The Bendigo Advertiser, a Fairfax daily newspaper, took a stand against racism yesterday with this piece:

The column stated:

“I have read about racism in the newspapers. I know about the White Australia Policy and the 2005 Cronulla riots. But for most of my life I have escaped being exposed to racism first-hand, that is, until Sunday afternoon at the football.”

But perhaps Advertiser reporter Maddie Wines should have written “for most of my life I have escaped being exposed to racism first-hand, that is, until I read page 19 of my own paper today”. That’s where readers found this:

Tucked away between The Phantom and Garfield is the African-themed cartoon by Sydney’s Tony Lopes, who doodles the “Insanity Streak” series (it’s syndicated across quite a few Australian newspapers). Presumably its humour — and we’re making the bold assumption that there is any — derives from the assertion that African people have fat lips. The typo doesn’t help.

According to his Facebook page, Lopes had trouble convincing newspaper editors to run this “throw away” cartoon, which has been around for at least two months, because most “thought it would be too offensive”:

Lopes, who has also drawn cartoons riffing on ethnic stereotypes of Native American Indians and Italian gondoliers, defended the cartoon to Crikey today:

“A cartoonist has a very short time to engage a reader, so we rely on visual shorthand, a traditional native individual with a bone through the hair conveyed the image I was after. How can a cartoonist do his or her job without these well-worn stereotypes? My job with Insanity Streak is to make people laugh. The sources of laughter are extremely diverse and the effects of a particular joke, notoriously subjective … there is always going to be someone who doesn’t share my sense of humour.”

Lopes notes the cartoon had run elsewhere without incident, but says it was never his intention to be racist, so “I naturally offer my utmost apologies”.

The use of racial and ethnic stereotypes in cartoons is a hot topic. A cartoon showing former Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo as a sleepy-eyed Mexican in a sombrero riding a donkey earned criticism (Trujillo accused Australia of being racist for various Mexican-related references made during his tenure, although he wasn’t necessarily referring to cartoons). The New York Post ran a cartoon depicting President Barack Obama as a dead chimpanzee. On the other hand, while besieged Qantas chairman Alan Joyce is Irish, cartoonist don’t seem to have focussed on that (with one exception we found).

Crikey asked Fairfax for comment and received this response just before deadline:

“We apologise unreservedly and are investigating how this lapse happened. We can totally understand the concerns raised and acknowledge that the cartoon should never have been printed in any of our publications.”

Perhaps the last word should go to Advertiser columnist Maddie Wines:

“I am struggling to understand how some people believe it is still acceptable to be racist … As long as we keep standing up to these people, there is hope that one day, we will live in a society where no one discriminates on the basis of race.”