A Concise History Of Black-White Relations In The U.S.A.
| June 13th, 2007
This cartoon is years old, but it’s one of the best political cartoons I ever did. Donna reminded me of it last month (you can see the black-and-white version at her post), and I decided it would be a fun exercise to color it. I was tempted to redraw the whole thing, too — the original is very crudely drawn, which I realize is part of its charm, but occasionally it reduces the effectiveness (particularly in facial expressions) — but instead I just redrew all the faces and some of the hands.
June 13th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
I really like this one. Is this the part where how tell you how you did it wrong? (I mean, how you should do it better)
This comment was written by joe.;)
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June 13th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
How strange, I’ve seen this work of yours before, and I was JUST thinking about it this morning.
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June 13th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
My favorite part of this whole strip is that the thing being climbed up onto is this weird, abstract black rectangle. The colored version makes the bizzaro artificial non-grounded aspect of this object even more stark. Which is great because it’s not like there’s any non-artificial reason to want to be “higher” than someone else in the first place. It (hopefully) makes you ask, what the hell is that thing, why is he climbing up onto it any way? No reason at all, except to be higher. Very subtle and cool little commentary on power structures.
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June 13th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
I loved this when I first saw it years ago, still think it’s great now.
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June 13th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Joe, the main thing that struck me, when I was coloring this, is that when I originally drew this strip I did a terrible job of deciding what direction the lighting is coming from, which made it hard to know how to color it. (In panel four, for instance, the black kid is being lit from the right while the white kid is being lit from the left.)
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
June 14th, 2007 at 7:51 am
While this is a good cartoon, it just illustrates what I’ve said in the Cherokee thread. That ground they’re standing on should be red and have murdered Native Americans everywhere.
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June 15th, 2007 at 12:34 am
This is one of my favorite political cartoons ever. The first time I saw it, I saved it on my computer and have busted it out repeatedly whenever someone brings up race issues. I even got to use it as a source in college–got me some extra credit. :)
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June 15th, 2007 at 3:17 am
Amp, I worded my comment badly. I was trying to make a joke about how every time you post a cartoon a bunch of people comment to tell you that you’re off point. Pheeno’s comments an example of what I meant. I think it’s silly to expect a 6 panel cartoon to be a research paper. I think the art is great.
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June 15th, 2007 at 3:44 am
Oh, i get it now, Joe. Sorry I misunderstood you.
I tend to be much more aware of the many faults in my drawing than most readers. Fortunately. :-)
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June 15th, 2007 at 5:01 am
[...] Very interesting! A Concise History Of Black-White Relations In The U.S.A. [...]
This comment was written by Very interesting! « A Moveable Feast.Report this comment to the moderators
June 15th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
You missed my point Joe. The only race problem that ever gets attention is black and white.
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June 15th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
I got it. It’s a good point, although you could probably get a debate going over the difference between most of the attention and all of it. I was just using it as an example of the type of criticism I was joking about.
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June 16th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Amp, it’s a good cartoon. Actually, I think it’s a brilliant example of cartoon as social illustration. Something that is particularly difficult to achieve. Most efforts of this sort end up being simple minded propaganda rather than thought provoking. Your’s escapes that fate.
Pheeno, you’ve reminded of a particularly savage cartoon by the great Ron Cobb. He drew a cutway of a house where a stereotypical white bread family was saying grace around a Thanksgiving table, groaning with a huge turkey and other delectables. Beneath this scene of idyllic Norman Rockwell splendor, below the foundations of the house, he revealed the jumbled bones of numberless, nameless Indians. Quite a statement.
I suppose Amp could have done something similar here. It would certainly be a more complex statement. African Americans can hardly be said to stand in the same relation to Native Americans as European Americans. The history of African American and Native American relations is itself pretty complex, as the contrasting experiences with the Seminoles and the Cherokee show.
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June 16th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I’d just like to see more of it in day to day examples of racism, instead of just whenever thanksgiving rolls around.
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June 16th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
This cartoon? How to measure my love for it? Vast. I shall measure it in vast.
