6 ms·

Thankfully, the unhinged racist who drew it just shuffled off this mortal coil. He had many more which were just as terrible as this.

flukus 9y ago
The cartoon wasn't racist, it's your own bias that makes you think it is.
- d_t_w 9y ago
  Your opinion is a fairly common one in Australia, or at least it is one commonly expressed.
- dazc 9y ago
  An Aussie friend once told me about a friend of hers who killed a person while drink driving. She said "he (the victim) was only and Ab, but she (her friend) got done anyway" as if it was a perfectly normal thing to say.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  I'm not Australian, but I went back and looked at it again and I can't see any possible way to interpret it that isn't racist. Perhaps you could fill me in?
  - strken 9y ago
    I read it as a statement that the problems faced by remote aboriginal communities are structural and obey institutional inertia; that they are hard problems. We have a history of well-intentioned reformers coming in and making everything much worse: the stolen generation, the NTER, laws against alcohol consumption that cause even more destructive patterns of behaviour, etc. I've known men and women who trained as police, and went off to the NT rosy-cheeked idealists. All came back either depressed or outright racist. It's a hard problem. Abusive parents create abused children, who grow up to be abusive parents themselves; the same is true of poverty. Abuse and poverty are grinding cycles that are very hard to disrupt. How do you teach a boy who's never met his father about the importance of being there for his own sons and daughters? How do you talk about the cycle without blaming or objectivising the human beings trapped within? But then, maybe Bill Leak was just plain old racist, and I read a pattern in the noise.
    - d_t_w 9y ago
      Thanks, what an intriguing level of detail to draw from the cartoon, I have to admit I never read even the slightest amount of that from it. To me the cartoon is staggeringly racist. Clearly, deliberately, outrageously racist. And I am deliberate in my use of the words "deliberate" and "outrageous" because personally I believe in Australia that the proprietor of this particular newspaper makes his money by manufacturing outrage. To me the cartoon is as racist as the day is long, it's as racist as it is blunt. There's no finesse. There's no guile. There's no dog-whistle or wink to the unspoken. It's a full frontal racist scaling of the ramparts. Which is why I find your comment so intriguing, because you clearly hold a detailed opinion, well communicated, of many different facets you have drawn from the content and how they relate back to social issues in the Northern Territory and yet none of what confronts me occurs to you. So can I ask you. If I were the proprietor of a newspaper that liked this cartoon but needed it to actually be racist. What would you change? Could you change anything to make this cartoon racist? Or is it not possible. Perhaps we just disagree on what racism is. Personally, I can't think of a single thing that I could change to increase the amount of racism it expresses. I'm interested to hear your opinion.
      - 2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
