A&M cartoon was wrong, but it wasn't racist

I hate bringing up a controversial and finished topic, but I thought some people might be interested to read this from today Chronicle.

Feb. 1, 2002, 9:21PM

A&M cartoon was wrong, but it wasn't racist
By RONALD E. GEORGE

He was someone with whom I shared the press room at Houston's central police station. We covered the news, he for a television station, I for the Houston Chronicle.

I was new on the beat. He was not. He offered to take me for a ride in the van he had equipped with police radio monitors. Part of the beat, he said. This cub reporter ought to see it firsthand. We headed for Houston's Third and Fourth wards, deep and overwhelmingly black pockets of poverty and crime.

"Just look at 'em," he said, beginning a vile monologue that etched itself into my memory. "If it was up to me, I'd take 'em all out, line 'em all up and shoot 'em."

And so on, on and on, an anthology of ignorance, bigotry and hate.

He was a racist, pure and simple. He believed blacks were inferior by definition, not just second-class citizens but second-rate human beings, perhaps not really human at all. They were good for nothing, he said. Whores, pimps, criminals "and they breed." Vermin.

It was my first personal encounter with racism, 32 years ago. I was 22.

Today, I am faculty adviser for The Battalion, Texas A&M University's student newspaper, which has been accused by black students and others of publishing a racist cartoon on Jan. 14.

The newspaper has apologized for offending some readers with a cartoon that showed a large black woman wearing an apron, holding a spatula and admonishing her son: "If you ain't careful, you gonna end up doing airport security."

The cartoon was not good journalism and shouldn't have been published. The student cartoonist erred by obscuring his point with irrelevant imagery. The student editor erred by not calling the artist's attention to this problem and recommending that the cartoon be recast.

The cartoon was patently offensive, but not racist, not by a long shot. It's publication was a mistake, but it was an honest mistake, the kind collegiate journalists make all the time trying to learn an exacting, difficult profession.

Even the pros make such mistakes. Recall the Arizona Republic's publication in 1999 of a cartoon linking the deaths of 12 students in the Aggie Bonfire collapse with the Branch Davidian inferno in 1993 and the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. by three East Texas racists in 1998.

Insensitive? Yes. Unfortunate? Yes. Bigoted? No. Some editor's judgment slipped a cog. With clear-as-day hindsight we know it shouldn't have run, but that was then, this now. We journalists live with the burden that we can't undo those things we ought not to have done. The Republic apologized.

The Battalion's lapse might not have become painful even to its highest administrative levels had not a group of black students commenced fax warfare alleging racism where there was none. Texas A&M's student newspaper was the last to know of the group's allegation that it had published a racist cartoon. It hadn't, but at that point it didn't matter. The games had begun.

University President Ray Bowen was gracious in his support of The Battalion's apology on Jan. 28, which said: "If we had it to do over again, we would not approve this cartoon for publication." Now, Bowen said, let us all learn from this experience, because that's why we're here. Amen to that.

I hope The Battalion editors and their staffs -- my students -- have learned how responsible journalists must be to ensure accuracy and fairness by diligent reporting, accurate writing and rigorous editing.

I hope they have not been disillusioned by being called racists by fellow students who apparently don't know what the word means. In this case, the term "racist" bore as much venom as any epithet used by true racists to attack blacks.

This is no quibble. The moral philosophy of our language is that we accurately name things so we may know the truth and know ourselves as well.

Vicious rhetoric sheds no light, and I would hope that somewhere in this controversy we might discover a way to talk to each other about race, even in anger, without hurling buzz words for the sake of garnering news media attention.

George, a journalism lecturer at Texas A&M university, , is adviser to The Battalion, A&M's student newspaper.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1235404

 

If you read the article, he said it was a mistake to write it and a mistake by the editor to put it it. Yes, it was stereotypical and offensive. And it was probably prejudiced as well. But there is al ine between racist and prejudiced. Prejudice is is an opinion for or against something without adequate basis. Racism is a belief that some races by nature are superior to others and the discrimination based on that belief. While you can argue that the cartoon was racist, you can't prove it. Unless you know the artist and his beliefs and intentions, you can't call it racist. If he would have said that the boy was stupid and going to work airport security because he was black, that would be blatent racism. The fact that the boy is black makes it wrong and offensive. The commentary though was on airport security and bad grades. Nowhere does the cartoon state that there is discrimination or failure due to his inferiority by being black.

Reread the article and really read what it says. If you read it with a closed mind, you'll only hear what you want to hear (I'm not accusing anyone of this, but if you go in bitter and thinking the cartoon was racist, the article won't change your mind).

Kim had a good statement too, and it goes with what I'm saying and what the article clearly states.

 

He set up what being racist meant at the beginning. It seemed pretty clear to me.

What the cartoon was, he also explained. There was no hatred or discrimination involved. Maybe he didn't put it in those exact words, but I thought the message was clear.

And I even gave definitions of racism to further explain things to anyone who didn't pick up on them in the article.

It was not put into plain in simple words, but the message was there. Racism involves hatred and belittlement. Prejudice involves ignorance. Offensive obviously offends someone. The story Ronald put in his article explained that.

