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Fall 2007 Bulletin
Cartoons Cause Community Controversy Across the Country
In September and October 2007, cartoons in one city newspaper and three student newspapers were called offensive for their content and messages.
The Birmingham News
In Birmingham, Ala., protesters met on the steps of St. Joseph’s Baptist Church on October 4, alleging that The Birmingham News had skewed its coverage of the city mayoral race in order to discredit black candidates. A key motivator for the protest was a cartoon that appeared in the September 16 edition of the newspaper, showing two of the black mayoral candidates patting one of the white candidates on the back and placing signs reading “white” and “Republican” on him while doing so. A version of the cartoon appeared on the newspaper’s Web site the same day, in which the signs read “honky” and “Republican.” The cartoon was removed from the Web site after a few hours, according to a story The Birmingham News published about the incident.
The newspaper called the posting of the cartoon containing the “honky” sign a mistake, and asserted that there was no conspiracy at the paper to influence the election.
The University of Virginia
University of Virginia student journalist Grant Woolard was forced to quit his post at the student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, after a cartoon he drew for the September 3 issue of the paper caused an outcry. Woolard’s cartoon ran below the text “Ethiopian Food Fight” and depicted bald, mostly naked, dark-skinned figures fighting over a tree branch, pillow, chair, boot and stool. The Web site “Insidehighered.com” reported that on September 5 over 100 students and faculty marched to the offices of The Cavalier Daily, demanding an apology for the cartoon along with Woolard’s resignation.
Woolard told The Washington Post in a September 12 story that he “was not trying to trivialize famine,” and meant only to comment on the current situation in Ethiopia, an issue, he said, that not many people think about. “I will admit that I really lacked the foresight in anticipating the reaction [to the cartoon],” he said.
According to Insidehighered.com, another controversial Woolard comic appeared in The Cavalier Daily the previous Friday, August 31, that depicted Thomas Jefferson with a whip, standing before a black woman sitting on a bed. The woman is asking, “Thomas, could we try role-play for a change?” In September 2006, two cartoons by Woolard drew angry rebukes from religious groups and were eventually featured on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” Insidehighered.com reported.
The September 7 Cavalier Daily editorial was an apology for the cartoon, reiterating what the paper called its “policy regarding censorship.” The policy, the editorial said, “was published in the lead editorial of April 24, 2006 after a different comic sparked similar discussions.” The editorial said that standards for the work of columnists or graphic artists is to be examined against three criteria to determine whether it should be censored. “The comic in question clearly violates the third criterion,” the editorial said. “It criticizes people for circumstances they cannot change. Not only did the comic violate our own policies, it violated our sense of decency.” The full editorial is available at: http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=30639&pid=1607. The April 24, 2006 editorial can be found at http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=26949&pid=1440.
The University of Kentucky
On October 5, an editorial cartoon drawn by Brad Fletcher appeared in the University of Kentucky student paper the Kentucky Kernel. The cartoon depicted members of campus fraternities “bidding” on a black student chained to a slave auction block. In it, a white auctioneer referred to the black student as a “young buck.” Fraternities in the cartoon are labeled “Aryan Omega,” “Kappa Kappa Kappa (KKK),” and “Alpha Caucasian.” According to the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, the cartoon was intended to satirize the competition among predominantly white University of Kentucky fraternities to win over the few black students that rush them.
The cartoon offended members of the black student community as well as members of campus Greek organizations. Wesley Robinson, a black reporter for the Kernel who had been covering discussions of the segregated nature of Greek campus life, was among those who criticized the cartoon. Robinson told the Herald-Leader that the scene in the cartoon was “like Cheapside,” a nearby area where slave auctions once took place. Brooke Perrin, president of the University’s Panhellenic Council, told the Herald-Leader that she was “appalled,” by the cartoon, and that “it offends the Greek community as a whole,” as well as both “whites and blacks on campus.”
According to the Herald-Leader, approximately 100 to 150 students from the University of Kentucky gathered to protest the cartoon on October 5 . The same day, Kernel editor in chief Keith Smiley met with a small group of protestors and issued an apology for the cartoon on the Kernel’s Web site. An apology was also printed in the October 8 issue of the Kernel.
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona’s Daily Wildcat also apologized for a cartoon it published in October.
The cartoon, published October 9, pictured a receipt with a 7 percent tip for a meal bearing the signature “Mark Goldfarb.” Below the receipt was the message: “Attention Crappy Tipping Jews: Just because you’re ‘screwing’ the server … does not mean it’s a Mitzvah.”
The Associated Press (AP) reported that the Daily Wildcat received numerous complaints from students calling the cartoon anti-Semitic, and that the university’s president wrote an official letter criticizing the cartoon. According to the Tucson Arizona Daily Star, Michelle Blumberg, director of the university’s Hillel Association, and J. Edward Wright, director of the Center for Judaic Studies, collaborated on a letter to the editor in response to the cartoon. “People have been very clear to me that it has not been a question of First Amendment rights and free speech,” Blumberg told the Star. “It has been a question of taste and perpetuating a negative stereotype,” she said.
Daily Wildcat editor in chief Allison Hornick wrote an apology which was published in the paper the day after the cartoon. According to the AP, Hornick said the comic, drawn by Joseph Topmiller, meant “to take common stereotypes and misconceptions and mock not only the stereotype itself, but also the people who believe in them.” In her apology, Hornick wrote, “The Daily Wildcat apologizes for the misunderstanding over the comic and does not, in any way, wish to belittle the Jewish community or depict it negatively.”
- Sara Cannon, Silha Center Staff
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