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

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Um, I thought it was supposed to be a bowling ball, actually. I agree "coconut" is racist but didn't get that meaning...

[emperor]

Are you sure it's not referring to this bowling-related gaffe?

[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.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Can't even remember when the last time I saw a bowling ball was, but it sure looks like a coconut to me.

[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.

[makyo.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about that (or, for that matter, the use of the word 'coconut' as a racial slur) but my first thought was "bowling ball?" and my second was "shot three times in the head by an unusually precise and symmetry-conscious assassin?"

After reading the article you linked to, I'm inclined to go for the bowling-related analysis too.

[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.

[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.

[hungry-pixel.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how 3 holes in the head looks like a coconut. Not the coconuts I've seen anyway. They tend to be hole-free. I was just confused by the cartoon, which is nothing new...mind you, I did think it was depciting Prince Charles...!

[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.

[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]

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.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

If you poke around in the bristly end, there are three depressions arranged around it, where there's skin but no hard shell - that's how you get the coconut water out without cracking the whole thing open.

[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]

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.

[megamole.livejournal.com]

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

:(

[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".

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Because the effort works.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

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

*blinks* Seriously?

[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*

[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".

[emperor]

The Beeb discusses the term.

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

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

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

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

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it clearly *is* meant to be a bowling ball rather than a coconut. It's not a very good cartoon, but the holes are very clearly bowling-ball finger holes.

The resemblance to a coconut would, I suspect, be totally impossible to see if Mr Obama had longer hair. It's only his hair's unfortunate similarity to coconut hair that makes it at all possible to see the coconut resemblance.