The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence: Media Performance and Public Transformation

No racially motivated murder in Britain in recent years has received the same level of media attention or public expressions of concern as that of 18-year-old black student Stephen Lawrence. Through time and growing media interest, the name of Stephen Lawrence became a potent symbol and catalyst for change. This particular killing prompted widespread re-examination of questions of (in)justice, cultural identity, and continuing racism in British society, and it eventually initiated processes of institutional self-questioning, including government policies targeting institutional racism within Britain’s most powerful organizations of state and civil society. This book examines the media’s role in performing the Stephen Lawrence case over the ten-year period since Lawrence’s murder. Developing the framework of mediatized public crisis, this book examines how and why the British and international media turned the Stephen Lawrence case into a watershed moment with potentially transformative effects. To understand this, we need to attend to the rhetoric of journalism, the dynamics and contingencies within both politics and narrative, and the strategic interventions of involved interests and identities. The author provides new insights into how and why the media report and, occasionally, perform issues of race in ways that can unleash moral forces for social change. Includes many newspaper images from the British press; a list of racially motivated murders from 1970 to 2003; a detailed chronology of the Stephen Lawrence case; and the Macpherson report’s recommendations and social reforms.