Letters to the Times

[mirrorshard]

If you haven't seen this appallingly racist cartoon in the Times, I recommend it for sheer did-they-actually-publish-that value.

Edit: please read the comments before leaving "helpful" corrections. If someone else has already said it, I don't need a "me too". Thank you.

I can't find an address specifically for complaints; comment@thetimes.co.uk gets autorejected. I've sent the following to online.editor@timesonline.co.uk as the apparent next most appropriate thing.



Sir,

I should like to register a complaint about Peter Brookes' cartoon dated 21st March 2009. It clearly depicts Barack Obama as a coconut, which is of course a strong racial slur - a derogatory term meaning "black on the outside, white on the inside".

I am disappointed that a respectable newspaper would publish such slurs, and further disappointed that a respectable newspaper can find nothing better to say about a prominent world leader so soon after his election than to comment on his race.

Yours sincerely,
mirrorshard

Comments

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Probably, but I had no idea about the reference beforehand, and the "coconut" reading is still extremely unfortunate to say the least.

Which is to say that what they intended doesn't matter in the slightest; it's how it's read that matters. I'm sure a lot of people will take the bowling-ball reading (or an assassination reading, as soneone else has pointed out) but that also trivializes and denigrates the racial-slur aspect - a classic invisibilization effect.

Possibly I'm just a congenital non-bowler.

[emperor]

I showed the cartoon to the IRC channel I inhabit, and they all said "bowling ball", even though several of them hadn't heard of the incident I noted.

[angoel.livejournal.com]

I looked at it and thought 'bowling ball'. And, for that matter, am not entirely sure why a coconut is considered racist.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

It's black on the outside and white on the inside, just like a bounty bar.

The equivalent for the Chinese is "banana".

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

for that matter, am not entirely sure why a coconut is considered racist.

*blinks* Seriously?

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I'd never heard "coconut" as a racist term. Oreo yes, coconut no.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard it either.

[emperor]

The Beeb discusses the term.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my dear, that was overly harsh of me.

I actually hadn't been aware of coconut used in the Oreo/bounty bar sort of way at all. I just tend to assume that using tropical fruit as an image when portraying someone of colour is a Really Bad Idea (cf. Boris Johnson and "watermelon smiles"). And also tend to assume that most other sensible people see it as such as well.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of that incident either, and had no thought other than 'bowling ball'.

[megamole.livejournal.com]

what they intended doesn't matter in the slightest; it's how it's read that matters

I have particular issues with this. If that is true, then in theory everything I write, despite my efforts at clarity, can be labelled with whatever the reader wants to attach to it.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Yes, it can. Yes, it will be.

Your words are ink on paper (or pixels on a screen) - they are symbols conveying concepts.

Well, "conveying" is a deceptive term here. They are symbols which can be confidently expected to evoke concepts in others' minds. There is no mystic connection, there is nothing attached to them, it's all just associations.

We can know with a fair degree of confidence what associations will be brought up, but they're all fuzzy sets rather than precise definitions. So in the end, if you want near-complete clarity of what you intended to convey, you have to know what all your words and phrases mean to everyone who's going to be reading it, and you need to be on hand to explain everything - which means knowing what they're thinking, because you can't expect them to ask the "right" questions.

I would say that for perfect clarity you need them to be you, but even that doesn't work; reading my old writing can leave me with different ideas, because who I am and the referents I have have changed between then and now.

[megamole.livejournal.com]

This is very dispiriting and makes me wonder sometimes why I make such an effort to be clear.

:(

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Because the effort works.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

And because it is morally good that you make the effort, even if there will always be a margin for error. (And in my experience, you yourself do seem to succeed in being clear really rather well. :-)) Part of the problem with that cartoon is that the cartoonist and editor clearly haven't thought very hard about it, or they'd have gone "hang on, erk, that looks like it could be a coconut, yikes, let's do something different...".

The author is dead, as Barthes said. It is sad, but don't let it de-spirit you. *hugs*

[naath.livejournal.com]

Coconut - yes, clearly that would be racist. But, er, with the added "doh" (a Homer Simpson remark if ever I saw one) I think it's pretty obvious that it's a Balling Ball reference.

I think it's right to point out that it could be read as racist and thus that it is possibly ill-advised. But I don't think it's right to claim that it is hideously offensive.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I didn't get the Simpson reference (though I don't see a connection with bowling there) but, well, I suppose you can't expect the Times to spell "D'oh!" correctly.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Homer bowls! Like, lots. Also It's "doh, I screwed up" since the Bowling Story is about Obama making a nasty abelist remark.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Ah, that'd explain it. I suppose it's a standard sport given his socioeconomic status.

(I mostly just watch the Simpsons for Lisa.)

[cjwatson]

There's standing up against racist slurs, and there's attempting to ensure that nobody can ever say anything negative about a black person for fear of being accused of racism.

Obama's presidency has generally been a good thing - but in this case, Obama made a comment that was highly offensive to people with disabilities, and he deserves to be called on it. There's a long tradition of newspaper cartoons actually being vaguely related to current events and expecting you to keep up with them in order to understand them.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was highly offensive, but I still wouldn't have associated it with a bowling ball. If I think about bowling balls I know they (often?) have holes in, but that's pretty much the extent of my bowling knowledge.

There's a difference between "saying something negative about a black person" and "invoking a racist trope", whether deliberately or accidentally.

[cjwatson]

It's entirely clear to me that any similarity was thoroughly accidental and that you should apologise to the cartoonist for going off the deep end.

Being oversensitive when you clearly hadn't taken the effort to understand the point of the cartoon (as is obvious from your letter) harms the cause by reducing the signal-to-noise of complaints about genuine racism. "Oh, all those racism complaints last time were ridiculous; let's ignore them." A better way to make your complaint would have been to take the effort to understand the point of the cartoon and then send a letter saying "you may not be aware of this, but your cartoon is uncomfortably close to this racist trope, and you should take more care to avoid this in future".

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Which is to say that what they intended doesn't matter in the slightest; it's how it's read that matters.

I'm sorry, but I must passionately disagree with this. Intentions count for a lot and should be respected. Verify them by all means, but credit them. Also, if "it's how it's read that matters," the implication is that if even one person is offended, then the original should be eradicated. But it is IMPOSSIBLE to some up with anything that someone won't find offensive.

I saw your comment below about it being the creator's responsibility to be clear about meaning. But the reader has responsibilities as well.

(admittedly, I looked at the cartoon, wondered why Obama had been drawn as a bowling ball, and just didn't get it because I was unaware of the bowling gaff; the coconut thing did not occur to me at all, and I still think it's very unlikely to have been intended)

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

(I have a long long history of battling censorship and very strong beliefs about the importance of being an intelligent reader; apologies if I was rude)

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Snap. This.

That said, I think the cartoon is fairly stupid and unfunny. I *did* think it was a bowling ball, but this is hardly a funny way of approaching the bowling ball gaffe. Which, as cjwatson observed, merits criticism.

It seems quite rubbish on all sides, but I really can't see this as jaw-droppingly offensive. A bit dubious, yes indeed.