        > Thanks, what an intriguing level of detail to draw from the cartoon, I have to admit I never read even the slightest amount of that from it. When I saw the cartoon I thought it was clearly political satire. When have political cartoons not been heavily dependent on context and difficult to understand if you weren't familiar with what had been happening during the week? I've heard/read a fair amount of support for and against the cartoon. Some support for it has apparently come from people who have actually gone up to remote aboriginal communities. Some people think that it's a truthful depiction of the problems that are happening up there. Most of the coverage from the fallout of publishing the cartoon, seemed to me, to be about how racist it was. A lot of outrage. Some stuff about 18C. More outrage. Panel shows with a token aboriginal. Yet more outrage. I honestly don't recall anyone examining what problems indigenous communities actually have. So I guess the cartoon was a failure; it used racist, racial stereotypes and no positive outcome came from it. We're seeing more and more silliness being imported from the US and UK. Ayaan Hirsi Ali cancelled a talk because of security fears recently. She's been here before and given talks. What the hell changed? I think just this Thursday there were students planning to protest a screening of the Red Pill that was organised by other students at the University of Sydney. Everyone wants to live in an echo chamber. I don't know how we move on from this. I want to stay on topic. Damn the LNP for screwing up the NBN. I will not get the shitty version of it in my area until 2019.
  - flukus 9y ago
    It's about remote aboriginal communities that have problems like this, not aborigines as a whole. Note that the cop is also an aborignal he's probably the type that is fed up with dealing with this shit. I'd say the people that think it's racist are the racist ones, all they see is the skin color. They'd think it was a funny joke (or at least be indifferent) about rednecks of the characters were white, but lost their shit when the person is black. For context, the two biggest issues are alcoholism and especially remoteness. Imagine a poor black community in the US just after segregation ended and then imagine that they were 300Km from the nearest corner store (or maybe this is a problem in the US?). Our welfare system could probably eliminate a lot of the problems in a generation or two in cities but it doesn't make much difference in remote communities.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - ars 9y ago
    You realize that you are implying that any negative cartoon with a black person in it is automatically racism. That's why flukus said "it's your own bias that makes you think it is". If you weren't biased you would just see people being criticized.
    - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
      > You realize that you are implying that any negative cartoon with a black person in it is automatically racism. No. If this was a comic strip telling a story about a deadbeat father who happened to be black, that would be one thing. But it's a political cartoon. The entire point of the medium is to make broad points using clearly-understood imagery. If a political cartoonist draws a caricature of a black man (big red lips and all), it's either representing a specific public figure, or black people in general (aboriginals, in this case). So unless you're arguing that the father is a caricature of a specific person who was in the news at the time, there is no way it's not supposed to represent all aboriginals.
  - d_t_w 9y ago
    Thanks for sharing your opinion. The earnest responses you've received are fairly representative of commonly expressed opinions in Australia. I don't believe it's the majority view, but certainly at large minority at least - including the Prime Minister it appears. The further context is that cartoon was printed in The Australian, which is basically a Murdoch tabloid but masquerades as the paper of note in Australia. The cartoon in particular was drawn in response to a "Four Corners" (TV) report on the treatment/abuse of children at the Northern Territory's Don Dale detention centre, many of whom were Indigenous.
- beedogs 9y ago
  oh ok

