The New York Post gave Al Sharpton a chance to get on his divisive soap box this week when they published this editorial cartoon. Sharpton should stick to being a thoughtful and articulate pundit on TV news and commentary shows if he really wants to foster better race relations. If he wants to perpetuate the racial divide he should get up on that soap box and express outrage whenever President Obama is satirized in a way that could be construed as racially offensive.
In an OpEd piece today praising Sharpton and criticising The Post and other papers that have published cartoons of Obama as a primate, Gannett's Dewayne Wickham said "Labeling blacks as monkeys or baboons is akin to calling them the n-word."
Hogwash.
The Post cartoon is stupid. If there is a connection between a pet chimp in Connecticut ripping someones face off and the economic "stimulus" ripoff, the cartoonist didn't make the connection. If the cartoonist was attempting to make a statement about President Obama, he missed the mark by a long shot. The Post deserves to be criticised for publishing a dumb cartoon. Not for racism.
Presidents are satirized. Our previous president was often satirized as a monkey.
If Sharpton and Wickham really believe The Post was characterising Obama as a monkey, they should be celebrating a breakthrough in equality, not trying to incite racial divisions with their feigned outrage.
Attorney General Eric Holder had a good point when he called the United States a nation of cowards when it comes to race relations. Sharpton and Wickham contribute to racial fears when they equate characterising a president as a monkey with calling him a nigger. Condemnations like this might lead to more politically correct satire, but it won't lead to better race relations. Caucasians will respond by being more careful with their language, but they won't relate better to blacks as a result. On the contrary, they are likely to withdraw further from dealing with blacks rather than risk being labeled a racists if their language is misconstrued.
Racism exists in America. There are white racists and there are black racists. In my experience they are the minority of both races. Holder made the point that as a nation we have made great progress toward integration in the work place, but that America is as segregated as ever on Sunday when we worship.
If Martin Luther King were alive today I imagine he would be celebrating the progress we have made towards his dream, and that he would be passionately and lovingly challenging us that we still have a ways to go. He might challenge us to integrate on Sunday, calling on white churches and black churches to worship together on Sunday, followed by lunch.
Sharpton should get off his soap box and give that a try.
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5 comments:
(Too afraid to agree with you because then I'll find out I've been taken out of context by Purcell and painted as a racist...again)
You're not alone and you make my point and Holder's point.
I am pretty conservative and I was appalled when I saw the add.
I hate to say the critics have a point this time.
I immediatly thought Holy Crap they are comparing the president to a crazed Chimp that needs to be shot.
It is just wrong on so many levels and while it is wrong to compare anyone to a chimp I could see what that would be more offensive to a black person.
God, I must be getting slow in my old age. When I saw that cartoon, I related it (the monkey) to Congressman who blindly created and voted for the Pelosi-Reid spenditall bill. Obama had nothing to do in writing the bill; he let the Pelosi bunch run wild.
And yet I was shocked at the same time ... comparing Congreesmen to a monkey was an insult to the monkey.
All one chimp did is rip the face off one person (horrible) ... but Congressmen have been ripping all of us off for how many years??
Oh, I guess all the liberal pundits have become evangelicals and no longer believe in evolutionary theory (Darwin). Aren't all of us (not just those of a darker pigmentation) supposed to be descended from monkeys??
I also thought the chimp would depict Reid or Pelosi, since they wrote the bill. But the cartoon refers to the "Infinite monkey theorem" (I think the first I saw mentioning this was Jim Hogan).
That being said, aren't racist those who, as soon as they saw a chimp in a cartoon, said it's about Obama, although it was not?
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