[Vision2020] Wrong Words Speak Volumes

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (February 25, 2009.

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Wrong Words Speak Volumes
By Leonard Pitts Jr.

“Police and deputy sheriffs hunted Wednesday night for a negro ‘beast 
man.’ ” – Billings Gazette, Sept. 19, 1929

“An original Guinea negro whose blood has not been crossed is as docile as 
a shepherd dog.” – Atlanta Constitution, June 4, 1899

“Miss Mary Henderson The Victim of a Negro Beast” – Moberly Weekly 
Monitor, Aug. 29, 1901

“For two minutes Joe Louis was a throwback to a wild jungle creature.” – 
Associated Press, Jan. 14, 1940

“Towering above them all, his black apelike face, distorted with rage.” – 
Oelwein Daily Register, April 24, 1919

“Northerners cannot realize how low in intelligence, how irresponsible the 
pure negro is. He is an animal.” – New York Times, June 9, 1901

Just so we’re all clear on why black folk tend to get annoyed when 
newspapers compare them to animals.

For all that, though, it was not the New York Post’s now-notorious chimp 
cartoon that offended me. Rather, it was everything that came after.

Last week’s cartoon, referencing a recent incident in which police killed 
a chimpanzee that mauled a woman in Stamford, Conn., depicts two officers 
standing over the bullet-riddled body of a dead ape. One says to the 
other: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

Some observers were outraged, believing that cartoonist Sean Delonas had 
likened President Barack Obama to a chimp. I thought it equally likely he 
meant to taunt congressional Democrats (the president, after all, did 
not “write” the stimulus bill) and had inadvertently blundered into an 
awful racial stereotype. Given that ambiguity, my instinct was to give 
Delonas the benefit of the doubt.

Then he opened his mouth.

He and his bosses, actually. First, there was the strident 
defense: “absolutely friggin’ ridiculous,” said the cartoonist in a 
statement to CNN. Later, with protesters ringing its building, and finding 
itself questioned and criticized by everyone from the National Association 
of Black Journalists to New York Gov. David Paterson to the NAACP, the 
paper issued a grudging, churlish apology in which, even while expressing 
regret, it tried to blame the controversy on “opportunists” to whom “no 
apology is due.”

It took nearly a week before it dawned on the paper’s brain trust that 
maybe people had good reason for their vexation. Tuesday, media baron 
Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Post, issued a new apology, no strings 
attached.

That it took so long to do the obvious speaks volumes.

Let’s be clear on one thing: The Post has a right to provoke and even 
offend. That is absolute and sacrosanct. But it is difficult not to be 
troubled by a suffocating cluelessness that allows it to provoke and 
offend without knowing it or meaning it or even, apparently, caring about 
it – and then, to dismiss provocation and offense as the work 
of “opportunists” instead of seeking to understand why people were so 
upset.

The paper’s attitude and its evident ignorance of historical context are 
not unique. Rather, they have their echo in too many white Americans whose 
default defense is the proverbial good offense whenever they feel cornered 
on the subject of race.

And yes, that attitude is fed by the fact that in recent years too many 
African-Americans have found it convenient to cry wolf where race is 
concerned. But if arrogance on the one end and disingenuousness on the 
other are our only alternatives, we’re in trouble.

Fittingly, this all unfolds in the wake of Attorney General Eric Holder’s 
contention that we need to become better and braver in talking about race. 
Take the Post’s self-satisfied ignorance as Exhibit A.

The paper didn’t know that it didn’t know. One hopes the next time 
controversy comes calling it will, before deploying its defenses, do what 
it should have done here.

Shut up and listen.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


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