Protesters picketed the paper's New York City offices The New York Post newspaper has apologised to readers offended by a cartoon some people say was a racist depiction of President Barack Obama.
Cartoonist Sean Delonas drew police having shot dead a chimp, saying "they'll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill".
The paper said it had been meant to "mock an ineptly written" bill.
Commentators had denounced the cartoon, and protesters picketed the newspaper's headquarters.
"To those who were offended by the image, we apologise," the paper said in an editorial.
However, the paper went on to accuse "some in the media and in public life who have had differences with the Post in the past" of using the row over the cartoon "as an opportunity for payback".
How commentators first reacted to the cartoon "To them, no apology is due," the paper said.
"Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else," it concluded.
On Tuesday President Obama signed into law a $787bn (£548bn) economic stimulus package.
The plan only passed through Congress after weeks of political wrangling.
'Racist drivel'
The New York Post said earlier that the cartoon was "a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimp in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy," said editor-in-chief Col Allen.
It was widely reported in the US that a pet chimp was shot in Stamford, Connecticut, on Monday after a serious and disfiguring attack on a friend of its owner.
Mr Allen's explanation was rejected by Andrew Rojecki, co-author of the book The Black Image in the White Mind.
To compare the nation's first African-American commander-in-chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel
Barbara Ciara National Association of Black Journalists
"The cops are saying, 'Someone's going to have to write the next stimulus bill.' Well, who wrote the last stimulus bill? It's Obama and the Democratic Party, but really it's associated with one person - and that's Obama," Mr Rojecki told the Chicago Tribune.
"How could The Post let this cartoon pass as satire?" asked Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, in a statement.
"To compare the nation's first African-American commander-in-chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel."
Blog posts on the topic attracted hundreds of angry comments, while complainants reportedly jammed the newspaper switchboard and protested outside its headquarters.
The civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton said he associated the cartoon with "historic racist attacks" which depicted African-Americans as "synonymous with monkeys".
Cartoonist Sean Delonas has stirred controversy before, with cartoons which have made fun of Heather Mills's amputated leg and depicted Muslims as terrorists.
WHAT WAS SAID ABOUT THE CARTOON Editorial writers and cartoonists certainly have a right to criticize the bill and its supporters. But this attempt at humor or satire or whatever else it was intended to be fell far short of the mark.
Gabe Pressman, MSNBC
The drawing, from famed cartoonist Sean Delonas, is rife with violent imagery and racial undertones.
The Huffington Post, which received thousands of comments.
What could be seen as silly humor if President George W Bush were in the White House has to be seen through the lens of America's racist past.
Roland S Martin, CNN
As an African American, I must admit the cartoon made my bile rise somewhat when I contemplated it. But political cartoonists generally aim for the topically provocative, not the politically correct. On that level, Delonas succeeded.
Frank James, The Swamp
It is worth noting that congressional Democrats wrote the bill, not Obama or anyone in the White House. If the conservative New York Post is calling Harry Reid, Max Baucus and Nancy Pelosi a bunch of monkeys, is that worth Sharpton getting worked up about?
The Guardian's Deadline USA Blog
I'm not one to shy away from calling people or things out for being racist. I just think that some small amount of thought has to go into something for it to actually be racist.
Dennis DiClaudio in Comedy Central's Indecision blog
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Posts: 5454 | From: Holland | Registered: Aug 2008
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Jewish & Gentile FEAR is a deeply embedded psychological component of whiteness. Probably from distant African Albino memories. Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006
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posted
I've always thought we colored people have an opposite mindset.
White skin is seen **psychologically** as harmless ...
I now believe her hypothesis is a tad off though.
With our imaginations and depending on what we are 'learned' and thinking patterns developed in how we do learn, people can be made to fear or love almost anything.
I liked the book though.
quote:Originally posted by Egmond Codfried:
quote:Originally posted by Egmond Codfried:
the top post is just silly to me but rofl @ big Mike Moore and the boy who called wolf
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:But it reminds me of an old text I recently discovered online – “The Negro: What Is His Ethnological Status?” It was published in 1867 under the pseudonym “Ariel.” In fact, the author was a Southern clergyman, the Rev. Buckner H. Payne of Nashville, Tenn.
