прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Communicating Racism

172 Communicating Racism

TABLE 3.3: Differences in References to Media and Personal Communication (N = number passages; M = number of passages about a specific source)

on an area factor: Low-skill job people tend to live in the poorer highcontact neighborhoods, for which we witnessed similar distributions of source references.

The general pattern that emerges from these few figures is that lowcontact (and, hence, also high-skill job) people—sometimes criticallydepend on the media more often than people in high-contact areas, whereas in the high-contact areas, people have more information from family, neighbors, or unspecified people. Women and old people tend to refer to family sources more often than men and younger people, who prefer friends as a source of information about ethníc groups. Older people seem to depend more on TV than younger people and also have more information from their neighbors. And finally, high-skill job people tell us less about what their family members or friends told them but rather refer to acquaintances or people in general.

Topics in Different Areas

People may mention different topics in different areas, and there may also be variation among people of different age or gender. For a number of crucial topics, we have calculated these differences. Table 3.4 gives frequencies for mentions of some topics for both highand low-contact areas (i.e., numbers of passages mentioned by people from these areas accompanied by the prejudice scores for the people who mention these passages).

TABLE 3.4: Area Differences for Sonte Topics

We first notice that the classic stereotypical topics (crime, socioeconomic competition, and neighborly conflicts) are mentioned more often in the high-contact areas, as may be expected. In low-contact areas, there are more references to generally negative topics, but this is often the case in a general, that is, less concrete context: Speakers refer to what people in other neighborhoods say. Similarly, in high-contact areas there is not much talk about discrimination and racism, which, however, is a dominant topic in the low-contact areas. Indeed, our data strongly suggest that low-prejudice people and, in our case, also many people in low-contact areas, tend to talk about the discrimination and racism of other people and other neighborhoods. Obviously, these area differences are closely associated with educational and occupational differences between people, so that the amount of contact alone is not the only factor explaining these differences.

Age

One of the most conspicuous differences in ethnic attitudes is related to age. We have suggested before that older people tend to have higher prejudice scores than young people. One of the reasons may be that younger people have more everyday and more natural contacts with ethnic peers, such as at school. Another factor is, of course, education: Younger people are generally better educated. Our interviews, for instance, those in which younger people were interviewed with one or both parents, also suggest that they resent the sometimes bigoted opinions of their parents. In their references to communications about ethnic groups, they may also attend to different topics, of course, simply because they will have different contacts than older people. Several school children mention discussions about racism at school, and such explicitly antiracist education probably provides different topics of talk or different media interests.

Yet, generally, the differences are not dramatic: Overall, both younger and older people account for similar percentages of the various topics. Their differences in prejudice levels (indicated by P), however, suggest

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TABLE 3.5: Age Differences for Some Topics

that younger people will often mention a negative stereotype in a more critical way, whereas older people will more often agree with the negative facts or opinions reported. And, in both cases, when crime or aggression are referred to, the prejudice level of the people who do so is higher than the mean for the group. The most conspicuous difference is the mention of discrimination and racism, which is the most frequent topic of young people and the least frequent for older people. And, for both groups, the people who do mention discrimination and racism have lower prejudice scores than the mean prejudice level of the group. Difference of interest and solidarity, daily interaction with ethnically different peers, and sometimes the beginnings of antiracist education at school may account for such a marked distinction between the old and young generations.

Gender

In general, there are no gender differences in ethnic prejudice, and for that reason, there is little reason to believe that there will be different ethnically related interests between men and women. We already found that there is an interaction with age in this case: Elderly women tend to be more prejudiced than elderly men, whereas younger women seem to score even lower than their male peers on the prejudice scale. Are there also differences in topics men or women tend to mention when referring to other communications? After all, there are significant social and cultural differences in interest and occupation, and we may expect that women talk more often with other women than with other men, whereas men will have more male communication input. Also, as we have seen aboye, women tend to refer more often to family talk. In Table 3.6, we do not detect large differences, however (also, the numbers are too low to make serious conclusions).

