Recently, Floriday A&M University hosted a discussion on editorial cartoonists. The panel was made up of White men. I’ll point you to the article.
thefamuanonline.com
On Tuesday, Feb. 24, students and professors gathered in the School of Journalism & Graphic Communication Lecture Hall for “Disappearing Ink,” a panel discussion about the decline of editorial cartoonists.
The discussion was okay, at the beginning that is. It was obvious there was no diversity on the panel. The panel consisted of four middle-age white men: Ed Hall, Artizans Syndicate; Andy Marlette, Pensacola News Journal; Jeff Parker, Florida Today (Melbourne); and Rob Smith Jr., Glennbeck.com.
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Because diversity is important to most FAMU students, many questions were asked about diversity within the editorial cartoonist field. Our questions weren’t directly answered. As a matter of fact they weren’t answered at all. But the icing on the cake was when Andy Marlette said, “N**** Please!”
A cloud of dissension hovered over the lecture hall as no one knew how to react to something that had just slapped everyone in the face. Silence filled the room until one student shouted, “Say what?”
Then most of the room burst into laughter to ease the situation, and the discussion continued even though most students were furious at what Marlette said. How were we supposed to respond- riot? (more…)
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up now! Lemmie get this scrate…
A WHITE cartoonist calls a Black student “nigga” TO-HIS-FACE on a Black college campus and the room “burst into laughter to ease the situation?” On top of that, they stayed to hear the rest of the discussion??????? No one stood up to tell this man that it was time for him to leave? No riots? No breathless media coverage pointing out how this man committed such a great sin in the age of Obama?
Marlon Williams, the writer of the piece and one of the attendees had this to say later in the article.
Now the question lies: Who’s to blame for this incident? Some may think Marlette is to blame because he should have known better and should have chosen better language to use. This is true. I couldn’t agree more, but the blame is on us.
Everyday we unconsciously call our friends the N-word, I’m guilty as well. I know there are arguments that say we can use the word because some words are only used in a particular clique. I agree with that argument as well, but let’s think about where the word derived from. We must understand that if we use the N-word, it will give justification to other groups to use it as well.
Williams kept it real and told the truth. This is exactly why I know that a majority of the so-called outrage out there over the usage of the word “nigga” is phony and is mainly conjured up to score political points. Other than that, nuttin’ was buried.
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