Kevin Rudd and industry leaders speak up against The Oz’s ‘racist’ Kamala Harris cartoon
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has sent a written complaint to the Press Council about the cartoon, created by Johannes Leak and published by The Australian on Friday, denounced as racist for describing US vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris as “this little brown girl”.
Multiple advertising industry leaders also called for agencies and advertisers to take a stand. Founder of Almeida Insights and News Corp’s former head of digital strategy and innovation, Alice Almeida, said: “I always get asked why I left News Corp. There are many reasons, but an example of one is the below cartoon, and content like it.
“I couldn’t work for a company which published this kind of racist garbage and then go home to my Indian/Australian husband and mixed race daughter, as if it was all ok. … I’ve been told to be ‘careful’ being so vocal about issues in Australia as it could be bad for my business. Well, this is bad for my family, and that trumps business.”
https://twitter.com/KetanJ0/status/1294014032211574785
Nunn Media’s managing director, Chris Walton, called the cartoon “disgusting” and said “anyone working at The Australian ought to feel ashamed”. And Ben Shepherd, outgoing chief media officer at CHE Proximity and soon-to-be Thinkerbell’s general manager of media, asked: “Is this the sort of content advertisers want to run alongside? Seriously. Just gross from the Australian and can’t see how the people that work for them can be proud of this as their product.”
The cartoon depicted Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden saying: “It’s time to heal a nation divided by racism… So I’ll hand you over to this little brown girl while I go for a lie-down.”
Rudd called attention to the Press Council’s guideline that publications must not cause “substantial offence, distress or prejudice … unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest”. “There is no conceivable public interest in encouraging ridicule on racial or gender grounds,” he said.
The former PM was joined in condemning the cartoon by Labor MPs Andrew Leigh, Mark Dreyfus and Andrew Giles, swathes of journalists, and former Australian Human Rights Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, who wrote “[The Australian is] a newspaper defined by its own identity politics based on race and division. If you don’t want to be called racist, don’t do things that involve racism.”
How risible that The Australian plays the victim. And let’s be clear: it’s a newspaper defined by its own identity politics based on race and division. If you don’t want to be called racist, don’t do things that involve racism https://t.co/i2P7urJAdy
— Tim Soutphommasane (@timsout) August 15, 2020
But the publisher has stood by the cartoon and called the accusations of racism “ridiculous”.
“The words ‘little black and brown girls’ belong to Joe Biden, not Johannes, and were uttered by the presidential candidate when he named Kamala Harris as his running mate on Thursday; he repeated them in a tweet soon after,” editor-in-chief Chris Dore said in a statement.
“As many commentators in the US have noted, Biden is accused of using racial identity as a political weapon, and that is exactly the point Johannes was making in the cartoon, using Biden’s language.
“The intention of Johannes’s commentary was to ridicule identity politics and demean racism, not perpetuate it. The Australian deplores racism in all its guises, as does Johannes.”
However, the context of Biden’s comments, to which Dore refers, is very different to that of the cartoon. Biden was referring to children from racial minorities who would look to Kamala Harris as a role model, not calling Harris herself a ‘little brown girl’.
“Little black and brown girls, that so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities, but today … just maybe they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way as the stuff of president and vice presidents,” he said at an event, later tweeting a similar quote.
This morning, little girls woke up across this nation — especially Black and Brown girls who so often may feel overlooked and undervalued in our society — potentially seeing themselves in a new way: As the stuff of Presidents and Vice Presidents.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 12, 2020
The News Corp masthead said the purpose of Leak’s cartoon was to “ridicule identity politics and demean racism”. But author and commentator Ketan Joshi noted that the paper is identifying ‘racism’ as “Biden referring to young girls as ‘Black’ and ‘Brown’. Which is…………not racist in any way????”
https://twitter.com/KetanJ0/status/1294196041047212032
Rudd also called Dore’s defence “ridiculous because it seizes on the individual words used, rather than how they are used”.
“It is crystal clear that Mr Biden is not describing Senator Harris derisively as a ‘little brown girl’, which is the clear depiction of the cartoon. It is in fact the reverse,” Rudd continued.
“Mr Biden is referring to Senator Harris as a positive inspiration to children from racial minorities who so rarely see people of colour in positions of authority. Indeed, Senator Harris is the first woman of colour to stand as a major-party candidate for either the presidency or the vice-presidency in the 244-year history of the United States.