Rev. Payne argued that Negroes weren’t descended from Adam and Eve.
“... Adam and Eve being white, ... they could never be the father or mother of the kinky-headed, low forehead, flat nose, thick lip and black-skinned negro...”
The minister continued: “[I]t follows, beyond all the reasonings of men on earth to controvert, that [the negro] was created before Adam, that, like all beasts and cattle, they have no souls.”
Rev. Payne then broke it down scientifically: “[W]e take up the monkey, and trace him ... through his upward and advancing orders – baboon, ourang-outang and gorilla, up to the negro, another noble animal, the noblest of the beast creation. The difference between these higher orders of the monkey and the negro is very slight, and consists mainly in this one thing: the negro can utter sounds that can be imitated; hence he could talk with Adam and Eve, for they could imitate his sounds.”
(You can download the full 48-page text of Buckner Payne’s “The Negro” as a PDF file, courtesy of Google, by following this link.)
To me, it’s no coincidence that this description of blacks as non-human was published in 1867 – after the South lost the Civil War. Southern whites didn’t have to bother defining Negroes as animals while they were enslaved. But once the Negro was free – and politically empowered during Reconstruction – that’s when the defeated white Southerner felt the need (psychologically, not just politically) to put forth this ugly idea.
And guess what? When white Southerners reclaimed their political dominance and disenfranchised black people, the monkey thing stuck.
In 1900, Charles Carroll published a book building upon Buckner Payne’s. “The Negro a Beast” cites the Apostle Paul’s declaration that “there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts.” Carroll wrote: “[I]t becomes plain that the dog, the swine and the negro all belong to one kind of flesh – the flesh of beasts.”
He argued further that the “red, yellow and brown” races resulted from the “amalgamation” of whites and blacks. Therefore, all those non-whites aren’t human either. To argue otherwise, according to Carroll, was a blasphemy equal Darwin’s theory of evolution:
“This modern church theory that the negro and the mixed-bloods are included in the Plan of Salvation is another result of putting man and the ape in the same family.”
(Charles Carroll wasn’t a clergyman, but there are many references to him as “Professor.” I haven’t been able to find out where he was a professor, or what his field of scholarship was.)
Carroll’s book was sold door-to-door to across the South and was “enormously influential,” according to Jane Dailey, a Johns Hopkins University historian. In a 2004 essay, Prof. Dailey quotes an earlier historian:
“During the opening years of the twentieth century [‘The Negro a Beast’] has become the Scripture of tens of thousands of poor whites, and its doctrine is maintained with an appalling stubbornness and persistence.”
(You can download “The Negro a Beast” as a PDF file by following this link.)
To give you a sense of the impact of “The Negro a Beast,” I dug up a reference to it by Bill Arp, a newspaper columnist who was hugely popular in the South. The following appeared in Arp’s column in the Atlanta Constitution on May 18, 1902:
“I have just received a pleasant letter from a North Carolina friend asking me what I think of Carroll’s book, ‘The Negro a Beast,’ and he asks, ‘Do you believe the {censored} is a beast?’ I answered at the bottom of his letter, ‘Which {censored}?’ ”
Zing!
Which brings us back to Larry Auster and his thoughtful readership. I tracked down an email address for “Robert B.,” and I asked him:
“Isn't it funny that Lawrence Auster takes such grievous offense at the suggestion he harbors an animus towards black people... but he'll publish two letters on his website (including one from you) comparing black people to monkeys?”
Robert B. graciously replied:
“... I see no problem with it--Africa is what it is. Africans in America are what they are.... I have, from the very beginning, viewed the Black fashion trend of letting their rears hang out of their pants as akin to baboons with their brightly colored rears sticking out as well. The practice of grabbing one’s genitals is equally barbaric and is, as you can see from the article, akin to monkeys. Denying the obvious is a liberal trait, not an intelligent one. ...”
