National Geographic admits to being ‘racist’

National Geographic magazine has admitted its past coverage of people around the world was racist.

In an editorial entitled For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist, editor Susan Goldberg said the US publication had in the past ignored non-white Americans and depicted different groups as exotic or savage, propagating “every type of cliche”.

She said it was time to “own” the story to “move beyond it”, adding: “Let's confront today's shameful use of racism as a political strategy and prove we are better than this.”

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The next edition of the magazine, which was first published in 1888, focuses on the issue of race and asks historians to look back over previous issues.

Analysing its coverage over the years, University of Virginia associate professor John Edwin Mason said National Geographic had served to reinforce racist attitudes and that until the 1970s the magazine had only showed non-white Americans as labourers or domestic staff.

Mason said that while the Western world was portrayed as dynamic and rational “the black and brown world was [shown to be] primitive and backwards and generally unchanging”.

Despite this, he did acknowledge the contribution the magazine has made over the years by showing its readers the wider world, saying: “It's possible to say that a magazine can open people's eyes at the same time it closes them.”