You just take white men out of the picture because those standards seem unattainable to Blacks.

Deano

Lets say a man rapes a girl. After the rape he feels good about himself as clearly he has exerted his male authority over the girl through humiliation and degradation. He walks around with pride on his face.
After he gets caught and he is standing in front of the judge and jury his face will no longer be filled with pride but rather one that shows fear and vulnerability as he waits to find out what is about to happen to him.

Now that he is showing fear, does this mean we must all feel sorry for him because he is getting a bad deal? Absolutely not, if anything his fear shows victory for the girl that was raped, victory for all who oppose rape and victory for all girls and women who have been abused by men.

Now let’s go back to the cartoon. White men have always ruled but instead of ruling with compassion they have chosen to dominate and oppress women and minority groups. White men have always walked around with pride on their faces. Proud of how they have totally subjugated women and minorities to white male authority Now thanks to feminism and affirmative action white men are been challenged and are loosing their special status, they are now fearful because as women and minorities become more powerful white males will soon be subordinate to them. They have never in the passed had to compete with women and other groups.

Should we now feel sorry for these poor white males just because they are getting a bad deal or better put a taste of their own medicine? Absolutely not, if anything the fear that the white men are showing in the cartoon shows victory for women and minorities and should therefore be a reason for celebration.

The facial expressions on the faces of the women and black graduates is not so much of malice but rather a sense of knowing that finally after living under white male oppression justice is now been served and that white men will soon be at the mercy of the very groups that they spent the last couple of centuries oppressing and enslaving.

The white professor shows that not all white men are bad. Some understand the evils of white male supremacy and strongly support feminism and affirmative action. He is smiling because he is delighted by the outcome that his female and black graduates have no fear of white male authority which has always been the case in the past, and which they are proudly demonstrating by taking what is rightfully theirs from the white male graduates.

The white male graduates who get a chair and are happy could be representatives of white gay men. Even though they are white, gay men have probably had to endure some of the worst type of oppression under white male supremacy. It is therefore only fair that they too should get special preference under affirmative action.

So whether the cartoonist intended it to be or not to be, this cartoon could be interpreted as pro-affirmative action.

Does ANYONE here have any passing knowledge of The New Yorker’s history of
seasonally related covers?

I strongly agree with Karolena and CaptDMO. I think the illustration is satirical, presenting the distorted world views of white male graduates, who see themselves unfairly competing against women and minorities who benefit from affirmative action policies (most of which have been gutted) when in fact, generally speaking, it’s white men who are on the career fast track. And I think the cover’s timing reflects college grads leaving campus and entering the job market.

Years ago, back when he was simply a comedian to most people, Bill Cosby was on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson as host. Bill lit a fairly dark cigar. Johnny asked him what kind of cigar it was. Bill answered, “Flesh colored.” It got a big laugh, and the point was made.

At the same time, they printed fiction and poetry AND more than one article by women in the same issue. That was pretty astonishing.

That’s an argument both For and Against AA.

If anyone truly needs to be ever vigilent for the signs of the arrival of the beast
could you please wait until next Tuesday! You’ll still be using an electron microscope,
but it will be boffo on the covers in the supermarket checkout lines.

The drawing does not have any specific chairs for black people and women that white men can not get, instead the white guy in the center simply lost against a black man and a woman. For the picture to be Anti-AA, someone other than the black man or the woman would have ordained the seats for them (hmm, unless one would judge that the piano player specifically, and maliciously stopped playing at the time that would ensure that the white guy won’t get a chair).

For one, it makes the recipients of AA somehow morally responsible for the harm created to those not receiving it, which I believe only an outright misogynists and a racist would do — it is not the fault of minorities that there is a different standard. The black man is not morally responsible for the actions of a college etc. that decides to let him in due to AA, the college is.

The plight of the poor white man losing his place is the central emotional image of most anti-AA thought;

With all due respect, I don’t think you are the best person to descibe the emotional images of anti-AA thought any more than I (anti-AA) would be to descibe pro-AA thought.

No, it’s all about predatory females looking for a husband. See the woman at front left just about to grab the guy with no rhythm? Even at graduation with honors from a prestigious university, all she can do is think about getting married and she is so worried she’ll even take a guy who can’t dance.

No, it’s all about anti-Asian prejudice. None are even pictured symbolizing — obviously — that they can’t even get into the game because of the prjudice against them in admissions programs at major schools, especially in engineering and math.

Yes. I am just joking. I don’t think this cartoon means much more than it’s tough to even get started in a career much less climb to the top of the greasy pole.

ҢӢӢ

And Heart, as to the Horsey cartoon, I think he has missed the point somewhere; I am also not sure what he is saying but it has little to do with the Seattle Schools web pages on racism, which definitely had a very clear POV of anti-individualism combined with (if you can reconcile it) attack on majority standards such as “future time orientation.”

I live for the day when someone will think my work has enough depth to it to worry over my possible ulterior motives in composing it. :p

Heart

An outpouring of criticism forced Seattle Public Schools on Thursday to pull a Web site that viewed planning for the future, emphasizing individualism and defining standard English as examples of cultural racism.

The message had appeared under an “equity and race relations” section of the district’s Web site and was mentioned Thursday in an opinion piece by a Libertarian writer in the Seattle P-I. Criticism of the site has been building in the world of blogs for weeks.

In its place Thursday was a message that the site will be revised to “provide more context to reader around the work that Seattle Public Schools is doing to address institutional racism.”

That message, written by Caprice Hollins, the district’s director of equity and race relations, said the site wasn’t intended to “develop an ‘us against them’ mind-set.”

But she may have stepped into a second controversy by saying the site also wasn’t intended “to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as melting pot or colorblind mentality.”

Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, was the author of Thursday’s opinion piece. Among other things, he drew from the site’s definition of cultural racism.

“Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as ‘other,’ different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers,” the definition said.

“It was very ideologically charged,” Coulson said Thursday. “It was left of center by definition, criticizing individualism as racism and advocating a collective ideology. You can’t get much more red versus blue than that; it’s incredibly polarizing. That everyone who thinks in terms of individualism is racist?” Article here

Huh? The heck. Horsey is an all-his-life leftist/progressive. I went to school at the UW with him in the 60s-early 70s, he cartooned for the UW Daily then, and his cartoons and manner of living have been consistently left. So what the heck is he saying?!

Heart

that said, i see in this piece that the music has stopped, and the individuals are scrambling for the chairs. like amp, i also see the devious smirks on the black man and white woman as each of them out positions the white men next to them in getting the closest chair. that image is front and center, and speaks loudest to me. whether the work is a statment on affirmative action, i believe is really up to the observer to determine. i believe that art, over language, offers multiple valid meanings in virtually all cases. thank you amp, for giving this work greater meaning to me.