Stuart Halls Inferential Racism Racism is the belief that the members of different races have some certain,

inherent characteristics which grades people as being either superior or inferior to others. Stuart Hall talks about two groups of racism in his article The Whites of their Eyes: overt racism and inferential racism. Hall defines inferential racism: By inferential racism I mean those apparently naturalised representations of events and situations relating to race, whether factual or fictional, which have racist premisses and propositions inscribed in them as a set of unquestioned assumptions. These enable racist statements to be formulated without ever bringing into awareness the racist predicates on which the statements are grounded. (Hall, 13) Overt racism is a concious act to damage a certain group of people. Using a sentance like Black people always make trouble can be an example for this. It is directly and conciously showing a negative attitude towards the black people. Inferential racism unlike overt racism is an unconcious act. When we think about black people the idea that they are trouble occur. This kind of thinking and thoughts are invisible however it is widely spread over people. They all have accepted the facts of racism which are assumed to be in a certain way and they make certain representations according to it. Yet every word and image of such programs is impregnated with unconscious racism because they are all predicated on the unstated and unrecognized assumption that the blacks are the source of problem. (Hall,13) As the reproduction of these ideas is considered it is obvious that media has a big role in it. Media reproduces lots of racist ideologies and people see them as normal situations even though it is done unconciously. For example we usually do not expect a black person to be the hero. We expect them to be the bad guy or in a supporting role. We will not be surprised to

see the black person in a role like the clown, the slave, the native which Hall refers to as their roles throughout history. These ideas became stereotypes so people do not find them as racism. Now some group of people are trying to change these stereotypes but the effort is just pointing out the fact even more. For example Disney has created a black princess for the new version of the classic The Princess and The Frog. This way they are giving the message that they support equality but it gives the idea that they would not need it unless there was not an unequal situation. Asl Zeren 04.12.2009