“To get to the heart of this country, one must examine its racial soul,” said Attorney General Eric Holder in a speech marking Black History Month to hundreds of Justice Department employees.
Examine its racial soul, huh? What a way to take the advice and run with it, New York Post. The paper’s famed editorial cartoonist Sean Delonas sketched a bloodied chimpanzee collapsing under the bullets of two befuddled cops who say, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”
The Post
apologized later that week for printing the cartoon, claiming that it was
indeed the parody of an incident in
Connecticut where police were forced to shoot and kill a chimpanzee named
Travis after it mauled a woman, not a figurative representation of President
Barack Obama.
Naturally, the apology was prompted by the slick-back Al Sharpton who is deemed “the” mouthpiece for the African-American community as it pertains to all things sticky.
And, as much as the nation disliked being called “a nation of cowards” by Holder, here – in the form of a graphical image - was an instantaneous manifestation of his allusion to our nation’s disinclination for dealing with racial issues.
"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,'' said Holder.
The cartoon – as much as The Post tried to explain itself – resonated as a racist symbol to a large population of America who recall quite vividly being likened to wild primates, who were told to return to the zoos from whence they came, who were deemed uncivilized and boorish. These were the memories that the cartoon evoked for them. Just like the N-word, it would be foolish to deny the racist history associated with this symbol.
However, give anyone $100 bucks to find a kid in middle school or lower who would even construe the same meaning from this cartoon that Sharpton and countless other individuals socialized by our nation’s base racial history have deduced.
This demonstrates the progress that the youth of the nation have made in leaving behind the symbols of old and embracing the “diverse future [this country] is fated to have,” as Holder said.
And, as much offense as critics have taken about being called “cowards,” they neglected to take in the body of Holder’s speech where he shouldered the burden of leading the nation to a new birth of freedom where “Black History,” which is “such a major part of our national story” will not have to be “divorced from the whole.” And, images like this one will no longer represent Blacks in America.
The fact is much of America still holds racist attitudes, but the young grow to affect the racial landscape of a country. If young people are not prescribers to these attitudes, then impending diversity can indeed become “a positive, powerful force,” and not at all a “reason for stagnation and polarization.”