March 6th / 8th, 2009
"National Cowards and Racist Humor"
Last month, America’s top cop, Eric Holder angered some people when he said
we are a “nation of cowards”. But, taken in context, his remarks were
right on target. Holder, our country’s first black attorney general, was
referring to how Americans avoid talking with each other about race, and, if ever
there was a time for changing that dynamic, it is now. That’s because a few
insensitive idiots seem to think that since we have a man of color in the
White House, it’s OK to tell or distribute racial jokes.
True enough, Obama’s rise to power should help to lessen mistrust between
the races and ease the tensions of intentions. But his election doesn’t give
stupid or prejudiced people a license to take advantage of this golden
opportunity we have to be more open with each other. To paraphrase Holder, this is
a time for us to be talking about racial divides, not exacerbating them.
What’s really disturbing is that racist jokes and cartoons aren’t just
popping up from off-the-wall blog sites, they are also being propagated by
reputable publications and elected officials.
Last month, following the killing of a domesticated chimp gone wild, the New
York Post ran a political cartoon in which two policemen were depicted as
having just shot an ape. Standing over the primate’s lifeless body, one cop
says, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill”.
The cartoon sparked outrage from people who believed the illustrated ape
represented Barack Obama, which, if true, was disturbing for two reasons.
First, it would condone shooting a President, and second, it revived not so
distant memories of a time when white racists routinely referred to Blacks as
monkeys.
To make matters worse, the Post editor feigned his own outrage at any one
taking exception to the cartoon, which he claimed was misinterpreted. It took
nearly a week before owner Rupert Murdoch issued a formal apology.
But no sooner had Murdoch tried to put one mess behind us, when the Mayor of
Los Alamitos, California stirred up another. Mayor Dean Grose (a white
man) emailed friends and co-workers what he thought was a funny cartoon. The
image was of the White House lawn covered with watermelons. The caption read,
“No Easter egg hunt this year”. When questioned by the Associated Press,
Mayor Grose said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people
liked watermelon.
So here we are, supposedly celebrating a honeymoon with our first black
president, when, instead, the wedding party is bombarded with racial slurs.
Actually, though, the onslaught of racist cartoons began back when Obama’s
presidential campaign first caught fire. In March, 2008, Investors Business Daily
published a cartoon of Barack palling around with a jive-talking Rev.
Jeremiah Wright. Then, in April, The State, newspaper of Columbia, South Carolina,
ran a cartoon by Robert Ariail which depicted Obama as an Islamic suicide
bomber. Ariail said he was only making fun of the Senator’s verbal gaffes, in
particular the one in which Barack said, “small town voters cling to their
guns and religion”. The cartoon suggested that the candidate was so
embarrassed by his mistakes, that he just wanted to blow himself up.
And then came New Yorker magazine’s July cover on which cartoonist Barry
Blitt depicted Michelle and Barack in militant Muslim garb, giving each other a
terrorist fist bump. Blitt said he was only mocking people who accused the
Obamas of being secret Muslims.
No doubt, there seems to be a trend toward more blatant racist humor these
days, but we shouldn’t automatically lump all perpetrators together. The New
Yorker cover, for example, was a constructive slam at ill-informed white
people.
But what about the Post’s attempt at political satire? Was it really
intended to be racist, or was the cartoonist just insensitive? Long before Obama
came onto the scene, the Post frequently used images of monkeys to depict
incompetent and rude people. They once took aim at NYC cabbies by depicting a
taxi driver as a chimp (FYI, most New York cabbies are not black). So it was
consistent for the Post to take aim at congressmen who passed a pork-laden
stimulus package, and to assign them a simian identity for their misdeed. Let
’s be clear, though. I am in no way defending what the Post did. Even if
they didn’t mean to offend anyone, they displayed extremely poor judgement.
So too, did veteran insult-hurler Don Rickles during a recent interview with
Jimmy Kimmel. Mr. Warmth, known for being an equal opportunity offender,
joked that President Obama was tap dancing behind the podium during a recent
speech.
Rickles, who hasn’t a racist bone in his body, meant no harm. But given
the controversy and tension building from the Post’s debacle, Rickles should
have refrained from the minstrel show reference that night.
The fact is, sometimes, good people say things that they don’t realize may
be offensive. During a Monday Night Football broadcast in 1983, the late great Howard
Cosell (who was born in Winston-Salem) became excited when a black player broke free and ran the length of
the field for a touchdown. “Look at that little monkey run”, Howard shouted.
Angry viewers called in to demand that ABC fire the star. But the protests
were silenced when several major black celebrities came forward to explain
that Cosell, a champion of civil rights, used the term “little monkey”
affectionately, and did so frequently when referring to his own grand children.
The Cosell incident teaches us not to jump to conclusions, nor to assume that
certain words and phrases are necessarily spoken with the intention of doing
harm.
On the other hand, there are times when conclusion-jumping is entirely
appropriate, such as when Seinfeld’s Michael Richards went on a racist rant during
a stage performance. Richards clearly harbored some deep-seeded prejudice
against African-Americans, because being heckled doesn’t make someone
suddenly say the “N” word in anger. That’s why Richard’s delayed apologies rang
hollow.
How, then, can we really know what’s in someone’s heart, or in what context
they intended a certain remark or illustration? Interpretations of the
spoken word may continue to present us with moral dilemmas, but when it comes to
cartoons, we do have a benchmark with which to judge between satire and hate-filled
images. Just check out the website Resist.com, for example, and
browse the so-called humor of white supremacists whose cartoons are catalogued
by race, color, and religion. The images are very disturbing and clearly
designed to spread hatred. And then there are the animated cartoons of the
1930s, ’40s and ’50s, which, unlike the Klan–type funnies of
Resist.com, were insensitive and offensive without intending any malice toward
minorities. Nevertheless, Warner Brothers took those cartoons out of circulation in
1969, and, most recently blocked them from display on YouTube.
But censorship is not the answer to our problem. To the contrary, it can
be detrimental to the dialogue which Attorney General Holder is advocating.
We should absolutely discourage anyone from publishing material which may be
offensive, but, going forward, we should resist purging old cartoons from
public view. Such revisionist history does a disservice to those of us who
seek to understand and teach the context in which the offensive material
appeared, and to assess the damage they might have done.
In the meantime, we are left to walk a narrow tightrope. On the one hand
we must be ever vigilant to guard against denigrating images and hate speech,
while, on the other hand, we must not over react to every satirical word or
illustration that confronts us. Despite recent setbacks, we have made great
progress over the years in navigating a racially charged high wire act. We
must be careful not to lose our balance and fall from the great heights we have
achieved.
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