“Mr Dore’s defence is, therefore, an obscene twisting of the truth – seeking to comport a positive reference to Senator Harris by Mr Biden as a cynical, racial and sexist slur.”
Rudd denounced the Press Council for being “notoriously weak” recently “in enforcing its own industry standards against the Murdoch media” and urged the regulator to act on his complaint.
“When Australia’s highest-circulating national newspaper openly encourages ridicule and resentment towards successful people of colour, insinuating that they are inherently unworthy of success on their merits, it reverberates not only among minority communities in Australia; it also reflects poorly on Australia’s image around the globe,” he said.
“The Press Council here faces a clear-cut example of a newspaper fuelling racist and sexist prejudice in our society beneath the fig leaf of press freedom. If the Press Council rejects this complaint, it will demonstrate that it is an utterly toothless tiger – a sham body that is subservient to the same newspapers it is supposed to regulate.”
Rudd’s complaint followed his initial response to the cartoon on Saturday, in which he called Dore “that slime of a Murdoch editor”, followed by the hashtag #MurdochRoyalCommission. Since leaving politics, he has been consistently vocal against News Corp mastheads, including The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, and Herald Sun.
Rudd has urged the Press Council not to clear the cartoon of any wrongdoing
The backlash Johannes Leak has provoked with the cartoon mirrors that his father, Bill Leak, became known for; Johannes took up the cartoonist spot at The Australian, formerly filled by Bill, at the end of last year.
The older Leak, who passed away in 2017, created cartoons that suggested Indigenous fathers cannot remember the names of their children, and depicted a group of Indian people trying to eat solar panels. The former cartoon attracted more than 700 Press Council complaints and was also the subject of an Australian Human Rights Commission complaint. However, the Press Council declined to rule on that influx of complaints, and cleared the cartoon featuring Indian people.
The Press Council has similarly cleared other racist cartoons published by News Corp papers, including Mark Knight’s depiction of Serena Williams in the Herald Sun, and, earlier this year, a Warren Brown cartoon in the Daily Telegraph that received complaints for implying asylum seekers are “savages”, a “threat to white women”, “dirty”, “predators”, and “dangerous”.
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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Wasn’t the cartoon making fun of Biden’s use of that language?
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Biden announces that he is selecting his running mate based on their gender and later skin colour and Leak who observes this in a cartoon is the racist? He’s just taking the veil off what really happened.
Kamala deserved to be selected for many great qualities and achievements but Biden made it about gender and race. I’m glad it’s being called out but our outrage ‘cancel culture’ is clearly not mature enough for political satire that makes a valuable point.
I hope The Aus show more commitment to free speech than most other media organisations have lately in the great conservative purge of 2020.
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https://mumbrella.com.au/um-boycotts-news-limited-autoplay-video-135509
Do we need to as an industry stop advertising across News owned assets?
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Surely the real issue here is not the implied racism, but the wilful and totally unethical lack of context. In the past, I have believed that some similar complaints are sad self-defeating overreach by some zealots (particularly the Serena Williams cartoon), but for Leak and the paper to take an inspirational statement from Biden so as to reach this low ebb, is akin to the ploy of brain-dead fundamental ‘christians’ who selectively twist biblical phrases to their own self-interested ends.
All that said, a question: why TF am I not surprised?
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Who cares what Kevin Rudd thinks.Very few did when he was PM and even less care now.
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Biden has form in making what many would believe are old fashioned statements and offensive remarks on race. Unfortunately I haven’t seen enough people complaining about that..are we so driven to get rid of Trump it’s now clouding our moral judgement? This cartoon was a clumsy attempt at humor and regrettably Biden was illustrated as referring directly to Harris as ‘a little brown girl’. That was a stupid mistake and shouldn’t have been allowed by editorial. I am not remotely surprised The Australian is now in damage control.
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Perhaps “little girl of colour” would be more PC?
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This is all about The Australian driving “engagement” around their brand – with a thin veneer of plausible deniability.
Just an obvious provocation to a bunch of people in the community who can then be characterised as the “PC brigade” (or whatever the label du jour is) when they react in predictable ways.
Both sides acting our their depressingly familiar roles in what passes for “discourse” in our society at the moment.
