I consider myself an unapologetic liberal Democrat. I was always against non-President Bush, I was always against the Iraq war. I am pro-choice. I have always stood up for Obama against those spouting racist rhetoric.
But this New York Post cartoon probably wasn't racist. And I'll explain why it isn't, and why I think it matters.
First, let me preface this by saying that I am no defender of the New York Post, and don't agree with its conservative positions. I also don't presume to know whether or not the cartoonist or his editors really are racist. What I am dealing with here are the simple known facts. If it were to turn out that there really was racist intent, though my specific argument regarding this particular cartoon would be void, the larger points would remain valid nonetheless.
Here is the controversial cartoon, though I'm sure most are familiar with it already:
New York Post, 2/18/09
This cartoon was not created in a vacuum, and would not have taken this form without proximity to a news story about a chimpanzee that was shot and killed by police after it severely mauled a woman the day before (BBC, 2/17/09).
This explains the actual image of the cartoon. The cartoonist apparently thinks the stimulus bill is so stupid and nonsensical that it must have been written by a chimpanzee (which is in line with normal New York Post opinion). Editorial cartoons often relate recent news stories to the politics of the day, which is part of the reason they are often humorous. Thus it seems like a perfectly logical course of action for the cartoonist to have merged the two.
There seem to be two general arguments being made about this cartoon:
- The cartoon was drawn purposely with race in mind, where purposely could mean either a conscious or subconscious choice; or
- The cartoon may not have had malintent, but the cartoonist and his editors should have realized that African Americans and others extraordinarily sensitive to possible examples of racism would take it the wrong way no matter what the intent was and stopped publication to avoid public outcry.
Or, more succinctly: people are either mad because of the cartoon itself, or because of the failure to notice potential interpretations of the cartoon by the former group.
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Let me make it clear that I can understand why some individuals would assume the worst about this cartoon. In this country, African Americans were often depicted and thought of as a lesser species, more similar to our evolutionary cousins the chimpanzees and other primates than to Homo sapiens sapiens. Given this, the images of police shooting a chimpanzee may certainly call to mind a time when police in some locales brutally enforced segregation. Since a key figure in the stimulus plan was our new President, Barack Obama, also happens to be African American, the inference could be made that the chimpanzee was a racist depiction of our President, and that it was showing him being shot.
I can understand that viewpoint, and I sympathize with the view that the cartoon itself likely should not have been published because of how easily this train of thought could occur to many people.
However, that doesn't mean the cartoon was intended to be racist, and there is no evidence that the cartoon really was so. If this same cartoon had occurred out of context, I would likely think it was. But it's a scene taken straight out of recent headlines, and Obama was certainly not the only one involved in crafting the stimulus bill. When I first saw the cartoon, I didn't think anything of it. I'd heard about the chimpanzee attack, and was aware of conservative feelings about the stimulus bill, and so thought of the chimpanzee as no more or no less than a chimpanzee.
It is curious, though, that for eight years many of us eagerly compared George W. Bush to a chimpanzee, myself included, sometimes even going so far to call him "The Chimp". Why was that okay, and depicting Barack Obama as one is not? I'm not saying we should, or that this particular cartoon actually is, but we really need to think about these things rationally. How can it be okay used for one person, but horribly offensive to use it for the next, when the only difference between the two people is their skin color?
The end of racism would be defined by the point at which everyone is treated equally regardless of skin color. But how can that goal be reconciled with the apparent demands for Caucasians to be sensitive, not to racism as that should be a given, but to the appearance of racism. Does that not require Caucasians to treat African Americans differently than they would other Caucasians, working against attaining equality? And to what extent does lambasting and highlighting the potentially racist interpretation of this cartoon, especially if it was not intended to be racist, actually serve to propagate and reinforce racist images and stereotypes, rather than reducing and eliminating them?
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This controversy also highlights a problem I've witnessed personally: the tendency of some individuals to blame prejudice, without first looking at whether it is true. Whether it is sexism (see Hillary Clinton), or racism.
At my college, there was an incident at a dance where several young adults/late teens from the local community, who happened to be Somali, were asked to leave by Security after a girl told them that they were making her feel uncomfortable. I should note that the theme of this dance was minimal clothing, and these individuals were fully dressed and just watching. After being removed, they tried to get back in by climbing through the windows. When this was noticed, they were once again kicked out. Some members of the African American student club on campus witnessed this and cried racism. They complained that there was a Caucasian guy from the local community there as well who wasn't kicked out. Of course, what was security supposed to do if there wasn't a complaint about his behavior? One could argue that the girl who complained may have had racist tendencies, but that's a separate issue altogether.
The next night, at the annual formal college Gala, this group, with several supporters, essentially blocked the entrance to the formal, handing out fliers documenting their complaints with a projector screen showing a slideshow, along with chanting. People who passed without taking fliers were called racists or given dirty looks. But instead of drawing widespread support, it alienated many people on campus who would otherwise support this group.
My closing point is this: There are still some racists and other -ists out there to be battled and taken down. But we need to be sure about our targets before we make such charged accusations. As we should have learned from the invasion of Iraq, attacking the wrong target for the wrong reasons while ignoring any evidence to the contrary tends to breed more resentment rather than sympathy.