Women who refer to discrimination and racism tend to have lower prejudice scores than the men who do. On the other hand, references to socioeconomic competition, cultural differences, and neighborly conflicts are made more often by (more prejudiced) women. In our inter-

views, as is probably the case generally, they are indeed the ones who most often tell the stories about conflicts with (ethnic) neighbors and about cultural differences such as living conditions, clothing, cooking, and so on. Although the communication references do not show this very clearly, they also seem to be more bothered, for obvious reasons, by crime and aggression, and we may assume that this will also be an important topíc in their everyday talk with others. Recall that women, in general, tell us more often about talk with others. Of all interviewed, 45 % were men and 55 % were women, but the passages with references to communications with others are told relatively more often by women (62 %) than by men (38%).

Occupation/Education

Finally, there are also occupation/ education effects in differences of topics mentioned. Unfortunately, however, our data about these demographic properties of the interviewed are incomplete (because initially we didn't want to mix strictly informal interviews with a standard questionnaire asking for such data; later, such a brief list of questions was filled out, after the interview). We have data about the occupations of 60 out of 143 people interviewed. Most of the other people are retired, jobless, or are housewives. In our occupation scale, most of them would score at the level of 1 (unskilled work). The highest level is 7 for jobs that require postgraduate specialization (medical specialists, university teachers, and so forth). Of all interviewed about whom we have data, 20 scored high (>4) on occupation, and 40 scored low (1 to 4). Generally, the high-skill occupation people scored lower on the prejudice scale (2.7) than the low-skill occupation people (4.1), a difference that is very similar to the age differences discussed aboye. It should be noticed, though, that this difference, of course, also embodies educational differences as well as area or degree of contact (with ethnic group) differences. Of the people with betterjobs, of whom most also have a better education, nearly all lived in well-to-do lowcontact arcas.

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TABLE 3.7: Occupation Differences for Some Topics

For the people who refer to communications, the mean occupation is at the intermediate (3.7.) leve! (for 88 passages of people whose occupational background was known). The few data we have only provisionally suggest that people with higher-skill jobs (and education) refer less to crime and aggression, which is indeed much less of an issue in their neighborhood. On the other hand, they seem to mention more often the economic and cultural stereotypes.

The Approximate Nature of

Prejudice Leveis

As a final word of caution, it should be stressed again that the differences in prejudice levels we have found, such as for age, area, and occupation, are differences in (interpreted) talk of people. That is, they have been calculated from what people actually say, which opinions are formulated, or which topics are talked about. We have assumed that informal interviews and a subtle discourse analysis are rather reliable methods for establishing prejudice schemata and contents for people. That is, the better educated especially are less likely to be able to dissimulate their opinions in the brief, socially desirable answers of preformatted questionnaires. We have seen in the previous chapter that there are too many unintended properties of conversations that may indícate some features of people's attitudes and the transformations these may undergo in the strategies of positive selfpresentation.

On the other hand, also in informal interviews, the better educated may still have more control and social monitoring in their talk, especially when delicate topics such as ethnic minorities or discrimination are discussed. For them, and especially the liberals among them, the possible inference that they may be prejudiced or racist may even be more face-threatening than for other people. After all, they often consider thémselves as the moral guardians of society. Also, due to a lack of daily experiences with crime, urban decay, socioeconomic competition, or neighborly conflicts about noises or smells, their prejudices have

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neither been "tested" yet nor forced to become more specific. As many people in the low-contact areas recognize themselves: It is easy for them to be "tolerant." Indeed, when people have less experiences, they probably also have less negative experiences that may be used to support ethnic prejudice. From other research, however, we may conclude that as soon as people with better education and better jobs have experiences with ethnic groups, their prejudices will develop along the unes of assumed superiority, social and economic competition, or threats perceived in their own contexts (Essed, 1984; Wellman, 1977). Just as in their talk, their forros of discrirnination may appear more subtle, however. Yet, because these people have more power, the consequences are usually much more serious: They are the ones who control politics, the institutions, the job market, education, and social affairs. They are the ones who make the decisions that underlie the macroinequities of racism in society.

