Following some of Steve's links this proved interesting:
"Daniel Burdsey:
Sure, seaside locations remain overwhelmingly white places. [There's] a number of reasons for this, I think. Traditionally minority ethnic communities have lived in urban locations of the bigger towns and cities and we can trace that back to the mass migrations of the 1950s and '60s to places of industry.
Laurie Taylor:
And in many cases, of course, they're coming in and arriving and joining families who already are living in urban locations, aren't they, because of the work?
Daniel Burdsey:
Absolutely, absolutely. And more peripheral coastal locations tend to have relatively immobile populations who tend to live for generations without perhaps moving in or out.
There's also an over-representation of older populations which does tend to contribute to a whiter demographic in these places. Sign welcoming visitors to Brighton and Hove Welcome to Brighton for everyone?
Laurie Taylor:
And you'd want to say, I think, that at the coast or in seaside towns there's an association somehow between being in a seaside town, being by the sea, and what people who are perhaps white feel about national identity - this place is somehow 'for' them?
Daniel Burdsey:
Yes, I think you're right. I think the seaside is still embedded in aspects of the national psyche and survey evidence suggests that people do still closely associate the seaside with aspects of national identity.
I think there's a geographical issue here: the coast or the seaside is literally a place on the edge, the edge of the nation, it's a finite border and so it's habitually associated with notions of invasion and defence - both the white cliffs of Dover are the...
Laurie Taylor:
And it fits nicely. It just suddenly came to me this, that [I think] Paul Theroux wrote about the number of sort of Brits who go and drive their cars to the edge of the country and sit there staring out to sea, which he said, really they are imaginatively seeing themselves as the old imperialist, they see themselves, like their ancestors, sailing away. Possibly, that's a bit fanciful but anyway...
Very interestingly though, after having analysed the demographic facts of this, you turned to the ways in which really the social attractions of seaside towns [are], if you like,[...] white attractions.
Daniel Burdsey:
Yes, I identified a number of themes within the seaside amusements and entertainments and other aspects of popular culture and the things I identified, firstly, was the way in which these amusements and entertainments promote and exoticised and/or orientalist representation of the ethnic or racial other;
The way in which representations of white bodies are juxtaposed against black ones;
And finally the way in which seaside amusements and entertainments engage in ideas of exploring and conquering sort of non-Western primitive landscapes, whether that be the jungle or the wild west or ancient Egypt.
Laurie Taylor:
So a lot of these old amusements, these arcades, these museums, these galleries or whatever, in many cases black faces are absent, but if they're present they're present in a rather stereotypical fashion?
Daniel Burdsey:
Absolutely. I mean there's strong historical reference to this, you can trace this back...
Laurie Taylor:
But I suppose many people listening would say well it's a lot of old kitsch and it's stuck there and no doubt it has some of these resonances, I mean would you want to say however, if people came to look at this they would feel themselves sort of absent or would they feel themselves offended by it?
Daniel Burdsey:
I think the bottom line is that most people engaging in seaside leisure, entertainments, amusements perhaps don't appreciate the signifying attributes of these things. It is a place for fantasy, of fun, adventure, escapism but I think just because they don't perhaps have these sort of functioning connotations for people we shouldn't ignore the sort of....
Laurie Taylor:
Are we talking about attraction or repulsion? That black people decide that they don't want to go to places like this because they feel of them as white, or do you feel that the sort of white people there are actively hostile?
When you've looked at these towns are there other aspects of those towns and the way they behave, the political decisions they make, which suggests to you that really there is some ideology lurking behind these representations?
Daniel Burdsey:
I think that might be a tenuous link.
I think the issue around the way in which these environments are racialised from the sort of subsequent research is more about the sort of control and dominance of social space with certain parts of seafronts, towns, being seen as sort of safer spaces and others not.
But what was clear I think which came out of this and some of the subsequent research is that what is often seen as innocent tradition for some people can actually have quite racialised and excluding connotations for other groups.
Professor Laurie Taylor (Guest), Dr Daniel Burdsey (University of Brighton) "