Reacting to Black Lives Matter: The discursive construction of racism in UK newspapers

In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, and the international uprisings which followed, racism moved to the forefront of public discourse. Yet, racism has no fixed interpretation and is a term used by different individuals and organisations for various functional and ideological purposes. This study provides an analysis of the ways that racism is discussed in four UK newspapers using a mixed-methods framework incorporating critical race theory, corpus linguistics, and the discourse-historical approach. It is argued that, as the protests were taking place, systemic racism began to be foregrounded over individualised forms of racism in newspaper discourse. However, journalists continued to use strategies of positive self-presentation to place racism outside of themselves and within racist ‘others’, leading them to stand against racism in the abstract, while potentially diminishing possibilities for structural change.

Introduction

In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, and the international uprisings which followed, racism has been at the forefront of public discourse. However, racism is a concept frequently defined in different ways for different purposes (Hoyt, 2012). This study explores the ways that UK newspapers constructed the meaning of racism in their reporting in the first half of 2020. Using a methodological framework incorporating critical race theory (CRT), corpus linguistics (CL), and the discourse-historical approach (DHA), I will provide an analysis of the discursive boundaries of racism in four UK newspapers. It is argued that, after the death of George Floyd, systemic racism began to be foregrounded over individualised forms of racism in newspaper discourse. However, journalists continued to use strategies of positive self-presentation to place racism outside of themselves and within ‘bad’ racist ‘others’, leading them to stand against racism in the abstract while minimising its effects and emphasising its debatability. These findings expand upon previous research conducted on how the meaning of racism was constructed in right-wing UK newspapers during a 2-month period in 2013, which showed that journalists portrayed racism as morally wrong, but almost exclusively discussed a narrow form of racism characterised by moral transgressions by individuals, with a particular focus on ‘insulting’ or ‘inappropriate’ language (Moore and Greenland, 2018: 68). By challenging racism only within these limited boundaries and minimising structural factors, Moore and Greenland argue, newspapers contribute to the maintenance of the racial status quo. This study shows that these patterns are also shared by left-leaning publications and are still prevalent 7 years later, despite a renewed focus on systemic racism in mainstream newspapers.

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