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.
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.
