Despite the rhetoric that race no longer matters, two incidents involving race grabbed headlines Wednesday.
The New York Post is under siege for an ill-conceived editorial cartoon that pictured two policeman shooting a chimp. One cop says to the other:
"They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."
A lot of people didn't get it, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, who complained that the cartoon by Sean Delonas is racially offensive.
In a statement, the Post defended it as "clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut," and labeled Sharpton a "publicity opportunist."
But come on.
Who doesn't know that in America's racist past, black people were openly referred to as monkeys. And exactly who is the chimp supposed to be? The cartoon was a bad idea and should not have appeared.
Mary Mitchell is a columnist for the 
"And exactly who is the chimp supposed to be?"
That's the sticking point. The George Bush chimp drawings always looked like Bush. This just looks like a chimp.
My take. The connection was supposed to be 'out of control'. The chimp was out of control, the bill's spending was out of control, therefore those who wrote the bill (Congress) are out of control. The cartoonist wants a different bill.
I'm guessing the cartoonist watched the Dow tank on Tuesday, taking his 401K with it. Murdoch owns the NY Post and recent announced he's cutting staff. If you want to know who I'm guessing was 'out of control' when that cartoon was drawn, it was the cartoonist. So angry and out of control he didn't even think of a possible connection with Obama.
Of course it was a mistake to run it, but I blame the editor(s) in charge of reviewing content before publishing. They're supposed to have cool heads and think things through. As you said, there's history on associating black people with monkeys, and none of it's good. Or funny.
Everyone knows that explaining the punch line ruins the joke -- even a bad joke -- but under the circumstances, it's necessary.
The conceit here is that the chimpanzee that police shot and killed after it went bananas and attacked the two women in Connecticut on Monday was the author of the stimulus bill. In other words, the cartoonist is trying to say that the $740 billion stimulus bill was so bad, only a crazed primate could have written it. Many Americans agree with that view, in so many words.
Another possible interpretation, since Congress, not the president, writes the laws, is that the chimp is Nancy Pelosi.
One doesn't have to get the joke. But it is a joke, not an assault.
I find it sad and interesting that, as an off shoot of what I can only assume could be considered white privilege, the editors of the New York Post could not see how a cartoon depicting an ape being shot by police would be construed as racist. Compound the drawing with the caption referencing politicians (and by extension, Obama) and the unhealed wounds of America's bigoted past are revealed fresh. I do not believe that the editors meant to be insensitive or racist. However as record-keepers of American history, they should be fully aware how their world views taint their perception of what they find insensitive. A course in Diversity and an understanding of how their race and ethnicity affects their own perceptions of history should be required of the publishers of this cartoon. One cannot assume he or she is racially neutral without understanding that one's neutrality exists in a bubble created by an individual's experience with the world.
The New York Post owes President Obama an Apology
http://www.floodthelines.com/nypchimpcartoon/
Our President is No Chimp!
I believe that the obviously racist cartoon via the New york Post, was intentional. Intended to rile African Americans and civil rights leaders such as Al Sharpton to our usual outrage. Probably a joke, or even a bet that "we blacks" would respond the way we have responded to this issue so the New York Post can say... there they go again. No doubt the perpertrators are sending the message that the President means nothing more to them than a slave did during slavery. Funny thing is.... we survived slavery, poverty injustice,and we will survive the New York Post. Oh and the recession....We"ll eat that for breakfast, call me when it's lunch time, I'll have a Roland Burris pizza please!
Rev Al is looking for work...what did u expect?
American Media People have been sneaky, low down, low lives who have messed with the American people's minds long enough. I see through you and will not bend to your way of thinking, you awful manipulators. You use fear to get what you want. You use racism and deplorable methods to reduce people's self esteem and image for your economic gain. You are nothing but school yard bullys. And then you lie about it. How insulting you are to think the American people will buy into it.
Or maybe that's not it at all and you needed some sensational way to sell more papers. Why don't you print real news.
I will never ever buy a New York Post ever again unless the current editor gets fired.
I wonder if this will be approved!!!
An apology that assumes that the un-offended should be ignored refuses to recognize the fact that many non-practicing bigots did not eschew their bigotry through ideological "eureka" moments but due to the force of public opinion change; even practicing bigots insulate their activities from public spotlight. If public opinion shapers revert to apathetic penmanship as the excuse of an apology from the post then let us prepare for many more avoidable social wars.
Mary,
As it turns out, the 1st amendment addresses your concerns. Your far stretch accusation that the artist depicting the shot chimp is referring to "The Obama (your messiah)" is just that .. a far stretch...
Do us all a favor and keep your conjectural opinions to yourself you racist writer.
How more clear could it be? The monkey represents the authors of the bill. It means the bill is so bad a monkey could have written it. Is that Obama? No. Some other black person? No. I don't appreciate Sharpton and Jackson and the others that are always calling others racist. It makes us all look bad.
sure, whatever. forget the cartoon. look in your own houses and neighborhoods.
bobby rush, jesse jackson, martin luther king jr have all marched thorugh the south of chicago and worked for social change.
and, not a thing has changed. maybe it never will.
my point - stop worrying about a cartoon and start raising your children right. three more dead on the southside this morning. why? because of lousy ghetto moms and dads. plain and simple.
the "racial divide" is perpetuated by the "keepers of the culture" like Mary mitchell.
the racial divide is due to how you people behave, not me. three people were not shot in my neighborhood last night. cant get around that fact.
I have been married to my lovely black wife for 24 years , suprise i`am a white gentlemen. We and my inlaws speak politics and on racial subjects all the time. Americans in general our cowards because, they donot speak or think of the simalarity and the differances between us honestly.My wife loves country music and i like motown, man are we messed up. I love the things that make my wife different as much as those things that we have in common.
How in the world can most people in this country get themselves in an uproar about the message of the past cowardly display of its oppressors who allow that same behavior to appear on occasion now, when they tell us to get over a NY Post cartoon that is flaring the nostrils of blacks with the stench of flagrant racism? How does a true statement from Attorney General Holder grow Ben Johnson legs(implying that it was injected by the steroids of mainstream indignities)when and the blatant violent racism depicted in a cartoon is turtling on the sand? I dont get it. But what I do get is the visible racism of some people who have yet to see that the rest of us have put on the glasses prescribed by the theological optometrist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who declared that one day we shall live in a nation where his children are not judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.
When scientist tell us that HIV originated in Africa,is this the type of conduct with monkeys that they seem to be so reluctant to discuss? Is it more that just people eating tainted monkey meat ?
For better or worse, LOTS of people consider the chaos in places like Darfur...and I don't know...inner city Chicago as fights among animals. Is that racist or reality?
I travel the world...you would not believe what people in other countries think of the inner city black communities. Believe...they think far worse than people in this country.
Al Sharpton didn't get it because he is an idiot. Coincidentally, he is on DL Hughley right now still whinning. Playing on destruction, turning on ones friends, and having to be put down to stop the mayhem just happened to be a given in the chimp story. But, any attempt to discredit the truth, especially when the race card can be played is fair game. But, then I see the deeper story as well as the camouflage.