How black celebrities like Stormzy are treated by the media really matters – it affects the health of our nation

Cultural gatekeepers, including the editors of popular magazines, play an important role in how our celebrity role models are chosen, and it’s a duty that must be undertaken with care

Two glossy magazines this week offer hope in a landscape of Brexit, Donald Trump and a media that can’t seem to stop humiliating itself on race.

Last week, the BBC commemorated the death of NBA basketballer Kobe Bryant with images of LeBron James instead. In response, people of colour across the media and Twitter shared their experiences of such misidentification. Journalist Gary Younge shared his many turns as the Labour MP David Lammy or Turner Prize winning artist Steve McQueen. The mood ranged from generously humorous to – understandably – wearily outraged.

At least, I thought, we’re having a national discussion about the harm of racial bias that treats people of colour as interchangeable, and the damaging stereotypes that cause it. The stakes are literally life and death, as Younge observed: “Stephen Lawrence was mistaken for a gangster by the police; several hundred people of the Windrush generation were mistaken for undocumented migrants.”

And yet the BBC was at it again this week, confusing Labour MPs Dawn Butler and Marsha de Cordova with one another. Not to be outdone, the Evening Standard followed up with a third, unrelated MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, after following the incorrect labelling of a Getty picture library image of her speaking. Butler and Young both wrote about finding humour in such mix-ups – a magnanimous response when, despite their achievements, they are repeatedly excluded from our cultural definitions of success.

In better news, another person in the public eye has been left parsing the consequences of rejection following a rather different race-based screw up.

A Cosmopolitan cover featuring The Bachelor contestant Victoria Fuller was dropped after images surfaced of her modelling garments with the slogan “White Lives Matter”. The clothing range featured historic symbol of white supremacism, the confederate flag and trucker hats with the acronym “WLM”. In a bizarre twist, the clothing range was produced as a crusade to save the marlin fish (I still have many questions about the marlin preservation campaign strategy). Fortunately, Cosmopolitan recognised that this was no defence and pulled the cover, adding that such “phrases and the belief systems they represent are rooted in racism”. In an explanatory statement, editor Jessica Pels asserted support for Black Lives Matter “unequivocally”.

In an era when leaders on both sides of the Atlantic express racist sentiment in both personal comments (”watermelon smiles”; US “birtherism”), and public policies (the ‘hostile environment’; the Muslim travel ban), white cultural gatekeepers such as Pels have an important role as potential allies, and one it’s good to see used judiciously this time. Of course, another solution would be fewer white cultural gatekeepers. Says the white woman in her newspaper column; I’m aware of the irony.

Another glossy magazine cover made positive ripples this week – in a feature that did actually make it to print. Riffing off his previous conversation about racist misidentification, Younge yesterday tweeted helpful guidance for news editors who can’t tell black people apart: “I’m the one in red. @stormzy is in black. Neither of us are @DavidLammy @DawnButlerBrent or Steve McQueen.” His tweet was accompanied by a link to his profile of the grime rapper in GQ magazine.

The GQ cover story celebrated “a new kind of national treasure”. The magazine proudly asserted “This is Black British’, outlining Stormzy’s place in the contemporary British canon and his contributions to British music, politics and society. He said he didn’t choose to be a role model, but of course he is.

As Britain, under the auspices of Brexit, appears to be getting too comfortable with the idea of itself as racially intolerant, and famous people of colour such Meghan Markle start to find our shores unliveable, Stormzy’s Black British pride, beautifully penned by Younge, is valuable to the health of our nation.

And it is significant that it was penned by Younge, too. You don’t get this kind of state-of-the-nation insight into without black voices in the media. Instead, you get a litany of embarrassing and harmful cases of mistaken identity.

Dr Hannah Yelin is a senior lecturer in media and culture at Oxford Brookes University