6 ms·

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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.
    - d_t_w 10y ago
      Satire would suggest humour? Like you I've read all sorts of discussion of the cartoon, not once have I heard it described as funny. Perhaps I'm reading the wrong articles. What is satire that is not funny, crap satire? I was familiar with the affairs of the week, I just didn't read the precision of the OP because I don't think the cartoon was clever. As noted, I thought it was deliberately provocative, outrageous, and deeply, deeply racist. I find the Australian commentariat interesting: > So I guess the cartoon was a failure; it used racist, racial stereotypes and no positive outcome came from it. We agree, the cartoon is racist. So why all the circumlocution around the central point? Is it because it raises uncomfortable questions about Australian culture? Is it really appropriate for your Prime Minister to, of his own volition, choose to exalt a cartoon that includes racist, racial stereotypes? I expect the OP is a reasonable person, and I suspect I won't ever receive a response to "How would you make that cartoon racist?", because literally every ham-fisted racist trope has already been applied. There's nothing subtle about it. I'll posit this. That cartoon would never have been printed in The Times of London, The New York Times, or The New Zealand Herald. If it had been we wouldn't collectively expend one iota of the discussion required in Australia to ascertain that, yes, it is racist. It's not really a question that requires much inspection, but here we are. I'll accept our British, Kiwi, and American friends if they choose to contradict me on that. And yes, the NBN is a disaster. We're in agreement again.
- flukus 10y ago
  The worst thing is that if they were Anglo children, the stolen generation is exactly what we'd be doing. We have to bridge that gap somehow.
flukus 10y 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 10y ago
  [deleted]
ars 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.

strken 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.
  - d_t_w 10y ago
    Satire would suggest humour? Like you I've read all sorts of discussion of the cartoon, not once have I heard it described as funny. Perhaps I'm reading the wrong articles. What is satire that is not funny, crap satire? I was familiar with the affairs of the week, I just didn't read the precision of the OP because I don't think the cartoon was clever. As noted, I thought it was deliberately provocative, outrageous, and deeply, deeply racist. I find the Australian commentariat interesting: > So I guess the cartoon was a failure; it used racist, racial stereotypes and no positive outcome came from it. We agree, the cartoon is racist. So why all the circumlocution around the central point? Is it because it raises uncomfortable questions about Australian culture? Is it really appropriate for your Prime Minister to, of his own volition, choose to exalt a cartoon that includes racist, racial stereotypes? I expect the OP is a reasonable person, and I suspect I won't ever receive a response to "How would you make that cartoon racist?", because literally every ham-fisted racist trope has already been applied. There's nothing subtle about it. I'll posit this. That cartoon would never have been printed in The Times of London, The New York Times, or The New Zealand Herald. If it had been we wouldn't collectively expend one iota of the discussion required in Australia to ascertain that, yes, it is racist. It's not really a question that requires much inspection, but here we are. I'll accept our British, Kiwi, and American friends if they choose to contradict me on that. And yes, the NBN is a disaster. We're in agreement again.
flukus 10y ago
The worst thing is that if they were Anglo children, the stolen generation is exactly what we'd be doing. We have to bridge that gap somehow.

flukus 10y 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 10y ago
[deleted]

ars 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.