In this chapter, we have seen sorne effects of the actions of one such group, namely, journalists. What people report about the media, and what we have found in our earlier studies of media coverage of ethnic affairs, give us reason to believe that actual occupational practíces may well exhibit ethnic prejudice. Maybe these prejudices are more subtle, maybe they are less stereotypical than those studied aboye, but they may well be more influential. We found that many beliefs about ethnic groups derive from the media, and even if not all these beliefs reflect the opinions of individual journalists, the uncritical media reproduction of prejudices of others may well be crucial in the formation and confirmation of ethnic prejudice in society. In Chapter 6, we continue this discussion about the role of the elite in the reproduction of racism in more detail.

Conclusions

In this chapter, we have examined in detail what people attribute to communication sources when they speak about ethnic minority groups. Thís questíon is important because it suggests what information or beliefs expressed by such sources tend to be used again by the "next" speakers as sources for new recipients. Within the complex discursive environment of talk about minorities, the mass media (the newspaper, radio, television) and personal communications appeared to be most relevant as sources for speakers, at least for the salient ethnic group in the present situation. Less explicit, but maybe no less influential, is the "hidden persuasion" (Packard, 1957) of advertising, movies, novels, comics, children's books, or textbooks in various stages of socialization or in different situations of everyday life.

We have found that in all passages in which people attribute information or beliefs to other sources, the negative topics are by far most

178 Communicating Racism

prominent. Aside from generally negative opinions, we find frequent mention of such stereotypical topics as crime and aggression, perceived socioeconomic competition ("they take our houses and jobs, and they abuse our social services"), and the well-known cultural differences and conflicts. Such topics are predominantly attributed to personal communications, especially with family members and people in the neighborhood, and especially by people from high-contact areas. The media (mostly TV) are more often credited, mostly by people from low-contact areas, with information about discrimination and racism, although the press especially is mentioned (and criticized) for its crime reporting.

Overall, the use and attribution of topics to such sources is also influenced by various social factors. As may be expected, people from highcontact neighborhoods refer more often to the typical "experiential" stereotypes, such as crime, aggression, competition, and cultural differences, whereas people in low-contact neighborhoods refer more generally and abstractly to negative properties of minorities, on the one hand, and to discrimination and racism, on the other. Except for the topic of discrimination and racism, age does not seem to influence topic selection very much, despite the traditional finding that the elderly score generally higher on the prejudice scale. The same holds for gender differences, although there seems to be a tendency for women to refer more often to competition and especially to the usual complaints about cultural differences. Occupation and education are closely linked with the area factor: That people with lower-skill jobs (and education) focus more on crime and aggression is, of course, partly dueto their less safe neighborhoods. And, conversely, lack of neighborhood experiences will often cause the better educated to pay more attention to general issues of socioeconomic competition and cultural differences.

The qualitative analysis of the interview passages showed that people reproduce from sources precisely those topics that confirm the dominant prejudices of a racist society. Even when they are doubtful or critical of negative opinions reported, people know them and talk about them. Although generally, negative facts mentioned about minorities also tend to be reacted to negatively, especially when attributed to personal communications. Thus, reproduction of prejudice mostly means agreement with a source. This suggests that sources are mostly referred to for evidence that may be used to bolster one's own prejudices or, that is, argumentatively used in persuasive communication. Few people counter negative talk with positive information or beliefs, often simply "to avoid trouble." On the other hand, it also appears that sometimes people avoid (very) negative talk, for instance, because of the official norm that prohibits racist utterances, for fear of retáliation (by ethnic minority group members), or because they might get finto trouble with family members or friends.

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Our analysis of attributed sources and their topics sketches further outlines of the process of communicative reproduction of ethnic attitudes within the in-group. It shows that people do talk very often about foreigners, especially when they have become salient in their neighborhood. Together with the public communications of the mass media, such conversations are said to be about precisely those (negative) topics people also deal with in their own statements. Thus, speakers suggest that they participate in a tacit (if not outspoken) consensus, according to which foreigners are a real problem for "us" in all relevant domains of social life. It has also become clear that people do not always agree with what they hear or read, but their reactions to racist talk tend to be neutral or passive. Both in their own statements, and in their references to the media or to personal talk with others, explicit and antiracist counterarguments are rare.

