The UK’s advertising regulator has ruled that a Facebook ad for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was likely to cause serious offence by reinforcing negative stereotypes about black men.
The ad for the MoJ’s Prison Jobs scheme, seen on June 25, featured an image of a white prison officer talking to a black inmate, with superimposed text stating: “Become a prison officer. One career, many roles.”
A complainant, who believed the ad perpetuated negative ethnic stereotypes, challenged whether it was likely to cause serious offence.
Real Officers and Prisoners
Following an investigation, the advertising regulator Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the MoJ’s paid-for Facebook ad showed “an imbalanced power dynamic” and ruled that the advertisement must not be shown again.The MoJ said the recruitment campaign ran every week of the year across a range of media, including social media, physical posters, radio, and video on demand. The campaign’s aim was to recruit prison officers and other roles for prisons. The image only formed one small part of the overall campaign.
The MoJ used real officers and prisoners in the ad and argued that it did not “portray” a black man as a criminal, it depicted a real person who had been convicted of an offence, and it was not an inaccurate or unfair representation of the type of engagement that might have been seen between officers and prisoners.
However, the ASA concluded that the ad was likely to “cause serious offence on the grounds of race by reinforcing negative stereotypes about black men.”
The ASA pointed out that the inmate wore an afro pick comb in his hair, a tool they understood was “uniquely associated with black culture.”
“The ad made reference to prison officers being ‘problem solvers’ and ‘life changers’, and we considered it drew a link between the officer depicted and those attributes. On the other hand, the black prisoner was depicted as a criminal, without those positive attributes,” it added.
It said that the ad “showed an imbalanced power dynamic, with a smiling white prison officer, described as a ‘life changer’, and a black, institutionalised prisoner.”
“We considered the ad’s focus on the positive qualities of the white prison officer and negative casting of the black prisoner was likely to be seen as perpetuating a negative racial stereotype,” said the ASA.
‘Dominance and Subservience’
Marc Glendening, head of cultural affairs at the Institute of Economic Affairs think tank, told The Epoch Times by email that he believes that authorities’ focus on left-wing identity politics is “a recipe for a totalitarian culture.”“This decision is indicative of the way in which the new, culture-control left see all human interactions and representations of them as inherently political and therefore representing dominance and subservience,” said Glendening.
“Life, as for fascists as well, is thus perceived as a will to power between groups. Individual human beings become effectively mere avatars for entire social collectivities. This gives those, like the ASA, the right and moral mandate to ban or promote imagery and communications that they deem to either confirm or contradict the power relations, in this case between ‘whites’ and ’blacks,' they assume exist,” he said.
“This is a recipe for a totalitarian culture in which the state (and bodies given regulatory power by it) dictates what we can view and hear and tells us how we should interpret all the phenomena we are exposed to. Thus, we are reduced to a child-like status; we are not allowed to judge for ourselves the images and messages we discover,” added Glendening.
An MoJ spokeswoman told The Epoch Times by email that it would appeal the ruling.
“This was one of a wide range of different images used in an advertising campaign featuring real situations in prison—which is an essential part of attracting the right candidates,” she said.
A spokesman for the ASA told The Epoch Times by email that it “is politically neutral and independent of the state.”
