Editorial cartoon on Judge Sotomayor has subtext of lynching, stereotypes Latinos
The Oklahoman newspaper printed on Tuesday a racist, sexist and outright offensive “editorial” cartoon.
It depicts Judge Sotomayor strung up by a rope, likening itself to lynching images or a piñata, with President Barack Obama wearing a sombrero, holding a stick and asking a crowd of elephants (Republicans) “Now, who wants to be first?”
The cartoon is captioned “Fiesta time at the confirmation hearing.” See the cartoon here on our ConfirmSotomayor.org blog.
NABJ Statement on Future of Journalism Senate Hearing
Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, today issued this statement:
On Wednesday, a panel of digital and traditional journalism industry experts testified at a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and Internet Hearing on “The Future of Journalism” about the challenges and successes facing online news aggregators and newspapers today.
The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) has worked on behalf of newspaper journalists for more than thirty years, yet many of our most talented members are rapidly becoming unemployed or leaving the profession out of necessity.
The intellectual property of journalists must be preserved, and NABJ supports any effort that seeks to afford news agencies a greater capacity to retain and compensate black investigative reporters, editors and other journalists while respecting the growth of digital journalism.
NABJ Board Member Charles Robinson, who attended the hearing, told Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) after the hearing that diversity needs to be a part of the overall discussion and a more diverse panel should be part of future discussions. Robinson also told the Senators that NABJ was available to help draft a diversity component of any future legislation affecting the newspaper industry.
The recently released 2009 ASNE newsroom diversity census is disconcerting for revealing that black journalists are losing their jobs at a greater rate than any other ethnic group, but it is especially disturbing that minority ownership or representation in newspapers was not a topic at Wednesday’s discussion.
Of the five panelists, there were no black representatives and only one minority. It is disgraceful that a discussion on Capitol Hill about the future of newspapers can happen without doing more to incorporate the perspectives of America’s increasingly diverse population.
NABJ will continue to work with news agencies, publishers, editors and others to promote diversity and affirm that our members are offered cutting edge training to keep them ahead of the curve.
At the same time, we call on our nation’s leaders to open their eyes to the communities that surround them and ensure that black media representatives have a seat at the table as new legislation is discussed.
NY Post Editorial Cartoon: Simian Stereotypes and Cartoonist Excuses
If nothing else, the now-infamous New York Post cartoon by Sean Delonas published Wednesday showing a chimp shot to death by police officers should be a clear answer to the question of whether we’re in a “post-racial” America.
As EJS President Eva Paterson and others have argued, the answer to that question is a resounding “no.”
In a piece published Wednesday, Cal psychology professor Phillip Atiba Goff states that persistent simian stereotypes tagged to blacks are not mere small and unimportant post-racial leftovers of the “bad old days,” but significant psychological mechanisms of discrimination.
“It is tempting to … downplay the significance of ‘isolated events’ of bigotry and ‘armless words or pictures.’ But precisely because the dream of post-raciality is seductive for so many, it is all the more important that we not forget that cartoons like the one in today’s New York Post are never isolated-and consequently, never harmless,” he writes.
Eva Paterson: ABC7 Story on Ledbetter Act
Eva Paterson is included in a story by ABC7’s Mark Matthews on President Obama’s signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which will make it easier for people to get the pay they deserve — regardless of their gender, race, or age. The Act was introduced by Bay Area Congressman George Miller.
Survey on Media Coverage of Race Issues in the Presidential Election
Onica N. Makwakwa of UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc. (unityjournalists.org) and Darrell L. Williams of The Loop (theloop21.com) today announced that their organizations are partnering on a survey of how media covered racial issues in the presidential election, biling it as a “unique opportunity for journalists of color to show how diversity in the newsroom could make a difference in news coverage.” The survey results will be announced next month before the presidential inauguration.
Rafael Olmeda Elected President of UNITY: Journalists of Color
Rafael Olmeda, immediate past president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), has been elected president of UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.
Mr. Olmeda was chosen by UNITY’s board of directors at its fall board meeting last month. Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) was elected vice-president, Michaela Saunders of the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) was elected secretary and Jeanne Mariani-Belding, president of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) was elected treasurer. Their two-year terms begin on January 1, 2009.
Read more
AP Analysis: the Racism in Palin’s Attacks on Bill Ayers
Associated Press writer Douglass K. Daniel yesterday writes about how Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama’s relationship with University of Chicago Prof. William Ayers embed negative racial connotations without resorting to “overt racism.”
Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?
In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.
Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.
Most troubling, however, is how allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves McCain’s purpose so well. As the fallout from Wright’s sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America’s promise to treat all people equally.
Republican strategist Joe Gaylord is quoted in the article saying that it’s a “legitimate strategy to talk about Obama and to talk about his background and who he pals around with.”
UPDATE: Adding commentary by Camille Z. Charles, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania:
Of course there’s racial subtext! Right or wrong, character and “guilt by association” attacks are commonplace in presidential campaigns, but that doesn’t mean that such attacks cannot and/or do not also tap into white voters’ racial fears and resentments.
Republicans and their allies mastered the subtle. implicit racial appeal that has “plausible deniability” more than a century ago: the most (in)famous example being the Willie Horton ad in 1988. The recent attacks by Governor Sarah Palm are a prime example of this approach.
From the outset, McCain-Palin have emphasized their own patriotism with the catchy Country First slogan, sending an implicit message that their opponent is unpatriotic or un-American. Plausible deniability? Easy, it isn’t about race, it’s about being patriotic and loving America; they never even mention race and they don’t have to because you can just look at him and see that he’s, well, black. When questioned about potentially racial motives, they simply respond: What are you saying? That everything is racial? Really, he’s the one “playing the race card.” Sound familiar?
What Republican strategists are counting on is voters’ tendency to equate “American” and “patriotic” with, well, being white. So, the catchy slogan, the emphasis on McCain’s military/POW experience. and Palm’s hockey-mom-who’s-just-like-us-and-knows-our-story persona all send the message that they are real Americans. Implicit in all this is that Senator Obama is, well, not. Remember the uproar over the flag pin? Same thing. Nobody cared that HRC was often sans flag pin.
Obama’s “associations” with Rev. Jeremiah Wright (e.g., “God damn America”) and William Avers (former member of the Weather Underground and the “terrorist” that Obama “pals around with”) are offered as evidence of his lack of patriotism. (Never mind that he’s severed ties with Wright, barely knows Ayers, or that Palin and her husband have a real tie to the API, an organized political party with an anti-American platform that advocates Alaska’s secession from the United States! Oops—sorry. I digress).
That one man is African American and the other is white is a perk for Republicans—allowing them to play on whites’ racial fears again without ever mentioning race. The three of them are angry, dangerous and anti-American. Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric and Ayers’ criminal past both targeted America, so the message goes. These men are angry, dangerous, and clearly hate America; Senator Obama is guilty by association and the American people need to be warned (did I mention that Palin says Obama is “dangerous”?). Plausible deniability? This matters no matter what color they are! Bill Ayers isn’t even black, so how are we playing the race-card? But hey, two out of three aint bad and, you know, they are angry and dangerous and unpatriotic …
Preying on (some) whites’ nagging feeling that they “don’t really know” or “can’t be sure they can trust” Senator Obama perpetuates racial tensions and divisions that most of us long to be rid of; doing it “on the down-low” is dishonest. How un-American.
