Article #1
Equality board defends racist posters
THE COMMISSION for Racial Equality yesterday defended its decision to launch a racist advertising campaign which suggested that black people were rapists and compared them to orang-utans, prompting more than 30 complaints from the public.
The government-funded race relations watchdog said the pounds 250,000 poster campaign was designed to shock the public into thinking about racism and challenging it when it occurred.
The posters, which went up at 192 sites in cities across Britain on Friday, were yesterday covered with the message, "What was worse? This ad, or your failure to complain?"
But the exercise was criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority, which said the commission could have the "dubious honour" of becoming the first organisation to be forced to have its campaigns vetted.
An authority spokesman said: "It is a shame that the CRE did not work with us within the guidelines laid down. The complaints we have received have come mainly from irate members of the public and there have been others from race relations organisations."
The three posters, which were spoof advertisements for bogus companies and did not mention the commission, prompted more than 30 complaints to the association.
One of the posters for a rape alarm shows a white woman sitting on a bus with a black man in the foreground. The accompanying slogan reads: "Because it's a jungle out there".
Another, for sports footwear, shows a black man jumping at a basketball hoop and an orang-utan in a similar pose reaching for a branch. The caption reads: "Born to be agile".
The final poster goes under the guise of a recruitment company's advertisement. It depicts two businessmen, one black and one white, climbing a ladder. The white man is treading on the hand of the black man with the caption reading: "Dominate the Race".
The commissioin was unapologetic. A spokesman said: "We have been hitting our heads against a brick wall when trying to get British society to pay attention to [racism]."
Sir Herman Ouseley, the chairman, said: "The campaign is designed to force people into considering their own personal attitude to racism and is specifically intended to provoke a reaction - preferably complaint or condemnation.
"There were still thousands of people who must have seen these posters and thought about complaining but couldn't be bothered."
Brett Gosper, who led the team that devised the advertising campaign, said its message was aimed at the "passive majority".
If a racist joke was delivered among such people in a group, they would not protest: "They will perhaps laugh and move on. The statement in this campaign is: condone or condemn, there is no in-between."
Sir Teddy Taylor, Tory MP for Southend East and Rochford, said the commission should be closed.
Article #2
Ford workers angry as blacks are whited out
When Henry Ford launched his Model T automobile, he told customers they could have in any colour they liked - as long as it was black.
Mr Ford's comments will be seen as bitterly ironic by British workers who were photographed to launch the "Everything we do is driven by you" advertising campaign in 1991.
Five members of ethnic minorities were invited to appear in the picture to show the racial mix of Ford's workforce at Dagenham, but in an "ethnic- cleansed" version of the photograph last year, the black and brown faces had been mysteriously replaced by white ones.
Four of the five workers still working at Dagenham have since registered their anger over what they perceive as blatant racism.
Bill Morris, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, yesterday condemned the incident as "deeply offensive". He said: "This is an appalling situation which reveals the depths of racist attitudes in our society."
He said the union had elicited fulsome apologies from management and a pounds 1,500 cheque for each of the workers, in compensation for their hurt feelings. "We shall be equally vigorous in tackling racism in future, wherever it surfaces."
The dramatic transformation in the picture was first noticed by Noel Sinclair, a worker at Ford's Dagenham plant, when he walked into a showroom in Essex.
Mr Sinclair took the new brochure back to the paint, trim and assembly department at the Essex plant and showed four of his friends, who had readily agreed to pose.
Douglas Sinclair, a 56-year-old black man who has worked at the plant for 30 years, said his body remained in the picture, but a white, bespectacled face had appeared on top of it.
"My body was there, dressed in my overalls, the rings on my fingers were still there, but I had glasses on and a white face. It was embarrassing. People at work started to come up to me and call me 'Two Face'."
Patricia Marquis said she felt "humiliated and angry" when she saw that her face had aged 20 years, that she had put on 10lb and turned white.
Article #3
Yesterday's racist ads are today's Collectables
There was a sharp intake of breath, and a muttered "Jesus". Bernie Grant, militant black MP for Tottenham, was reading the caption on a postcard that showed five black toddlers sitting in a row. It said: "God made the little niggers, he made them in the night. He made them in a hurry, and forgot to make them white."
Then a rueful smile began to play on Mr Grant's lips, and he shook his head. This was not some racist propaganda from the present day. It was a postcard from 1929, part of a collection of black ephemera due to go on sale at Bonham's the auctioneers in London on Tuesday.
The Independent on Sunday had asked Mr Grant, veteran campaigner for black people's rights, to give his verdict on the collection. It includes books, songsheets, advertising posters and packaging from Europe and the US, dating from the 1880s to the 1960s.
Taken as a whole, the collection provides a fascinating insight into the way white society's attitude to black people changed over the years. Such material is usually snapped up by black American collectors, say the experts at Bonham's, who expect it to sell for more than pounds 2,000.
"Maybe they're buying this stuff to get it off the shelves," Mr Grant said at first. But his views changed as he saw more.
The earliest items in the collection are trade cards and packaging for goods such as soap and boot polish, dating from the 1880s. Beautifully illustrated, they portray young black men as exotic, almost superhuman figures from faraway lands, riding on giraffes and elephants. They are at one with nature - or, as Mr Grant said, "like animals".
Some are dressed as dandies, minstrels or huntsmen - which would have seemed amusingly outlandish to white Victorians. Many ads show products such as cocoa and cotton with the Africans who produced them, for authenticity. Others use shock tactics. Few show slaves in chains, but several portray black subjects as menacing. "The idea is to shake people up, in advertising terms - to attract their attention," said Mr Grant. "It's similar to what Benetton do now."
Some of the packaging mirrors the Victorian fascination with tales of brave missionaries "civilising" the savages. One ad entitled "The Birth of Civilisation - A Message from the Sea" shows a black man clutching a bar of Pears soap, washed up from a shipwreck. "The consumption of soap is a measure of the wealth, civilisation, health and purity of the people," says the caption.
Items from the turn of the century onwards show a fascination with black children rather than adults. The two most popular themes of the period are children eating watermelon - still an exotic food in Britain at the time - or being eaten themselves, by crocodiles.
"There was colonial unrest," Mr Grant said. "The missionaries felt that these people were sub-human, but they were still people. Portraying them as happy, smiling children, always eating, meant that they were not threatening. They needed educating, and there was no need to worry about them as a threat.
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