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van Dijk has pointed out, the denial of racism is a significant discursive move on the part of the media in order to legitimize the status quo and its world view.40 In this instance, highlighting cultural differences would have meant that the non-acceptance of members of different cultural communities (as a function of racism) is a reality that shapes the lives of girls like Reena Virk and renders them vulnerable to violence. Conclusion The above examples illustrate the ways in which specific definitions of culture are used and, in some cases, evacuated from the kinds of explanatory frameworks offered by the media. As with the official government discourse on culture, the media tend to identify culture as that which is visible and different from the norm. The norm, in this case, remains invisible in the background but nevertheless serves as a benchmark by which to assess and evaluate the differences of those whose “cultures” are considered to be an “other.” In the case of the Vernon tragedy, the cultural signi- fiers used throughout the reportage clearly position the murders as arising from a cultural practice of arranged marriages, which is then located as being a feature of the Sikh religious tradition. The Velisek incident serves as a stark contrast, demonstrating how the same issue has no cultural overtones when it concerns an individual who cannot be identified as being different or an “other.” Finally, the analysis of the murder of Reena Virk points out how a cultural explanation is explicitly avoided in order to occlude issues of racism and racialized difference, and to privilege the dominant filter of girl violence or the filter of bullying. In the last instance, the emphasis on girl violence and bullying served to legitimize dominant definitions of youth violence as emerging from deviance and individual psychopathology rather than as symptoms of a social order that determines and contains youth in ways that are detrimental.41 The various ways that culture is used or rendered absent in these accounts also demonstrate how the dominant culture sees itself through the lens of the mass media. In the case of the Vernon tragedy, the media consistently emphasized the cultural background of the victims so as to highlight how the practice of arranged marriages is oppressive and different from the egalitarian and progressive ways in which the dominant society encourages heterosexual unions. Similarly, the constant emphasis on immigrant backgrounds of both the Ghakhal and Virk families serves to underscore their status as “others”—unlike Canadians who are not immigrants by virtue of being born in the country and who are, therefore, not problematic in the same way. Implicit in these stories is the notion that immigrants 110 media and its (dis)contents who are visibly and culturally different cannot “fit in” and, hence, their inability to fit in makes them a target of violence. The responsibility for perpetuating such violence is thus strategically avoided. It is not the responsibility of the state or of Canadians at large to prevent such violence. Rather, such responsibility remains an individual problem. An ethnic interpretation of culture thus offers a way through which the dominant media can amplify differences to define “others” in society. It also becomes a way in which to neutralize the charge of racism. For simply by pointing out cultural differences, the media can refrain from using the explicit language of “race” and, at the same time, attribute to culture pejorative connotations that underscore the superiority of the dominant group. Culture thus becomes a way of talking “race,” but at the same time, it dismisses and erases the notion of racism. This is particularly true in the context of modern-day racism, where groups are treated differently and denied access on the basis of their cultural differences. Nonetheless, the use of culture to signify ethnic differences is highly potent. If such a definition were to be diluted by including other forms of culture—i.e., sub-cultural groups, then ethnicity/culture would no longer have the charge that it does in the dominant public and official discourse. Notes 1 Raymond Williams, Keywords: AVocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 87. 2 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic, 1973), 10. 3 Susanne Schech and Jane Haggis, Culture and Development: A Critical Introduction (Oxford and Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2000). 4 Kogila Adam Moodley, “Canadian Multiculturalism as Ideology,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 6.3 (1983); and Karl...

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