The lack of an antiracist consensus also shows in the lack of routine expressions or interactions that may challenge prejudiced talk in conversations. If not always persuasive, negative stories or statements are at least pervasive in society. They are about "what everybody knows" and the consensus thus also becomes rooted in commonsense representations and strategies for talk about foreigners. The individual actively reproduces the pervasive ethnic prejudices that charaterize the consensus and, at the same time, recognizes the legitimacy inferred from such a consensus. The conflict between the higher norm that prohibits racism, and the actual reproduction of racism through talk and action, is thus resolved: Our negative stories about foreigners are not prejudiced or racist, they are true and legitimate complaints, and everybody says so.

In the previous chapter, we have seen how people formulate such opinions and strategies in conversation. We have now seen how, and how much of, these may be reproduced from various sources within a broad consensus of acceptable talk about foreigners, both in private and in public. In the next chapter, we should finally go below this (socially relevant) surface of what is said. We need to investigate the underlying cognitive properties of such ethnic opinions and prejudiced attitudes, as well as the complex social information processes that determine their uses in our understanding and representation of discourses from communication sources and in our own contributions to conversational interaction. We can really explain what people tell and how they do so only with the help of such a cognitive framework embedded in an account of the social functions of prejudiced talk in society.

Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Greenwald, 1968; Himmelfarb & Eagly, 1974; Insko, 1967; Lingle & Ostrom, 1981; Petty & Cacioppo, 1981; Petty, Ostrom, & Brock, 1981).

Attitudes require cognitive analysis in their own right. The same is true for other notions to which attitudes are systematically related, such as beliefs, opinions, ideologies, or (inter)actions and their intentions. Thus, attitudes are taken as complex, schematically organized, shared cognitions about social objects, such as persons, groups, and their actions (Abelson, 1976; Petty, Ostrom, & Brock, 1981).

Similar remarks hold for the analysis of ethnic prejudice. What we need is an explicit cognitive theory that accounts for the content, organization, and operation of ethnic prejudice in social contexts (Hamilton, 1981). Our discourse analysis in the previous chapters has yielded data that may be used to build part of this theory. Having established such a cognitive basis, we can later return to the interpersonal, persuasive communication processes involved in the reproduction of ethnic beliefs.

It should be recalled that, in our opinion, prejudice should not be characterized only in terms of negative ethnic attitudes of ingroup members. What is also needed is a more active, dynamic dimension. Prejudice is not just a "mental state;" it not only involves the (trans)formation of ethnic attitudes, but actually operates through flexible strategies for the processing of group-based, ethnic or racial information. The representation and use of prejudice, then, is a specific form of what is now commonly called social information processing (see, e.g., the contributions in Wyer & Srull, 1984). Prejudiced memory "models" and schemata, on the one hand, and these "biasing" strategies, on the other hand, underlie the interpretation of discourse about foreigners and of ethnic encounters themselves. In other words, prejudice is not just "what" people think about ethnic out-groups, but also "how" they do so.

Finally, we have repeatedly stressed that attitudes and a fortiori ethnic prejudice are not (only) personal or individual opinions about other people. Their social nature goes beyond interpersonal perception and requires analysis in terms of group-based, shared cognitions within the framework of intraand intergroup relationships and social representations (Billig, 1976; Deschamps, 1977; Doise, 1984; Farr & Moscovici, 1984; Jaspars & Fraser, 1984; Tajfel, 1978, 1981a, 1981b; Turner, 1981; Turner & Giles, 1981). Whereas the points made aboye imply that current theories of attitude and ethnic prejudice are not "cognitive" enough, we also suggest that they lack an important social dimension (R. A. Jones, 1982). Without this social component, it is not possible to link the cognitive notion of ethnic prejudice to macro social notions such as ethnic group conflict and racism. These further social dimensions of prejudice and its communication will be dealt with in more detail in the