The New York Post and Sean Delonas have done it again. This time, Delonas, who draws the editorial cartoon that appears with the daily’s Page Six gossip column, depicted two police officers standing over the body of a dead monkey. One officer’s gun is smoking after just being fired.
The other officer says: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.â€
Without that caption, the cartoon would be pretty innocuous considering that in Connecticut Monday, a pet chimp was killed by local officers after maiming a friend of its owner.
The cartoon isn’t clever. It is simply offensive, racist, and totally uncalled for. Delonas, who is known to push the envelope with some of his cartoons, has pushed it right off a cliff. (For his many homophobic cartoons in 2008, GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, named Delonas one of its worst offenders.)
There is no misinterpreting this cartoon. Before folks over at the “No Spin Zone†— yes, I’m calling you out Bill O’Reilly and your colleagues at Fox News — say I and others are overreacting to a harmless satire, let’s analyze the cartoon.
Congressional Democrats under the leadership of President Barack Obama wrote the stimulus bill. The bill is being viewed by many observers as Obama’s bill. The officer refers to the dead chimp, which is lying in a pool of its own blood, as the author of the stimulus bill. This cartoon plays into the racist stereotype of depicting blacks as monkeys.
You see, this is why we must ignore calls to end Black History Month. Certainly, this country elected an African American president, but as this ignorant cartoon painfully illustrates, there is still a long way to go for full and complete equality.
Of course, the Rev. Al Sharpton has weighed in on the mess, accusing the New York Post of racism. “The cartoon in today’s New York Post
is troubling at best, given the historic racist attacks of African Americans as being synonymous with monkeys,†wrote Rev. Al Sharpton, a crusader of civil rights. “One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual reference to this. … Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama (the first African American president) and has become synonymous with him, it is not a reach to wonder, ‘Are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?’ ”Col Allan, editor-in-chief of the New York Post, issued the following statement in response to the cartoon and Sharpton: “The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.”
I would like to think that Attorney General Eric Holder’s comments at the Department of Justice’s African American History month program were in response to the Post cartoon, but the reality is his speech was likely prepared in advance. Regardless, it sounds to me like he was addressing Allen and Delonas with this sentence: “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” He went on to add: “Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we
are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.”Bravo, Holder!
The NAACP also weighed in on the controversy, in a statement that was about the same length as the Post‘s. “We are saddened that the New York Post chose to create a symbol that is so divisive, insensitive and antithetical to that goal,” said Ben Jealous, president and CEO of the civil rights organization that is celebrating its 100-year anniversary. “The NY Post must do better.â€
As far as I’m concerned, either the New York Post, which did not endorse Obama for president, is equating the 44th president of the U.S. as a monkey, or I need a humor transplant.
Sean Delonas didn’t return a call seeking comment.
Deborah Creighton Skinner is the editorial director at BlackEnterprise.com.