Is TV Driving Black People Mad?

A few months ago broadcaster, journalist, founder of Colourful Radio and generally all round good guy Henry Bonsu appeared on the Radio 4’s Current Affairs debate programme Any Questions, (for people who watch more television than listen to radio it’s the radio equivalent of BBC1’s Question Time). During the course of the programme one thing Henry said stuck in my mind; “unfulfilled ambitions are the biggest cause of mental illness for black people”.

If Henry’s point is true then it could have important consequences for BME people in general and those of us working in the media specifically.

First of all Black British people are vastly over-represented in the mental health statistics. For example black men are three times more likely to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals than the general population.

But what might this have to do with working in the media?

In the book “Status Anxiety” philosopher and author Alain de Botton argues that in most of Europe and the West we increasingly believe we live and work in a relatively fair democratic world. A world of “level playing fields”. The more we believe there is equality of opportunity then the more we believe our position in society is of our own making. When we succeed this is great but when we fail,(fail to get the pay rise we want, fail to get the promotion, etc), the more we blame ourselves. It is this perception of failure that creates, what Alain de Botton terms, “status anxiety”.

The gap between where we are in society and where we think we should be has also been recognised by the medical profession and is termed “Self-DiscrepancyTheory”. It is this gap that can seriously affect our mental health.

One only has to look at the statistics regarding employment diversity in the media to know that prejudice, direct and indirect, exists.

We may all know this in theory but in practice every time we apply for a job or go for an interview we suspend this knowledge and hope for the best, we have to temporarily believe the playing field is level (or at least level enough for us to be the successful candidate).

But every time we fail to get the job, which the statistics tell us is more likely to happen to us than our non-diverse colleagues the more likely we are to suffer from “Self-Discrepancy Theory”. Paradoxically this means that when we fail to get a job due to racism, the more overt the prejudice the better for our mental health. For example if a card carrying member of the KKK fails to give a black person a job the less likely he is to internalise the rejection, his mental health is less effected than if someone he believes to be fair fails to employ him.

That means according to “Self-Discrepancy Theory” prejudice in the media industry could be literally making people from diverse backgrounds mentally ill. Especially as this prejudice is nearly always indirect rather than direct and overt.

There are two obvious ways we could address mental illness caused by Self-Discrepancy Theory and the gap between where we are in our TV careers and where we think we should be. The first is to reduce the gap by lowering our expectations, the second is to eradicate all prejudice in the media industry. The first option definitely is not desirable, I do not want to lower our ambition, and as for the second option while we strive to eradicate prejudice this will not happen overnight.

But possibly there is a third option: We continue to aim high and overcome any prejudice. But when we’re unsuccessful at a job interview or fail to get the job promotion we know we deserve we offer support to each other. We remind each other of the statistics, the fact the deck is stacked against us, of the indirect prejudice that we often face. In that way we don’t internalise the rejection, we live to fight another day and most importantly we hang on to our mental health.