This blog is part of Action for Race Equality’s Racial Terminology Project series, exploring how racial terminology is used, understood and debated across the UK today.
Estimated read time: 3 minutes
The media landscape plays a central role in shaping narratives around race equality. As part of our research, we examined several case studies of recent news stories on race and racism with research participants in order to explore the acceptability of terminology.
Case study: Zarah Sultana
We looked firstly at a Good Morning Britain interview in August 2024 with Zarah Sultana, the Independent MP for Coventry South, during which she made the case for the racist riots that month to be called ‘racist’, and specifically Islamophobic, citing the direct targeting of mosques.
She experienced pushback from presenters about her focus on terminology. At the time, the government had used the language of ‘far-right thuggery’, and she was repeatedly questioned as to why specific language mattered.
Zarah Sultana’s Good Morning Britain interview exposed some of how retreating from the conversation about racial terminology might allow others to dictate the terms we use.
Case study: Marieha Hussain and Frank Hester
Through the contrasting examples of 2023/24 news stories of Marieha Hussain and Frank Hester, focus group participants were able to discuss the differences between offensive and illegal terminology, and explore varied views on ‘free speech’.
Most saw Marieha Hussain’s use of a placard depicting coconuts and the faces of some Conservative politicians as the expression of an acceptable criticism and a political statement. Several interesting discussions were had in the focus groups around the use of the term ‘coconut’ in Black and Brown communities; the history of ‘Uncle Toms’ and ‘race traitors’ tied up in colonial histories, and the benefits of proximity to Whiteness in relation to ‘Whitewashing’ and ‘cultural authenticity’.
Young people resonated with and were interested in the complex history of the ways in which Black and Brown individuals have been made complicit in the harming of their communities by colonialism. They also saw Frank Hester’s appalling comments about Diane Abbott, and his incitement to violence against all Black people as clearly racist, wrong, and illegal.
Hussain’s placard had no words; it was a visual representation of criticism of Brown politicians and their politics from a Brown person. Frank Hester’s comments were an incitement to violence from a rich White political donor against an opposition politician who was a Black woman. The fact that charges were brought against Marieha and not Frank demonstrates a gap in the way in which racial terminology is policed in the UK.
Who holds the power?
There is also a distinction to be made in these media examples about the direction in which power operates. Language used amongst Black and Brown communities to question, challenge, and even discriminate is different from the language used in the service of the structural power imbalance between White supremacy and those who are victims of White supremacy. Uses of racial terminology in the media must be responsible and aware of the power language holds.
The language choices journalists make in discussing racism and portraying communities of colour in the news media rarely reflect the terms preferred by those discussed.
Terminology around migration and class often intersect in important ways with this landscape. The proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group alongside the policing of the description of what is happening in Palestine as a ‘plausible genocide’ is a key example of how terminology has become an important battleground. The media and political discourse actively define, demarcate, limit, and control language and acceptable ways to discuss and dissent.
This blog is part of a series on our Racial Terminology Project. To find out more and access our toolkit, visit here.
