I write to express my profound dismay at The Columbian’s decision to publish a racist editorial cartoon that cynically depicts black protesters of George Floyd’s death as caring only about looting businesses for big-screen televisions.
Political cartoons can be used to illustrate important and profound points in our national discourse, but they also have a long and deeply unhappy history of quickly descending into racist caricature. This cartoon represents another data point on that shameful arc of racism used to deflect from racism (in this case, the depraved death of Mr. Floyd).
What concerns me about this decision by The Columbian to run Mr. McKee’s cartoon is that one of two things has to be true: either objections were made within the newsroom to the racist nature of the cartoon and those objections were overruled for reasons surpassing understanding, or no objections were made, which would suggest that some intensive remediation in anti-racism is urgently required for the newspaper and its staff.
Whichever scenario is true, The Columbian revealed to its readers that it needs to engage in some very real soul-searching, and soon.