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June 21st, 2007 at 6:13 pm
This cartoon is the hands-down BEST explanation for the fallacy of “reverse discrimination” I’ve ever seen — and I’ve been paying attention for a while. Not only did I use it to advertise the new Erase Racism Blog Carnival on my blog, but I put a permanent link to it on my blog roll. I’m going to use it as a handout in the classroom and in any other way I can think of. Thank you about a hundred thousand times!
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July 7th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Pheeno, you have a good point. I have done a couple of cartoons about racism against American Indian issues (mainly criticizing the Federal government), but I should do more.
Mandolin, Changeseeker, thank you so much. I’m really glad you like the cartoon.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 5th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
should probably also include irish and italians and nameless other euorpeans who were abused so that xenophobic americans could make it to that black rectangle on top
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January 17th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Great cartoon! I posted on my blog this morning.
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January 17th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
There are so many fallacies in that one strip it’s so hard to even begin to pull it apart - your metaphor is hopelessly inadequate, and no evidence is provided to support the alleged correspondence between the metaphor and reality. One failure is when the white guy says “I’m real sorry about being racist before”. In real life, it is completely different people, generations later, and the people who perpetrated slavery are long dead. You cannot blame one person for the vile behaviour of another, no matter how badly you want someone to blame. Something else that is amiss is the assertion that whites are on top *because of* slavery/racism. There is no proof for this, and in fact, macroeconomically, deliberately holding a group of people ‘under’ does not boost an economy, it holds it back (lower wealth production capacity over same number of mouths to feed) - Apartheid South Africa is an excellent example of this fallacious reasoning that keeping people down helps you up - maintaining and providing resources for an unskilled populace is an economic burden. Thirdly, the “victim” in the image is in real life different people in different generations/times. A black person who grows up in America today has more opportunities etc. than almost anyone in the whole world. Finally, racism *is* racism, and wrong, no matter what direction it’s applied.
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February 14th, 2008 at 12:44 am
[...] if you’ve just deliberately lopped limbs off a group of people. I really like the cartoon A Concise History of Black-White Relations in the U.S.A. and have found it useful for explaining a number of things. But it’s a very different [...]
This comment was written by Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples 13 February 2008 « Errantry.Report this comment to the moderators
March 16th, 2008 at 3:33 am
Your cartoon is so deliberately obtuse that it defies description. You’re proud of it? There is no inherited guilt for white people. Contrary to what your cartoon applies, I don’t recall being around 400 years ago enslaving Africans. My ancestors are Irish, and emmigrated in the 20th century, before that, they were too busy trying to survive the 1000 year genocide waged against them by the English.
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March 21st, 2008 at 7:35 am
I first saw this cartoon (the black/white version) in 2005, and I LOVED it then. STILL love it now. My favorite political cartoon EVER! Hands down!
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March 21st, 2008 at 10:35 am
Thanks, Liffy!
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March 21st, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Love the cartoon back when it was in black and white in various places across the net. Never knew it was in color or your work until now. =)
I love it more than the defensive reactions a few posters made. *grin*
This comment was written by Juan.Report this comment to the moderators
April 27th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
I hate to say it, especially because I’m white, but really I believe that white people are on top because of slavery/racism.
This comment was written by Tyler.Report this comment to the moderators
April 29th, 2009 at 8:27 am
“Your cartoon is so deliberately obtuse that it defies description. You’re proud of it? There is no inherited guilt for white people. Contrary to what your cartoon applies, I don’t recall being around 400 years ago enslaving Africans. My ancestors are Irish, and emmigrated in the 20th century, before that, they were too busy trying to survive the 1000 year genocide waged against them by the English.”
