Do children notice racism in their favorite radio dramas?

Editor’s note: How do children from minoritized backgrounds experience their exclusion from equitable media representation? New research by Adolé Akue-Dovi sheds light on this question from the perspective of Black German children. This post introduces key findings of the study and examines racism in children’s media more broadly. It is co-authored by Adolé Akue-Dovi and one of the supervisors of her Master’s thesis, Liesa Rühlmann.

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Adolé Akue-Dovi & Liesa Rühlmann

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As a child, I (Adolé) loved listening to detective stories to fall asleep to. One of my favorite was a series called TKKG about four teenage detectives. However, as I got older, I realized that there were hardly any non-white characters on the show. In the rare instances where they appeared, they were usually suspects or otherwise portrayed negatively.

From childhood passion to research topic

The radio drama TKKG has been running since 1981 and continues to be highly popular, currently comprising 225 episodes.

The first 100 episodes (produced between 1981 and 1996) continue to be available in the “TKKG Retro-Archive” on streaming services and are consumed by more than 80,000 listeners a month on Spotify alone. This demonstrates the on-going popularity even of these older episodes. Especially in these first episodes, violent, sexist, and racist language was used.

How do Black children and youth perceive racism on TKKG?

In debates on racism in children’s media, radio drama is largely overlooked, despite its popularity. Therefore, Adolé’s research asked: How do Black children and youths perceive the reproduction of racist stereotypes on TKKG?

Four Black German children and adolescents between the ages of eight and thirteen participated and listened to three short scenes from three TKKG episodes published between 1981 and 1984. The group discussion showed that those who are affected by racism notice it at an early age and may already experience injuries.

Key findings

First, the participants were able to identify racist stereotypes; some explicitly (“Well, he’s probably a racist”), others implicitly (“He was mean”). Even though some of the interviewees do not seem to have a language for racism yet, they still notice unequal treatment.

Second, the interviewees, especially the two older boys, related the content of the scenes to their own reality and made connections to their experiences of racialization. Third, the participants gave explanations for racist practices. They provided rationalizations for why some characters act racist and why some characters are racially discriminated against.

Media representations need to change to change Black children’s experiences

The research shows that we need more critical examination of racist representations and language in children’s media.

Publishers, educational institutions, and carers all have a responsibility to keep all children safe from harm. Therefore, an essential step is to educate oneself and learn about racism. German society is not as white, heterosexual, able-bodied, and monolingual as normalized in the media. All children must feel represented in a positive way and have access to role models or inspirational figures who look like them.

Augsburg Research Award for Intercultural Studies

The message of Adolé’s research has been well-received and was honored with the 2021 Augsburg Research Award for Intercultural Studies. The award recognizes outstanding achievements by early career researchers whose research deals with diversity in Germany.

About the Authors

Adolé Akue-Dovi is a doctoral researcher at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Liesa Rühlmann recently completed her joint PhD at Macquarie and Hamburg universities. Together they teach seminars on Critical Race Theory in education, have contributed to a conference, and are working on joint publications.

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Reference

Akue-Dovi, Adolé. (2022). Kindermedien und Rassismuskritik. Wie Schwarze Kinder die Reproduktion von Rassismus in TKKG-Hörspielen wahrnehmen. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38395-4.