The intersection of media and race

Gift Gwindingwe Correspondent

Semiotics is the science of signs. We use semiotics to study the various signs, codes and conventions that result in shared meaning amongst members of society.

Language is a central communicative regulatory sign that is widely employed to convey messages.

Images/pictures are also used to produce, maintain and repair meanings.

A common adage that “A picture is worth a thousand words” is rich in meaning: it is polysemous and semantically rich.

A recent post on a new disease, Monkeypox, and the accompanying pictures by certain Western media outlets prove the contested area at the intersection of media and race.

Depiction of blacks in the Western media has always, in most cases, been a reflection of a racially condescending attitude towards blacks.

Football stadiums across Europe have been other media platforms that are awash with “monkeying” blacks: Many footballers have been at the mercy of racial attacks as monkeys, either by supporters of their teams after a dismal show or by supporters of the opposing side.

What then follows are investigations that only end with apologies and fines on supporters.

An image that is conjured out of that verbal sign and its signifying value is ingrained in the minds of the racists’ future generation and will last.

The unsaid sign in the game of football is the absence of outstanding African footballers on the list of footballers of the year awards across Europe.

At one time, Cameroonian star Samuel Eto’o lamented that had he been named “Etoldihno”, probably he could have fared well against other players for the coveted and prestigious awards.

Under-representation as symbolic annihilation of a particular race has been central in media studies, and football has been an arena awash with such.

Diseases, hunger and conflict have also been signs that are associated with Africa and they have been taken to signify Africa’s level of economic and political development.

The Western media has been using various methods to portray diseases, hunger, poverty and civil strife as indices of African culture until recently when these very signs permeated Western life.

The detection of Monkeypox in Europe and North America recently has created a potential explosive field of racial antagonism.

The Foreign Press Association, Africa (FPAA) has condemned the use of pictures of black people to depict the outbreak of the Monkeypox virus in Europe and North America.

There is displeasure when certain media outlets are using images of the black people alongside stories of the Monkeypox outbreak in North America and the United Kingdom.

The signifying value of such signs is that of representing Monkeypox as a disease associated with blacks.

Yet there is a scientific evidence that the disease can occur in any region in the world and afflict anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity.

A prudent conclusion is, therefore, that factual reportage/representation should be neutral in its depiction of the disease.

Capturing the stories of Monkeypox on black skins has a prejudicial effect of associating the disease with the black/African race, thereby inciting racism.

This disturbing conclusion comes about against the background that Western media representation of Africa and the people of African descent has not yet changed at a pace that globalisation is spreading.

Semiotics as a theory behind media literacy should guide the editorial policies of media organisations.

The theory is very useful in organising our thinking as journalists and as readers/listeners or audiences as well as in analysing what we see/read/hear.

What audiences take home after reading/listening matters much because it shapes the general citizen’s opinion.

The unfortunate representation of both the disease and the African race in this context has demonstrated how some Western media outlets are still perpetuating stereotypical representation of the African race.

The unfortunate representation has again triggered past racial imbalances at a time when the global perception has been that of a unified humanity on an equal racial footing.

It is assumed in this 21st Century that current media outlets and their mouthpieces should not be platforms of racial contestations but ones that forge unity in diversity.

In this global village, we are always involved in producing, interpreting and employing the signs common to us and others living amidst us or our culture.

Racial segregation should be one of the last societal impediments in modern times.

The denotative and connotative meanings of the representation of Monkeypox and the black skin entrench systemic racial segregation and cultivate a condescending attitude by the Westerners to the Africans or blacks.

It is at the intersection of media and race that all seeming disparities are supposed to be resolved.

Media are the ultimate panacea to the obliteration of all previously existing inequalities.

It is through media that a perfect world is constructed, maintained and repaired.

It becomes unfortunate and tragic to this world if race informs media constructions.

The results are unending racial contestations that make the world inhabitable.

Contestations of narrow conceptions of race at local and global scales are demonstrated through such stereotypical representations.

Fairness and justice in racial representation is measured at the intersection of media and race.

The role of media exposure in shaping social perceptions regarding race should never be underestimated, and world peace is anchored on racial representation and the connotations derived from such representations.

Social arrangements can never be based on a hierarchy of races.

In any case, race no longer has a scientific basis but rather has been considered a social construct.

Media construction of such a phenomenon should not be allowed to divide a peace-loving world unless peace itself is a fallacy.

Dr Gift Gwindingwe is a lecturer and media specialist in the Department of English and Media Studies at Great Zimbabwe University.