Now, this person’s probably gone, but… is it beyond possibility that your ancestors may have indirectly, or even directly benefited from the long-standing disenfranchisement of blacks p0st-slavery? It was kind of a big deal. No one can honestly contend that none of their ancestors recieved a spot in a college, a job, a neighborhood, or a social program that blacks were categorically barred from BY LAW as much as by custom. If I remember correctly, Amp had a cartoon about this, as well, but I’m too lazy to find it. And all of these claims of a background consisting solely of recent immigrants strike me as somewhat statistically unlikely, seeing as the vast majority of American whites have a pan-European background, with ancestors that hail from all over the U.S. and arrived here at varying times. Furthermore, isn’t it kind of a red herring? We’re all fully aware that you wouldn’t believe that if you were the direct descendant of slave owners you’d feel any more responsible, concerned or “guilty” than you do now. You don’t believe in inherited guilt. That’s fine. Do you believe in inherited social position, inherited wealth and opportunity? Because that’s what the people in the cartoon represent to me. I’d really like to hear from you if you don’t believe in those things, because that, not your proud inability to feel guilt for the sins of the long dead (guilt that contrary to pop. belief, no one wants from you), would make you quite rare indeed.
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April 29th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Correction: No white person whose family has been in the country for more than a half-decade can honestly contend that none of their ancestors recieved a spot in a college, a job, a neighborhood, or a social program that blacks were categorically barred from BY LAW as much as by custom.
The edit feature, it burns!
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April 29th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Good post, BD.
Here’s the cartoon I think you’re referring to: The Story Of Bob And Race
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April 29th, 2009 at 10:04 am
“The Story of Bob and Race” is fascinating to me because I think it’s particularly hard for people to conceive of themselves as having benefited from racism, but easy to see where they are disadvantaged by it. I don’t know if this is a general heuristic bias (people assume everything that benefits them is due to their own merit; everything that doesn’t is due to some bad outside force), but it’s hard to escape.
For example, I could think of ways in which my family has been disadvantaged by racism against Asian immigrants, but it’s less easy to understand how we’re advantaged by racism against others that doesn’t apply to us. E.g., Asians don’t suffer so much from the kind of negative stereotypes (uneducated/ less intelligent/ inclined to criminality) that African Americans or Latinos do. Does that mean racism against other people of color is to our benefit? I can see how it works out that way practically, but I feel emotionally resistant to it because it doesn’t seem right that just being treated with an absence of discrimination — not even benefiting from connections, good ol’ boy networks, accumulated generations of wealth — is “benefiting from racism.”
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June 16th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
PG:
The “absence of discrimination” you speak of could be seen as the whole point. Given that all the people living around you constitute a single interlocking society, with, say, a certain quantity of good jobs/neighborhoods and a certain quantity of poor jobs/neighborhoods, any circumstance where the “black man” wasn’t permitted to take the good job because of cultural bias elevates your own chances of taking the good job instead. The distinction between “benefitting” and “not being penalized” is fuzzy that way.
The question at hand is, whether you should feel responsible for the cultural bias, and what you are willing to do about it.
This comment was written by Garote.Do you feel obliged to combat it out of racial guilt?
Or are you motivated to combat it because of your principles, and the understanding that cultural bias erodes productivity in society as a whole?
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June 16th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Garote,
I think that I do my bit to combat cultural bias in myself and in institutions as a policy level. However, I guess my question has more to do with whether it’s right for me to take advantage of a system that I consider neutral with regard to me, but that actively disadvantages some other POC. For example, should I abstain from endeavoring to improve my score on standardized tests, given that those tests have cultural bias and systemically disadvantage other POC? That’s the kind of thing I wonder about. Is standardized testing for me something like nepotism/networking for white upper class people: an unfair advantage? At a policy level I do oppose the use of standardized testing and I’ve frequently written against it, even using myself as an example of why it doesn’t do what it claims (predict future performance). But so long as we have it, how do we deal with its existence?
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July 13th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Just a great cartoon. Completely awesome and on-point.
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July 14th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Amp needs to do a cartoon in which he claims everything is completely wrong with the cartoon, while everyone else in the cartoon tells him to stop being so hard on him. It could be panel after panel in which Amp points out defects in the characters and characters explain why they are all drawn correctly …
Great toon — too small to blow up and put on my fridge.
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