Ebrahim Harvey LEFTFIELD
While some of its research and recommendations are useful, the report on the investigation into racism in the media, released last week by the Human Rights Commission, is in its theoretical, methodological and analytical approach badly flawed. However, the recommendation for legislation to govern the media will be a veritable legal, moral, psychological and journalistic minefield, especially in monitoring “subliminal racism”. The failure to evaluate the evidence of both the complainants and the editors who responded to allegations of racism and to consult them before finalising the report are some of the obvious procedural flaws, which, however, pale in comparison with the substantive flaws in the report. The failure to concretely identify, aside from alleged racial or racist stereotyping, other forms of racism in the media was another. It appears that the commission had problems in clearly and concretely identifying racism in the media but despite that characterised it as racist. The commission has failed to provide a clear and comprehensive definition of racism which satisfactorily integrates the key dimensions of race and class. Instead it relies on a vague United Nations definition and ignores the vast literature on the matter. In its own words: “A proper analysis of the definition, however, is necessary in order to understand the full meaning of it.” The reason such a definition of racism is so important is that without it we cannot clearly identify its varied forms and develop strategies to combat it. The report neatly avoids the radical perspectives on racism from several respected scholars. It instead settles for a definition which does not call into question the class and capitalist power relations which symbiotically exist alongside racism in this country because it would unmask the fact that the ruling party, having made its peace with capitalism, has a reformist approach to the question of racism. The revolutionary standpoint is that racism will never be eradicated within the capitalist system as its roots in this country are deeply struck within it. However, this does not mean that we must not resolutely fight it but that it will not be completely defeated on that basis. The report states that a black British social scientist “holds against Marxists that racism serves class interests”. This is a deliberate distortion of the Marxist position on racism. Anyone familiar with colonialism and imperialism will know that there is a systemic and largely congenital connection between racism and capitalism and, for that and other reasons, Marxists would argue that in so far as racism is a manifestation of largely, but not only, capitalist power relations, it does, in the final analysis, mainly serve class interests. We don’t have to look further than our own country to see how inseparably racism and capitalism have developed, the legacy of which lives today. The analytical interdependence of racism and capitalism which has been established in progressive literature and debates on racism is starkly lacking in the report. But how can the commission prefer a “social analytical method” in its investigation, which it says is by its nature subjective and risky for a serious investigation into racism in the media, and state that this exercise “had to be based on sound theoretical analysis if it was to have credibility” but produce a report which is bereft of it? Can something that is subjective provide tools for a sound theoretical analysis or did the report try to objectivise subjectivity? The commission has only partly conducted a “deeper examination of the multiple and complex means whereby racism is expressed and experienced”, which it set out to do. Is racial stereotyping necessarily racist, especially since it is largely on that basis that the media is regarded as racist? We must be careful that black and white do not in themselves become analytical categories with foregone conclusions which are a substitute for analysis.
The inseparable connection between racism in the media and the economy is not dealt with. An investigation into racism in the economy will show, despite new laws, it is still rife, much more than it may be in the media. Another serious theoretical and practical problem is the finding that, regardless of motivation or intention, the charge of racism is valid if the effects are felt to be offensive. This has the potential, seen against our history, to dangerously open up a subjective flood tide. This is the commission’s way around the controversial charge of “subliminal racism”, which by implication assumes that the main, or sole, contradiction in our society is racism and not capitalism and class conflict. This position does not locate racism within the interstices of the conflicting interests and struggles between largely white capital and black labour, but assumes that it is the main problem or, as the African National Congress said earlier this year, that the problem of the 21st century is a problem of the colour line. However, the underlying reality is that it is more the class line reflected through the prism of colour or race. Racism is not, and never was, the dominant contradiction in our society. The class dimensions of post-apartheid are becoming clearer by the day. The black elite, in its own class interests, elevates questions of racism and suppresses questions of class.
It appears that while the commission, like the ruling party, wants to emphasise race and racism as the biggest problem confronting “transformation”, they avoid class analysis of racism which clearly shows the strong and undeniable connection between racism and capitalism in our country. Therefore, based on political considerations, the report was tailored to maintain this fallacy but today events themselves are fast exploding it. Why does the commission not display similar zeal in ensuring that the state satisfies the basic socio-economic rights as stated in the Constitution? At least there it won’t have to deal with “subliminal” poverty. Its failure to focus on more critical areas adds grist to the mill of those who believe that bad as racist stereotyping or subtle racism in the media or elsewhere is, it is being used to divert national attention from the failures of the ruling party to meet the basic needs of mainly black people. The point is not to minimise the scourge of racism but to contextualise it.