Dear Editor, Most Specifically, Rubbery Rupert Murdock:
Congratulations, on this, your latest salvo into the world of racist journalism! As a Black Man, I deeply appreciate this newest honor you’ve shown my brethren and me, especially with this being Black History Month and all! Thank you.
It still seems that in SOME eyes, we are and will forever be doomed to the tunnel-vision scope of your tragically limited perceptions of us. We are not inventors, not doctors, not lawyers, not astronauts. We are not Congressmen, not Senators, and certainly NOT Presidents! No. We are apes and monkeys.
It is both shameful and incredulous that you claim not to have known of the cartoon’s dubious implications. It is beyond sad, that in 2009, you, your so-called journalists, and your cartoonists have yet to evolve from a mindset steeped in good ole Jim Crowism.
It is no secret that racist minds have long attached the image of gorillas, monkeys, chimpanzees and simians to the visage of African-Americans in this country. Only a FOOL would bother to deny that this was clearly your intent! The cartoon's caption furthermore targets one very specific Black man: The President. How sick! How dangerous! How dare you!
How could this not be obvious to you, or to anyone on your staff, regardless of their education?
Any image that hints at the assassination of anyone, much less the Leader of the Free World is an image based in evil. Period.
If this were truly an ill-conceived and harmless depiction of a current event, it might be forgiven. However, only the deeply uninformed would believe this to be a mistake or an egregious error in judgment, because your history of blatant yellow journalism, your habit of ridiculing, debasing, besmirching and demonizing blacks in this city and this country is a long and ugly one.
Having once been a regular reader, I can site chapter and verse of the many times you’ve used your paper to sway public opinion in a negative light whenever it featured people of color.
Was it not YOUR paper that has referred to young back men as ‘BEASTS?’
Is it not your paper, which will systematically ignore the achievements of blacks, or usher them to a less visible section, and yet gives front page headlines to any negative incident or crime where people of color are involved? Does the arrest of Spike Lee’s father for possessing a ten-dollar bag of heroin really necessitate front-page news? Apparently in the pages of The Post it does.
Since those days of your not-so-subtle racist headlines, your aggressively right-winged slants, your ugly ways of reporting stories that are geared at degrading black and brown people, I had already long ago boycotted your rag. Hopefully, with this latest event, thousands of others will do the came.
It is my wish that you will come to know such explicit racial hatred, shameless dodging of the facts, and your fake-ass passion-free apologies will no longer be tolerated. Perhaps when your revenues begin to slip even further, THEN you will finally get the message.
Wake UP!
L.M. Ross
