Blog | Newspaper criticized for ‘racist’ Obama watermelon cartoon. Is it?
The title of my 2008 book: “Proud. Black. Southern. (But I still don’t eat watermelon in front of white people.)”
Many readers have asked me why would I name it such a thing. For those in the know, it is obvious. It is a play on the racist stereotype about black people and watermelon, which has a deep, dark ugly history that harken back to slavery. I like making fun of things that are supposed to anger me, which is why the cover of the book has an image of a black man’s arm with a Confederate flag tattoo.
Those not well-versed in that part of our ugly history find the subtitle odd.
I’m guessing the cartoonist at the center of a firestorm over a depiction of President Obama and an image of watermelon-flavored toothpaste would be in the latter group.
Clearly, he did not understand the historical roots at play.
I don’t believe he did it for racist reasons. Had he gone with raspberry-flavored, as he did in a second version of the cartoon, there would be no controversy.
I get that some people don’t know or understand this history. But if you are writing or drawing for a major newspaper, you should.
No, I don’t believe he should be fired or even disciplined, just given a history lesson so he can be better informed about issues he clearly needs to understand better.
For more context, go here: This is why your fried chicken and watermelon lunch is racist
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Here’s a piece I wrote about the issue in the run-up to Obama’s election in 2008:
Last night goes out to all the strength that came before , Friday, August 29, 2008
The black man was lying on his back next to a Dumpster. Near his right hand was an empty KFC bucket, to his left pieces of watermelon.
The picture was attached to a message titled: "Barack Obama 's victory party."
It was part of a mass e-mail sent by a regular reader, maybe by accident, a reader who has told me a thousand times how much of a Christian he is, how racism is overblown, how it would go away if we just let it go.
That was Monday. It's still in my inbox. I've wondered how to respond, or even if I should. But on Thursday, it didn't matter, because even though that reader was using racist stereotypes to make fun of "Barack Obama 's victory party," America's victory party was taking place in Denver.
Because as much as that e-mail - and the e-mail that said I wouldn't have this job if I weren't black - sting, they can't hold a candle to what took place last night, because it reminded me why America made it to this place. Because a countless number of people - white Americans and black Americans and Jewish Americans and Latino Americans and Native Americans - stood in the breach against racism, even when it wasn't convenient or comfortable.
Because they forced this country to live up to its ideals and wouldn't take no for an answer, even when it cost them their livelihoods, sometimes their lives.
Thursday night was America's victory party because Obama was standing on the shoulders of Martin Luther King Jr. when Obama became the first black man to head a major party presidential ticket.
It was America's party because King stood on the shoulders of a white mother of six, Daisy Gabrielle, who stood in the breach.
During the height of the civil rights movement, she took the hand of her elementary-age daughter, entered the "gauntlet of hecklers and shovers" - repeating the Twenty-third Psalm along the way - and walked into a school that had allowed in "a single Negro child," according to "The Race Beat," a book about the press and the Civil Rights Movement.
A woman told Gabrielle she was making a spectacle and sacrificing her neighbors.
"I told her when it comes to sacrificing my neighbors or my principles, I'd sacrifice my neighbors," she said. "Neighbors change; principles never do."
Thursday was America's victory party because Gabrielle stood on the shoulders of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells-Barnett and Archibald Grimke, black men and women; Henry Moskowitz, a Jewish man; Mary White Ovington, a white woman; Oswald Garrison Villard, a German-born white man; and William English Walling - a white man whose family once owned slaves.
They founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 after an eruption of lynchings in Springfield, Ill., the place where Obama would, just short of a century later, announce his presidential campaign.
They stood on the shoulders of Jim Hoffman, a white Alabama farmer. In the early years of the 20th century, Hoffman stood in the breach. While many of his contemporaries participated in a de facto slavery - using the judicial system to re-enslave blacks up through the mid-1940s - or stood silently by, Hoffman testified about what he knew, legitimizing the word of blacks who had told a grand jury of the rapes and beatings and murders they and others endured, according to "Slavery by Another Name."
Obama and King and all the rest stood on the shoulders of Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.
He's been described as the least racist man of his time, a time in which most others were either ignoring or excusing slavery. He was white. He pushed for the end of that peculiar institution. Pushed hard. He was one of the people, along with Frederick Douglass, who steeled the resolve of Abraham Lincoln.
They all stood on the shoulders of Crispus Attucks, a bi-racial man (black and American Indian) like Obama (black and white), who was one of the first martyrs of the American Revolution.
There are so many others, such as those who housed runaway slaves to help Harriett Tubman usher them to freedom. There are too many to name, too many who made a difference without making a headline. No matter how ugly things got, there were always Americans who stood in the breach, who reminded the country to hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are equal.
Their shoulders were strong enough to provide the foundation upon which the 75,000 who showed up Thursday night stood to watch the first black man accept a major party nomination.
It's because of them that last night wasn't a political celebration - but an American one.
This story was originally published October 1, 2014 at 12:12 PM with the headline "Blog | Newspaper criticized for ‘racist’ Obama watermelon cartoon. Is it? ."