them appear, at least on the surface, to be doing this quite well. However, just a cursory look at the country’s mental health service will show you that black women have it so hard that some of us just can’t handle it.

I think this is where the interesting link with some of the other stats you mentioned comes into it. 68% of black women think it is ‘very important’ to have a successful career. I’m not so sure this is very much to do with lack of black models in magazines. I think this is probably a lot to do with the fact that when times get hard – like now - we often find ourselves among the first to be made redundant. Last year, my friend told me how her team of 20, with 7 black women including herself, announced redundancies and 5 black women and 1 white man had to go. My friend, and the PA to the director were the only two black women who stayed. Job instability for black women is a real concern. For example, in local government the majority of fixed term contract workers, as opposed to permanent employees, are ethnic minorities or younger women. According to the Scottish national census in 2001, the employment gap between ethnic minority women and white women was 21%, despite the fact that younger ethnic minority women are more likely to have first degrees. For example, Indian women under 34 were twice as likely as their white counterparts to have a first degree. Black women can’t afford to treat their careers, when they have them, as anything less than ‘very important’.

55% thought it important to have time to pursue other interests…. I’d like to know what these interests are. I’m not sure these are all lunching ladies, or those taking up hobbies as serious leisurely pursuits. ‘Other interests’ could very likely be caring for the elderly, physically and emotionally supporting friends and family who have little recourse to public funds, engaging in long hours of homework to supplement the deficient education their children receive in institutionally racist schools, joining community organisations like Saturday Schools and support groups, or simply getting up to speed on the law so that they can ‘work effectively’ with the police when they pick up their sons. Most of the black women I know spend their time helping others, frankly. As oppressed minorities we need to. I know that this doesn’t make as pretty an article, but I’m concerned at your superficial reading of those stats. I don’t think your article represents black women very well, in your article it sounds like black women are having it good, and that rings alarm bells for me.

You also said 52% of white women think it's "very important" to be in a romantic relationship, compared with only 44% of black women and somehow that speaks to our ‘liberation’ – what from patriarchy? I really don’t think so. Not rating it as ‘very’ important, does not mean that it is not important at all! Black women, like most human beings, want love and affection and support and all of those things that are possible in relationships (and it would be helpful if we had some healthy black relationships represented in the media, too). While I would fiercely argue against black women ‘needing’ romantic relationships, as I would all women, it’s classic white mainstream feminism solipsism to assume that familial relationships are necessarily bad. The family for black women does not always mean oppression, and restriction. It can also mean supporting networks that are often dearly needed. Also, one could argue that a consuming concern with romance is a luxury!

I don’t think your article is fair to black women. I don’t think your article is fair to white women either, but I’ll let them take up that argument with you elsewhere.

Racism and the Media

Proud and Prejudiced- Channel 4

If you’re a TV addict like me you might have noticed that there has been a wealth of programmes tackling racism in the past few weeks, particularly focusing on the growing racial tensions in Luton.

My Hometown Fanatics, BBC Three, and Proud and Prejudiced, Channel 4, both focused on the Luton-based extremist groups the EDL and Muslims Against Crusaders. Another Channel 4 show about racism and multiculturalism is Make Bradford British; a Big Brother-esque two-part series that throws a mixed group of people from Bradford who failed a British citizen test into a house together to see if they can figure out “what it means to be British”. Yep, that age old question. Considering that we’ve been debating that for a while now it seems that they’ve been set up to fail really.

Now I have absolutely no idea why TV executives have decided that now is the time to discuss racism. Maybe they only just realised it actually existed. Maybe someone, a friend, acquaintance or even a passerby on the street, took them aside and whispered into their ear: “Oi you know that racism that you read about once. It still happens, you should do a programme about it.” Who knows how it happens, I suppose we can only imagine.

What I do know is that as a black woman who craves any type of representation in the media you would think I’d be happy that to have a debate about racism in Britain today on a nationwide stage. I would love that but I don’t believe that is the main aim of any of these programmes and that is why I was so desperately disappointed with all of them.

Make Bradford British sets out from the start deciding that multiculturalism has failed. I think that’s bollocks but everyone is entitled to their opinions not matter how much they frighteningly mimic David Cameron and his ridiculous world view. The housemates are all from a variety of backgrounds and are given the overwhelming task of deciding what it means to be British. Many of the housemates have their own prejudices and the programme is full of triggering and offensive language.

My main problem with the first episode is the way one of the Muslim housemates was set up to be the ‘problem’ of the house. Rashid was played out as the episode’s villain because he would not compromise missing out on praying at the Mosque to join the group on certain outings. Although he did finally give in and prayed while going out with the group, leading one white woman to realise that his faith and hers were extremely similar, I do not think the public will perceive him well. Rashid was portrayed in a negative light for the majority of the episode confirming many British people’s attitudes towards Muslims. I do not believe the one revelation about his character and faith at the end of the episode makes up for it. There is still another episode due to air Thursday 8 March, which could take a more positive turn but I do not believe it will because the makers of these shows are only interested in drama and shock value which leads me to the other two shows.

My Hometown Fanatics featured BBC Three presenter Stacey Dooley talking to the EDL and extremist Muslim groups with the aim of finding out why extremist groups are popping up in Luton. As you’ll probably be able to guess Dooley comes to no clear conclusion and, due to her truly terrible journalism skills, probably makes things worse.

Instead of taking a clear, rational look at what both groups had to say and using their own contradictory and nonsensical words to trip them up with Dooley decides to argue with every person she sees even going so far to say that it’s a “shame” that some Muslim women protesting had been rude to her. A “shame” is it. That a few women have in your eyes brought down all Muslim women because of what ‘they’ said. That’s a whole other blog post that I will tackle later because this one is already far too long. All the viewer learns from this programme is extreme, radicalised views that are great for getting annoyed at but do not actually tackle the real problem in Britain.

Proud and Prejudiced takes a slightly more removed view but still has the same result. The opposing groups both had chances to show themselves and show themselves up, which they did. The EDL leader, Stephen Lennon, repeatedly claimed that the EDL were not a racist group yet when Lennon brought out an Asian EDL member to speak at a rally the crowd turned, spat out racist remarks and several fights broke out. In turn Muslims Against Crusaders had their remarks countered by another member of the Muslim community who says the leader, Sayful Islam, did not know as much about the scriptures as he claimed.

In the end all three programmes are made for entertainment rather than to actually inform viewers. Producers will focus on drama and extreme views, which people can talk about in the office the next day, rather than a frank discussion on race.

What I would like to see is an hour dedicated to a roomful of people, a moderator and the free flow of ideas, experiences and values. Not to say that this would bring about the end of racism as we know it, but wouldn’t that be lovely, but it would at least inform the nation about what’s really going on in the lives of black people in Britain today. A safe space to take part in an honest discussion is the stepping stone to first understanding what racism is and then to breaking it down. But, I guess that would be boring to watch, or would it.

By Stephanie Phillips