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It tried to – but the words weren’t used in a controversial or harmful way by Biden. So the Australian decided to have a crack at it and ended up making his words harmful and offensive.
Also are we ignoring the bigger question here? There’s a lot happening in AUS, why was the full cartoon given to discuss the US election? Irrelevant!
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They are kind of missing the point here. Biden’s use of identity politics and bringing race into the whole issue is actually racist itself. Does Rudd not see the irony here?
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It no longer surprises that individuals and institutions which blindly support POTUS Trump, stoop ever lower to meet his standards. A quote read last week also moves a little closer towards actuality: the US, the only major country to move from barbarism to decadence without passing through civilisation.
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Let me guess… you work for NewsCorp?
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Yes it was, but there’s nothing wrong with his language here
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The incompetence at News knows no bounds.
This company is a blight on Australia and any marketing person advertising in any of their properties should be ashamed.
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Is Kamala a tall white girl?
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As much as I dislike the Australian and its utterly biased, idealogical position on most things, I have to ask a question.
Are we saying here that a cartoon can’t ridicule someone’s racism by using that person’s very own racist language?
The detractors and the cartoonist seem to share the same objective.
Feels like hypersensitivity laced with virtue signalling to me.
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So the position of Mumbrella and the writer is that the cartoon is racist, clearly articulated here. How is this report then supposed to be considered fair?
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No. They twisted and misrepresented them. But nice try.
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Surely these intelligent people can see the satire in pointing our Biden using a “token” black candidate as a running mate rather than taking her on her merits. The Australian is pointing that out not calling her a little brown girl themselves….
Keep going The Australian, you are not being racist.
And to automatically call for an advertiser boycott, as well as “everyone who works for the Australian should be ashamed” is just ridiculous. You’re a part of cancel culture and should be ashamed of yourselves.
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The Australian is entitled to print whatever it feels the need to, but advertisers don’t have to fund it. And the Australian is ultimately not entitled to any advertising revenue if advertisers feel its content isn’t aligned with what brands feel is suitable..
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She was Attorney General of California and then a senator. She is extremely qualified for this position. Biden was also referring to little girls looking up to her. The Australian has taken him out of context.
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Love it.
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Well it is racist, so that’s a fair position to hold. Same with articulating that climate change is real.
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They will because they reach the people with money to spend.
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Why whenever something like this happens is it so often happening in Australia?
What’s up with you folks?
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I find it hypocritical that some in the advertising industry think that we have some sort of moral compass and responsibility while happily peddling booze, banks, fast food, insurance, bullying supermarkets et al. As Orwell described the industry, simply banging a stick in the swill bucket.
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And yet you cared enough to take time out of your undoubtedly important day to give us the benefit of your completely irrelevant opinion, given the subject of this article is the inherent racism and sexism of The Australian’s cartoon, not the merits or otherwise of Rudd as PM. But then, I guess that does tell us where you stand on the subject after all.
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Yeah nah. Positively promoting a black woman – a minority – and identifying her as such, and suggesting she would be a positive influence and role model for other black and brown skinned girls, is the antithesis of racist. Try understanding what racism actually means: “policies, behaviours, rules, etc. that result in a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race :
harmful or unfair things that people say, do, or think based on the belief that their own race makes them more intelligent, good, moral, etc. than people of other races.”
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And yet you cared enough to take time out of your undoubtedly important day to give us the benefit of your completely irrelevant opinion…..
Understand the power of using a person’s own words to highlight their stupidity now?
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Blah blah blah. I lost my job as a barista so I’m angry others have more than me. I’ll express my frustration in a way to make it sound like I’m not pissed that I can’t buy a new iPhone.
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Despite denials of racism from The Australian and its cartoonist Johannes Leak, the revealing line is “while I go for a lie-down”. Obviously borrowed from Donald Trump’s “sleepy Joe” nickname for Joe Biden, who is not a Murdoch press favourite.
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What part of Biden’s language was racist?
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On Jun 27, 2019, Kamala Harris posted a photo of herself as a child on Twitter. The caption she wrote was “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me.” She and Biden are more than happy to weaponize identity politics for their own ends. The cartoonist was throwing it back at them. Yes, it’s racist, but so is the initial use of it. Both sides are equally culpable for race-wielding.
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