I was dissapointed in Boondocks Season 2 (in the few eps I watched), but the above reminds me of Uncle Ruckus's version of "Catch Freeman" in an episode I laughed at:
quote:Originally posted by Serpent Wizdom: they are not sorry for anything and truly the pic has an very disturbing, underlying message.
it makes me think that there is a deep, sinister desire to actually see the man (obama) killed.
not funny.
Looking at it again with my knowledge of how people can act and think (in this case whites) I see your point.
When a person is likened to what is considered a thing, even something "possibly good", if there is a level of animosity this usually means they'd have no problem with imparting physical harm.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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Really? Can't help but wonder what soured hus apples.
quote:Originally posted by myself: this usually means they'd have no problem with imparting physical harm.
Didn't mean to imply that the intentions are always as drastic as death - this is commonly seen adolescent or child cases where the 'dehumanizer' is weaker than the object of ire, or otherwise cannot easily harm the object though without unwanted repercussions - intentions could be as tame as verbal exchange or assault on reputation or even just doing something themselves not at all involving the person that the person would not like if the person's sort of an authority figure.
In cases where the object of dehumization is someone who the dehumanizer feels has done some offense and is still a threat to do an offence.
was NOT talking about the stuff that's not meant or cared about, the harmless friendly joking, etc so it's kind of like name calling in that respect
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Iranian TV show scrapped after child calls toy monkey "Ahmadinejad" live on air (No problem, however, when Iranian sponsored terrorist organization Hezbollah runs children programs teaching that Jews are, not just monkeys, but pigs.)
Oh, the innocence of youth!
Iranian TV show scrapped after child calls toy monkey Ahmadinejad live on air March 11, 2009
An Iranian children's television show has been pulled after a child appearing on the programme called his pet monkey Ahmadinejad live on air.
When the presenter of Amoo Pourang (Uncle Pourang), a programme watched by millions of Iranian children three times a week on state TV, asked the name of the toy the boy had been given as a reward for behaving himself, the child replied: "Well, my father calls him Ahmadinejad."
The father's likely unease at his son's honesty was matched by the programme makers after the state broadcaster, IRIB, immediately responded by removing the show from viewing schedules, The Guardian reported.
The popular show has been running for a very successful seven years but is now due to [be]screened for the final time next week, the paper added.
Jahan News, a conservative website, said the decision was sparked by "the high financial and spiritual damage" caused by live broadcasts.
Eluding to the naming of the monkey, the statement highlighted an incident in which "a child in a live telephone line compared its doll to one of the well-known authorities and managers"...
Discrimination against blacks is linked to dehumanization, according to paper
BY LISA TREI
Jennifer Eberhardt Crude historical depictions of African Americans as ape-like may have disappeared from mainstream U.S. culture, but research presented in a new paper by psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes.
In addition, the findings show that society is more likely to condone violence against black criminal suspects as a result of its broader inability to accept African Americans as fully human, according to the researchers.
Co-author Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford associate professor of psychology who is black, said she was shocked by the results, particularly since they involved subjects born after Jim Crow and the civil rights movement. "This was actually some of the most depressing work I have done," she said. "This shook me up. You have suspicions when you do the work—intuitions—you have a hunch. But it was hard to prepare for how strong [the black-ape association] was—how we were able to pick it up every time."
The paper, "Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences," is the result of a series of six previously unpublished studies conducted by Eberhardt, Pennsylvania State University psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff (the lead author and a former student of Eberhardt's) and Matthew C. Jackson and Melissa J. Williams, graduate students at Penn State and Berkeley, respectively. The paper is scheduled to appear Feb. 7 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
The research took place over six years at Stanford and Penn State under Eberhardt's supervision. It involved mostly white male undergraduates. In a series of studies that subliminally flashed black or white male faces on a screen for a fraction of a second to "prime" the students, researchers found subjects could identify blurry ape drawings much faster after they were primed with black faces than with white faces. The researchers consistently discovered a black-ape association even if the young adults said they knew nothing about its historical connotations. The connection was made only with African American faces; the paper's third study failed to find an ape association with other non-white groups, such as Asians. Despite such race-specific findings, the researchers stressed that dehumanization and animal imagery have been used for centuries to justify violence against many oppressed groups.
