One chicken coming home to roost

In an editorial I wrote in the December 3 edition of the Community Journal, I said racism had not died and gone to heaven (or should that be hell?) with the election and eventual swearing in of President Barack Obama.

In the editorial, I said: “Racism has not been ‘defanged.’ If anything, expect racism’s ‘fangs’ to grow bigger and its bite more vicious during the next four years.

“Black America’s fight for equality is far, far from over. To believe racism is no more after one election is to inspire racists and the racially naïve in this country to continue ignoring our pleas for justice, economic equality and respect.”

Well, at least one prophetic chicken has come home to roost!

If you haven’t heard about it, seen it on television or on the internet by now, or listened to “Keepin’ It Real with Rev. Al Sharpton” (where I first heard about it), the New York Post newspaper provided “Exhibit ‘A’” of what I was talking about in my December editorial by publishing a very offensive editorial cartoon in that paper’s Wednesday Feb. 18 Op/Ed section.

The cartoon was an obvious take-off on an incident that occurred Monday, Feb. 17 in Stamford, Conn. A woman in that city was attacked by her friend’s 200-pound “pet” chimpanzee. The woman was critically injured. Two Stamford police officers responded to the chimpanzee owner’s 911 call and fatally shot the monkey.

The Post cartoon depicts two police officers—one of them still holding aloft his smoking gun—having just shot a chimpanzee (supposedly representing the one that savagely attacked the Connecticut woman), it’s body laying in a pool of blood with two visible bullet holes in it.

The other cop in the cartoon, who’s standing behind the one with the drawn gun, says: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

It doesn’t take a Black rocket scientist to put two-plus-two together as to whom the cop was referring to when he talked about the stimulus bill: President Obama.

The stimulus bill is the first legislative victory for President Obama’s young presidency. He fought long and hard to make that bill a reality.

As a result, he has been vilified and attacked by the Conservative Right in Congress, so-called economic experts (who obviously dropped the ball because they didn’t see the economic meltdown coming—they probably went to Princeton or Yale), and in the media, especially the hard Right Conservative talking heads such as Shaun (“the Pawn”) Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, as well as local talkers such as Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling.

The Post now finds itself neck-deep in some “stuff.” The newspaper threw Black America a lame “apology” and blasted Rev. Sharpton, calling him a publicity seeker for calling out the newspaper and informing the community about the newspaper’s insult of the president.

As expected, the “apology” was rejected by Rev. Sharpton and the community. Demonstrations were held Thursday and Friday in front of the Post’s offices by Rev. Sharpton and other activists and New Yorkers tired of the newspaper’s often dispicable coverage of Black New Yorkers.

More than 75,000 emails were sent to the Post’s publisher through ColorOfChange.org, reportedly the largest African American online political organization in the country.

Let’s just say it plain: The New York Post’s chimp cartoon is blatantly racist and disrespectful to President Obama, his presidency and all African Americans.

Unfortunately, there are White individuals in this country who don't see the correlation between the Monkey and President Obama.

Their white supremacist mind-set and sense of privilege blinds them to the obvious insult perpetrated by the Post cartoonist and editors, who obviously didn’t know (or didn’t care) that among the many racist names Black Americans have been referred to, “monkey” is a close third on the list of “popular” White insults behind the “N”-word and “coon.”

The Post also failed to “realize” the cartoon subconsciously gives “permission” to any racist, neo-Nazi and KKK whack job in this nation to point a real gun at Obama and his family.

The line has to be drawn somewhere as to the insults towards our community and our president. And that “somewhere” is the New York Post and its cartoon, which proves what I said earlier, racism in America, in the era of President Obama, is alive, well and frighteningly real!