Barack Obama Nigger Cartoons

On Wednesday evening this week I received a text message from a classmate of mine encouraging me to attend a last-minute meeting concerning the campus newspaper "[calling] Barack Obama a nigger in a published 'witty' cartoon". I did not attend the meeting because I had not seen the cartoon. The next morning, however, when the class met I viewed the piece.The joke ran as follows (note that this cartoon was published the day after the election):

A young girl on the campaign trail for Obama is going from door to door. She knocks on the door of a house, only to find a middle-aged white woman answer. The girl asks, "Who are you voting for on election day?". The woman says she doesn't know, but she turns back and shouts to her husband, "Melvyn, who are we voting for on election day?", to which the man replies, "The nigger!". The woman turns back to the girl and says, "We're voting for the nigger".

Whatever you may think of the comedic merits of this cartoon, I appeal to your good sense, dear reader. If I have translated the cartoon adequately you will be able to see the inherent joke. Nevertheless, living on a campus this size, hundreds of people congregated to criticise the supposed racism of this independent publication. Letters of complaint flooded the mailbox of the Wildcat and they ran an article in the following day's paper regarding the meeting and the ensuing furor. Significantly, the paper did not publish the cartoon again the next day for any of those who may have missed it, even though they ran a lengthy section dedicated to the repercussions. Clearly, you might argue, it's journalisticly irresponsible not to. Further, on the Wildcat website, the editor in chief issued a turgid and bed-wetting explanation, claiming that she, in fact, published the wrong cartoon. What's more, the president of the University of Arizona, Robert Shelton, published a response claiming those who people took offense "are rightfully shocked, saddened, outraged and disappointed by the message this cartoon sent". People quickly demanded an apology from the paper so that "this is never allowed to happen again", and, if not, they would begin to attack the advertising base, from which the paper gains its only source of income. It is here that I must come to the defense of the piece.

There are three degenerative stages of argument from the point of view of those attacking the cartoon. First, it's racist. To me, this is a clear misreading of the piece. The fact that these are white caricatures intends to show the recent cultural shift in attitudes towards ethnicity and skin tone, whilst highlighting the direct manifestation of what the elections achieved for minority groups. Indeed, this is a white, home-owning, middle-aged couple who are, contrary to popular assumptions, going to vote for the very thing they may be bigoted and prejudiced against. The irony lies in their identification of Obama as a "nigger", a deeply offensive term, because this would suggest that they are aligned firmly against Obama, and yet the intend to vote for him. This is not some insipid racial slur against a black public figure from a right-wing neo-Nazi do-rag publication, but rather an independent newspaper carefully providing a megaphone for clever public address. This moves me to the second line of argument.

Second, the inclusion of the very word, 'nigger', itself is implicitly insulting, and has no place in a campus newspaper. We now begin to negotiate areas of free speech. Before I begin, it's worth noting that the cartoonist actually took care not to do this, but rather play with the medium of cartoon frames and chop the end of the word - we only see "nigge" in one frame, and then "nigg" in the next. This is hardly a sound defence, but it's important to recognise the cultural taboo, just as the cartoonist has done. This may, dear reader, remind you of the Danish Cartoon fiasco of 2006, which still makes one's blood curdle at the very insinuation. Their placards that promoted killing those who cartoon Islam, or beheading those who insult Mohammad, were couched in the doctrinal teaching that forbids the visual representation of the prophet. Is the same thought-process not in play here? Is it totally unacceptable to use the word "nigger" in any context whatsoever? Surely not. As I am demonstrating in this post, it's necessary to confront but not to outlaw its use.

Third, once all else fails, it is the obligation of the prosecutor to claim that "the fact that people are offended is enough for me". Why? I accept anyone's right to their opinion, and their right to take offense; but in the same breath, those who take offense must affirm the right of those to free expression. In the constitutional democracy of the United States, where such freedoms should be deeply respected and upheld, it's morally impossible to criticize one but not the other. To do so would be to appear complicit with the Mullahs who promulgated the burning of Danish embassies in 2006, or, for example, support the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989 following the publication of The Satanic Verses that led to the death of a translator and countless other acts of violence and open repression.

It is with the evidence before you that I encourage you to give the above motion the resounding indictment that it deserves. It is unsurprising that I cannot link you to the cartoon online. Everything is all too reminiscent of 2006. To demand apologies for freedom of expression attacks the very core of our free society and establishes the basis for a new climate of fear whereupon nothing satirical or ironic is acceptable. Lastly, I repeat my proposal that to take offense is to misread.