Just one week after the fallout over a NY Post cartoon depicting a police officer shooting and killing a chimpanzee while the other cop wondered who would write the next stimulus bill, the Washington Post released an apology for an upcoming article to appear in the Washington Post Magazine.  That’s right, while the county debated over whether or not Rupert Murdock’s Post was spewing racist monkey business, the WaPost nibbled their nails down until finally cracking with this outburst of remorse. 

“The headline, illustration, and text of 'Below the Beltway,' a column in The Washington Post Magazine today, may cause offense to readers. The magazine was printed before a widely publicized incident last week in which a chimpanzee attacked and badly mauled a woman in Stamford, Conn. In addition, the image and text inadvertently may conjure racial stereotypes that The Post does not countenance. We regret the lapse.” 

            With racial stereotypes fresh in my mind from my very own debates over the first cartoon, I was eager to see what the Washington Post wrote AND illustrated that required them to preemptively squeal on themselves like a captured criminal looking for a lesser sentence.  Upon seeing the cartoon of a chimp carrying a love stricken White woman away on his shoulder while a dejected Caucasian man held limp flowers in his hand, I thought, “Oh damn, this racist article must speculate that White women fall head over heels for Black men while leaving more and more White men behind.  But where do they get off calling Black men chimpanzees?”  Once that didn’t make any sense, it was time to assume that the Post’s Gene Weingarten laid down some serious dating stereotypes and puzzlingly tried to tie dating behaviors of Black men to social encounters among Chimpanzees. 

            Imagine my surprise and lack of disappointment toward the Washington Post to find out that the article was simply outlining a study that monitored women and men’s natural physical reactions to various sexually explicit videos.  Surprisingly, women were turned on by everything, including sex among Bonobos, or apes.  After Weingarten shared his back and forth with his feminist scholar friend that educated him on why women are so freaky deaky, I was left hanging, wondering where all the offensive racial overtones were hidden. 

            The Washington Post’s pointless apology for an article about being turned on by Bonobos, which was accompanied by a most appropriate and humorous illustration shines a light into the nature of our country when discussing race.  It’s pretty apparent that this apology didn’t come from a logical place in anyone’s mind at the paper; it only showed that many people don’t take the time to understand why some people were offended by the cartoon in the NY Post.  They just want to profusely apologize for anyone that MAY BE OFFENDED by their content.  There is no sense in regretting something when you have no idea why you’re regretful.  What’s next?  Will the WaPost Sports page apologize for its upcoming story about how the Wizards lost another game to remain at the bottom of the NBA?  There’s no need in doing so since their lack of understanding will only allow them to report the inevitable fact that is offensive to no one. 

            These publications are so afraid of the public’s outrage over a potentially racist piece that they don’t take the time to hear what the public is upset about.  How can they fix it if they don’t diagnose the problem?  We as a country need to calm down when something is called racist.  In most cases, it probably is so rather than selecting randomly common aspects of both situations and issuing a blanket and disingenuous apology, listen to what the complaints are so they can be properly addressed.  It makes the apologists seem like they don’t care about racism, they just care about being called out for it. 

           Ignorance is one thing that perpetuates racism.  Originally, the people at the NY Post showed their ignorance when they published a cartoon that could obviously be seen as having racial overtones, but the Washington Post jumped on the ignorance train with them when it issued this useless apology that has absolutely nothing to do with Black people.  What’s the thought process?  “Don’t try to understand them, let’s just apologize and move on with our ignorance.” 

 

--JJJ 

Add Comment