The Herald Sun’s Serena Williams cartoon draws on a long and damaging history of racist caricature
Whether Mark Knight and his editor realise it or not, the controversial Serena Williams cartoon draws on at least 200 years of racist and sexist caricaturing of African and African-descended people, writes Clare Corbould in this crossposting from The Conversation.
In the aftermath of the dramatic US Open women’s final between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight sketched a cartoon of Williams that has drawn opprobrium worldwide.
Critics such as writer J.K. Rowling and basketball player Ben Simmons have denounced it as racist and sexist. However, the Herald Sun’s editor defended Knight, saying the cartoon had “nothing to do with gender or race”.
Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop. https://t.co/YOxVMuTXEC
Well done Clare. You’ve pointed out what Robert Phiddian was unable to see.
The donkey in Shrek is a racist caricature? The world has gone mad…
This I am thoroughly confused by. Its.. a donkey.. ?
Is that really so confusing? Anthropomorphised animals have been used to play out racist stereotypes for ages. Dumbo’s crows are clearly supposed to be African American (the leader of the crows is named ‘Jim’, because apparently Walt Disney wasn’t subtle), and the Asian stereotype cat in The Aristocats is pretty disgusting.
Interesting that some male tennis pros have come out in her defence, saying she was certainly penalised for a sin they got away with and that the penalty was out of order. It seems that she might well have been justified in having a go and it might well turn out that the umpire is in trouble.
Which would make the cartoonist look pretty stupid, not to mention out of touch.
She lost a game of professional tennis, there were many references that did not need to be made while pleading to the referee. This has probably highlighted how the person in question behaves behind closed doors. I think the cartoonist portrayed her in a reasonable light. Political Correctness gone mad, soon we will all be recorded for deformation because sensitive Sam or Sally are upset with our rebuke.
Just as an aside the ITF have come out in support of the umpire saying he was correct in all of his calls and they backed his decision to make the penalty that he did.
The challenge here as in all sports with interpretation as part of the adjudication (AFL, Soccer, Rugby, etc..) is that different umpires will make slightly different calls on different days.
The issue here is not that maybe another umpire would/wouldn’t have made the call, the issue is whether it is because she was a woman he made the call to dock her the game.
Umpire says it had nothing to do with her gender and ITF says he made the right calls.
Martina Navratilova came out saying Serena was out of order. I’d back her over your unnamed male tennis players. Which I’d suggest makes you look pretty stupid, not to mention out of touch Ed. Smiley Face.
Thank you for explaining this so clearly. The Herald Sun claiming on its front page that the PC police are taking away all the fun is misleading and I think frightening in its ignorance.
The Herald Sun is correct.
It’s choice of defence is wrong.
Well done on your contribution on escalating the “divide and conquer”movement currently being rammed down the public’s throat globally by the media monopoly .
So depending on your race, you expect a free pass for any abhorrent behaviour and cartoonists cannot satirise you? Not going to happen. These snowflakes need to get over themselves and harden up. Satire is back, and it’s got plenty of targets in its sights.
If you’re continually inclined to find things racist or sexist, stop looking at anything and you’ll no longer be offended.