Missing the Racist Forest for the Trees

I imagine by quitting time today most people will have heard about the NY Post cartoon that ran yesterday. It depicted two police officers with guns drawn and a bullet-riddled monkey. One cop is saying "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." I don't believe I've seen such as racist cartoon since the publication of the anti-Muslim Danish cartoons of a few years back.

CNN's Roland Burris and Al Sharpton have called out the cartoonist and the Post for the vile history in the US of referring Blacks as 'monkeys' and the vigilante and state terror that have gone hand in hand with it. A relatively unreported fact has been that hate crimes against Blacks has INCREASED after the election. Sean Delonas, the cartoonist, claims that it is standard practice to mix two current events in a political cartoon. We all know about OBAMA's stimulus bill (many defenders of the cartoon point to the fact that the 'kill Obama' implication is patently false because the legislature, not Obama wrote the bill. Pure bollocks.) But, who the fuck has heard of the other story, the Connecticut monkey attack incident? I surely haven't.

My biggest beef with the backlash against the cartoon (and admittedly I have not done a wide survey of the responses online) is that no one is calling out the implication of police brutality!!! Police have ramped up their killings and shootings of young Black men. Look at Oscar Grant. Delonas and his 'freedom of speech' defenders are apologists for the very real racism that continues to exist despite the historic election of Obama and are actively contributing to the climate where cops get off scot free for murder.