Ashley's First Post

Between sightseeing and trying to establish a working wi-fi connection, I have actually been working on my project--a comparison of how race is presented in the UK. media Back home in the states, it seems ANY instance can easily turned into a racially fueled incident. Most common is anything involving politics, social justice, or representation in the media in general.  Often the races caught in these disputes are People of Color, namely African American and Hispanics.

But during my short stint in the UK, I’ve noticed the attention of race shifted, if not ignored all together.  As far as representation is concerned, I noted a lot of Asian movie film posters, with all Asian casts. Usually in the states, these films would have been re-casted or gotten little to no advertisements. Asians have also been at the center of a huge sex scandal in the news.  The newspapers like The Sun (referred to as tabloids, but not perpetuated with gaudy headlines and clearly falsified celebrity gossip like back home) also cover small stories of incidents of racially charged encounters. Most had to do with the Asian community (mainly Pakistani) involvement in the sex scandal, and how its a clash of "cultures", but other headline racial stories involved football players.

This came as a surprise to me, to hear accounts of racial angst in sports. What's more, its here in sports news that Black people were at the center; Not crime or politics. In fact, other than these sports stories, Black people weren't mentioned in any light.  Not that there aren't any here in the UK. In London I saw a few here and there, though here in Scotland it's even more rare. But in all, I get a sense of the UK trying to quell any racial tension.