Read the article: in it and inbetween the lines. I thought the story did a better job explaing racism than the dictionary definition would have. I'm sure if he had simply used the dictionary definition, someone would claim that he didn't really know the meaning, he had to look it up. Or that he didn't have any experience with racism and couldn't know what it really was.

 

How can any of you call it racist when it isn't by definition or by the cartoonist's intent? And how can you call someone a racist who you don't even know?

It was offensive. Just because it is offensive to one race does not make it racist. It was not done out of hate or with harmful and hurtful intention. It was a mistake because it offended people.

Racism is a bad thing and should not be taken lightly. No one should apply it to anything less than what it is. By using the word so loosly and freely, it's causing further division between races. Mast white people are afraid to say anything because it might be taken the wrong way and they might be called a racist by black people (even if they are not). Then, the white person is mad at the black person for labeling him and then has more reason to dislike him. It leads to more hate between the two. I don't think this is the real cause of racism or the only cause, but I do feel my statement is true.

haven-Have you looked at the definition of the word racist or racism? Did you read the article? This clearly does not fall under the definition. If it looks like racism, that doesn't mean that it is. The problem is that the definition has become relaxed. Anytime anyone says something that offends someone, it's automatically labeled as racist. It's very easy to play the victim (which I'm not accusing anybody of doing). The word should not be taken so lightly. Racism is bad, very bad.

Also, I'm of the mindset that believes if you expect that something is racist or that someone is racist, then it will be racist because that's all that you're looking for. Not everyone who offends someone is a racist and not everything that offends someone is racist. If you were of the minority depicted in this cartoon and it offended you, that's fine. It was offensive and apologies were made. Not all mistakes or offensive things are racist.

Rokkit-From what I heard, he didn't have problems. I did hear that he had written cartoons about other minorities. And from what I know, they did not complain. If I'm wrong, please give me some concrete evidence and we can end this part of the dicussion. I did not hear of other problems though.

Just because something is not politically correct does not make it racist. We have political correctness specifically to avoid offending people. It was not implemented to do away with racism. In fact, I tend to think that political correctness is a breeding groud for racism (see my reasoning above).

Anyone who is so quick to judge this person and label his cartoon and him as racist, I don't think you're any better than he is, even if he is a racist. Racism is about hate, malice, stereotypes, prejudices and thinking you are better than someone due to race. Anyone labeling the artist is a racist is judging him without ever knowing him. But because he drew an offensive cartoon about black people and he is probably white (again, if I'm wrong, please correct me) and therefore, he's a racist. Shame on you too.

 

Yes, it has already been established that it was prejudiced, wrong, stupid, offensive, whatever word you want to use. That is why he apologized.

As far as semantics, I think my previous entry touches on that. If more explanation is needed, I'll be glad to provide it.

His characterizations were racial in nature, but racial and racist are two very different things.

And I am trying to keep my mind open. But when you have a apology from the artist and the advisor, it's hard to ignore. (And I'm pretty stubborn and I like to argue. )

I'm not asking you to accept "my" definition. That's the dictionary's definition, which I think more people should look at. There is a big difference between offensive and racist and the disticntion is important.

If you don't want to listen to his definition, that's fine too. But he probably knows his students and their intentions better than any of us do. And he did apologize for offending people. But he also demonstrated that he knows what true racism really is/was which I don't think many people today understand.

As far as your black friends go, they may very well know what racism is. But because they are black does not make them know it any better than I do or anyone else for that matter. Racism is about being denied admission to a school based on race (which has happened to me, but I'm not allowed to complain because I'm white and we have it easy-yeah, right). It's being denied a job because of race. It's getting beat up and called stupid and being harassed, JUST because you are of a certain race. White people CAN know what racism is. In fact, I would bet many know it just as well or better than some black people. I find, as with this article, many black people are so quick to call something racist when in many cases it is not. They didn't like something and that makes it racist. I don't think that is fair at all.

Many black people I know are bigger racists and bigots than some white people I know. And NO ONE has any right to be-black, white, blue, red, orange. I went to a high school that had an extremely high black enrollment (almost majority). Every single day I would hear black people talking sh*t about white people and how they hated them. I heard black people talk about hating white people much more often than I heard white people complaing about black people. White people have a little bit better understanding of racism than you might think.

The fact that it was offensive did not necessarily make it unworthy of publication. If I'm not mistaken, we still have freedom of speech and press in this country. What made it unworthy of publication is that words like racist and offensive and prejudice are thrown around too often. People are unwilling to see anything for what it is. I am sorry if anyone was offended by the cartoon, I truely am. At the same time, I know that if it would have been white trash people living in a trailer park, the cartoon would have been about the joke. And any white person who called it racism would have been laughed at.

The truth is that the cartoon was not lying. There are many uneducated black people working airport security. It's a shame that it can't be more than that.

 

I don't know, but the Batallion is not the first place they have been portrayed as black. SNL did it all the time and I'm sure there are other places.

I doubt it would be racial profiling. If more black people do work airport security, I would attribute it to the fact that ltraditionally, less black people have higher educationlevels (I'm not trying to offend anyone, but it is the truth) and airport security WAS a low education level job.