"Despite widespread opposition to racism, bias remains with us," Eberhardt said. "African Americans are still dehumanized; we're still associated with apes in this country. That association can lead people to endorse the beating of black suspects by police officers, and I think it has lots of other consequences that we have yet to uncover."
Historical background Scientific racism in the United States was graphically promoted in a mid-19th-century book by Josiah C. Nott and George Robins Gliddon titled Types of Mankind, which used misleading illustrations to suggest that "Negroes" ranked between "Greeks" and chimpanzees. "When we have a history like that in this country, I don't know how much of that goes away completely, especially to the extent that we are still dealing with severe racial inequality, which fuels and maintains those associations in ways that people are unaware," Eberhardt said.
Although such grotesque characterizations of African Americans have largely disappeared from mainstream U.S. society, Eberhardt noted that science education could be partly responsible for reinforcing the view that blacks are less evolved than whites. An iconic 1970 illustration, "March of Progress," published in the Time-Life book Early Man, depicts evolution beginning with a chimpanzee and ending with a white man. "It's a legacy of our past that the endpoint of evolution is a white man," Eberhardt said. "I don't think it's intentional, but when people learn about human evolution, they walk away with a notion that people of African descent are closer to apes than people of European descent. When people think of a civilized person, a white man comes to mind."
Consequences of socially endorsed violence In the paper's fifth study, the researchers subliminally primed 115 white male undergraduates with words associated with either apes (such as "monkey," "chimp," "gorilla") or big cats (such as "lion," "tiger," "panther"). The latter was used as a control because both images are associated with violence and Africa, Eberhardt said. The subjects then watched a two-minute video clip, similar to the television program COPS, depicting several police officers violently beating a man of undetermined race. A mugshot of either a white or a black man was shown at the beginning of the clip to indicate who was being beaten, with a description conveying that, although described by his family as "a loving husband and father," the suspect had a serious criminal record and may have been high on drugs at the time of his arrest.
The students were then asked to rate how justified the beating was. Participants who believed the suspect was white were no more likely to condone the beating when they were primed with either ape or big cat words, Eberhardt said. But those who thought the suspect was black were more likely to justify the beating if they had been primed with ape words than with big cat words. "Taken together, this suggests that implicit knowledge of a Black-ape association led to marked differences in participants' judgments of Black criminal suspects," the researchers write.
According to the paper's authors, this link has devastating consequences for African Americans because it "alters visual perception and attention, and it increases endorsement of violence against black suspects." For example, the paper's sixth study showed that in hundreds of news stories from 1979 to 1999 in the Philadelphia Inquirer, African Americans convicted of capital crimes were about four times more likely than whites convicted of capital crimes to be described with ape-relevant language, such as "barbaric," "beast," "brute," "savage" and "wild." "Those who are implicitly portrayed as more ape-like in these articles are more likely to be executed by the state than those who are not," the researchers write.
The way forward Despite the paper's findings, Eberhardt said she is optimistic about the future. "This work isn't arguing that there hasn't been any progress made or that we are living in the same society that existed in the 19th century," she said. "We have made a lot of progress on race issues, but we should recognize that racial bias isn't dead. We still need to be aware of that and aware of all the different ways [racism] can affect us, despite our intentions and motivations to be egalitarian. We still have work to do."
For Eberhardt, two stories of race exist in America. "One is about the disappearance of bias—that it's no longer with us," she said. "But the other is about the transformation of bias. It's not the egregious bias anymore, but it's modern bias, subtle bias." With both of these stories, she said, there is an understanding that society has moved beyond the historic battles centered around race. "We want to argue, with this work, that there is one old race battle that we're still fighting," she said. "That is the battle for blacks to be recognized as fully human."
This research was supported by a Stanford University Dean's Award to Jennifer Eberhardt.
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