flukus 9y ago

The cartoon wasn't racist, it's your own bias that makes you think it is.

d_t_w 9y ago
Your opinion is a fairly common one in Australia, or at least it is one commonly expressed.
dazc 9y ago
An Aussie friend once told me about a friend of hers who killed a person while drink driving. She said "he (the victim) was only and Ab, but she (her friend) got done anyway" as if it was a perfectly normal thing to say.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
I'm not Australian, but I went back and looked at it again and I can't see any possible way to interpret it that isn't racist. Perhaps you could fill me in?
- strken 9y ago
  I read it as a statement that the problems faced by remote aboriginal communities are structural and obey institutional inertia; that they are hard problems. We have a history of well-intentioned reformers coming in and making everything much worse: the stolen generation, the NTER, laws against alcohol consumption that cause even more destructive patterns of behaviour, etc. I've known men and women who trained as police, and went off to the NT rosy-cheeked idealists. All came back either depressed or outright racist. It's a hard problem. Abusive parents create abused children, who grow up to be abusive parents themselves; the same is true of poverty. Abuse and poverty are grinding cycles that are very hard to disrupt. How do you teach a boy who's never met his father about the importance of being there for his own sons and daughters? How do you talk about the cycle without blaming or objectivising the human beings trapped within? But then, maybe Bill Leak was just plain old racist, and I read a pattern in the noise.
  - d_t_w 9y ago
    Thanks, what an intriguing level of detail to draw from the cartoon, I have to admit I never read even the slightest amount of that from it. To me the cartoon is staggeringly racist. Clearly, deliberately, outrageously racist. And I am deliberate in my use of the words "deliberate" and "outrageous" because personally I believe in Australia that the proprietor of this particular newspaper makes his money by manufacturing outrage. To me the cartoon is as racist as the day is long, it's as racist as it is blunt. There's no finesse. There's no guile. There's no dog-whistle or wink to the unspoken. It's a full frontal racist scaling of the ramparts. Which is why I find your comment so intriguing, because you clearly hold a detailed opinion, well communicated, of many different facets you have drawn from the content and how they relate back to social issues in the Northern Territory and yet none of what confronts me occurs to you. So can I ask you. If I were the proprietor of a newspaper that liked this cartoon but needed it to actually be racist. What would you change? Could you change anything to make this cartoon racist? Or is it not possible. Perhaps we just disagree on what racism is. Personally, I can't think of a single thing that I could change to increase the amount of racism it expresses. I'm interested to hear your opinion.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 9y ago
      > Thanks, what an intriguing level of detail to draw from the cartoon, I have to admit I never read even the slightest amount of that from it. When I saw the cartoon I thought it was clearly political satire. When have political cartoons not been heavily dependent on context and difficult to understand if you weren't familiar with what had been happening during the week? I've heard/read a fair amount of support for and against the cartoon. Some support for it has apparently come from people who have actually gone up to remote aboriginal communities. Some people think that it's a truthful depiction of the problems that are happening up there. Most of the coverage from the fallout of publishing the cartoon, seemed to me, to be about how racist it was. A lot of outrage. Some stuff about 18C. More outrage. Panel shows with a token aboriginal. Yet more outrage. I honestly don't recall anyone examining what problems indigenous communities actually have. So I guess the cartoon was a failure; it used racist, racial stereotypes and no positive outcome came from it. We're seeing more and more silliness being imported from the US and UK. Ayaan Hirsi Ali cancelled a talk because of security fears recently. She's been here before and given talks. What the hell changed? I think just this Thursday there were students planning to protest a screening of the Red Pill that was organised by other students at the University of Sydney. Everyone wants to live in an echo chamber. I don't know how we move on from this. I want to stay on topic. Damn the LNP for screwing up the NBN. I will not get the shitty version of it in my area until 2019.
- flukus 9y ago
  It's about remote aboriginal communities that have problems like this, not aborigines as a whole. Note that the cop is also an aborignal he's probably the type that is fed up with dealing with this shit. I'd say the people that think it's racist are the racist ones, all they see is the skin color. They'd think it was a funny joke (or at least be indifferent) about rednecks of the characters were white, but lost their shit when the person is black. For context, the two biggest issues are alcoholism and especially remoteness. Imagine a poor black community in the US just after segregation ended and then imagine that they were 300Km from the nearest corner store (or maybe this is a problem in the US?). Our welfare system could probably eliminate a lot of the problems in a generation or two in cities but it doesn't make much difference in remote communities.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- ars 9y ago
  You realize that you are implying that any negative cartoon with a black person in it is automatically racism. That's why flukus said "it's your own bias that makes you think it is". If you weren't biased you would just see people being criticized.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    > You realize that you are implying that any negative cartoon with a black person in it is automatically racism. No. If this was a comic strip telling a story about a deadbeat father who happened to be black, that would be one thing. But it's a political cartoon. The entire point of the medium is to make broad points using clearly-understood imagery. If a political cartoonist draws a caricature of a black man (big red lips and all), it's either representing a specific public figure, or black people in general (aboriginals, in this case). So unless you're arguing that the father is a caricature of a specific person who was in the news at the time, there is no way it's not supposed to represent all aboriginals.
- d_t_w 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing your opinion. The earnest responses you've received are fairly representative of commonly expressed opinions in Australia. I don't believe it's the majority view, but certainly at large minority at least - including the Prime Minister it appears. The further context is that cartoon was printed in The Australian, which is basically a Murdoch tabloid but masquerades as the paper of note in Australia. The cartoon in particular was drawn in response to a "Four Corners" (TV) report on the treatment/abuse of children at the Northern Territory's Don Dale detention centre, many of whom were Indigenous.
beedogs 9y ago
oh ok