Was the chimp cartoonist a victim of subconscious indoctrination?
In its ongoing discussion about the controversial New York Post chimp cartoon, Wednesday’s edition of Richard Prince’s Journalisms looked at the historical correlation between blacks and monkeys.
Kyra Phillips with “CNN Newsroom” recited text from a theological-based 1867 piece titled “The Negro: What is his Ethnological Status”:
“We take up the monkey, and trace him . . . through his upward and advancing orders - baboon, ourang-outang, and gorilla, up to the negro, another animal, that noblest of the beast creation. The difference between these higher orders of the monkey and negro is very slight and consists mainly of this one thing: the negro can utter sounds that can be imitated; hence, he could talk with Adam and Eve, for they could imitate his sounds.’”
I find the longevity of this mindset both fascinating and disturbing.
In his book, “White on black; Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture,” Professor of Sociology at University of Illinois Urbana, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, presents 16th, 17th and 18th Century drawings, etchings and notes from anatomists, physicians, philosophers and scholars who drew scholarly correlations between Africans and primates.
The editors of the New York Post and its cartoonist, Sean Delonas, insist there was no intentional connection between President Barack Obama and the chimp depicted in the cartoon.
Perhaps there was no purposeful connection but what if there was an ingrained subliminal correlation?
This topic was explored in a study, “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences,” released last year.
The web site Science Daily carried a story about the research:
“Crude historical depictions of African Americans as ape-like may have disappeared from mainstream U.S. culture, but research presented in a new paper by psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes.”
Jennifer Eberhardt, an African-American Stanford associate professor of psychology and co-author of the project, said the research was some of the most “depressing work,” she’d ever done.
I can imagine.
No correlation or a historical subconscious connection?
Perhaps the study above sheds light on the motivation of one American cartoonist.
(2 votes, average: 1 out of 5)
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Sylvester Brown, Jr. often refers to himself as the "accidental columnist." He enrolled in college almost 25 years ago to pursue a career as a cartoonist. He ended up starting an award-winning newspaper and falling in love with journalism. Today, as a writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the "accidental columnist's" love affair continues. 
“share your thoughts”…
Don’t mind if I do.
And, of course, we’re having to go back to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries to try to make our point.
Who do you and your cited author think you are, Abraham Foxman?
I only have to go back about 6 months to make my point.
Some St. Louis firefighters found a child’s toy, a stuffed monkey, at the scene of a fire. It was soaked with water. Someone took it back to the firehouse and hung it up to dry out. Who knows what their intent was in doing it? A mascot for the firehouse? Something they lost in childhood dimly recalled and found in adulthood?
Since it was a *monkey* and since it was suspended–”hanging”, the issues of monkey and hanging were immediately seized-upon by the inveterate racisimists, those who find racism in every single possible issue. The accusation was made that the hung-up-to-dry stuffed monkey was obviously a “hate crime”, because after all, aren’t negroes and monkeys interchangeable? That was the racismists who were asserting that proposition. There is no evidence anyone involved in bringing the child’s toy to the firehouse and suspending it to dry was asserting any such proposition.
As I recall the monkey-doll was shown on television–it’s face was light blue unless memory fails. I don’t recall cyanosis as a racial characteristic, especially not of negroes.
DOES THAT ANSWER YOUR RACISMIST QUESTION?
……………must be a slow newsday at victimization bureau desks all over America. Keep up the good work, don’t let your cottage industry down.
………………..here are more pictures you may find interesting:http: //www.bushorchimp.com/
Was the chimp cartoonist a victim of subconscious indoctrination? In a word, no.
Does no one understand the concept the context anymore? Ask any editorial cartoonist, even a mediocre one like RJ Matson, and they’ll tell you one of the keys to an effective political cartoon is how informed the target audience is about current events. Apparently a certain local columnist and members of the national grievance theater guild didn’t hear about two recent events that happened to coincide at nearly the same time. Congress passed what is arguably the worst piece of legislation to come out of Washington in a century, and police in Connecticut shot a pet chimpanzee that attacked and ripped the face off of it’s owner’s friend.
That’s all the cartoon depicts. There isn’t a scintilla of racial animus or insult to President Obama in it at all. The only people who see something offensive in this are those who have a political or other agenda for seeing offensive things.
And the new Attorney General has the gall to call Americans tired of this sort of thing cowards. Sheesh.
I think if this country is going to move ahead on the race issues, some people need to let go of their victim complexes. Remember the office max monkey commercials? were they implying that black office workers are monkeys? no, but how is that any different. If people are intent on seeing racism in everything, odds are they will find it…especially if we keep digging up 16th century world views and saying it is what white people still believe. They thought the earth was flat for a long time too…doesn’t mean that there are people who “subconsciously” associate the earth as flat. Should white people be outraged over Ritz “crackers”? That is a racist term…or do most people know, that cracker means a small confection, and not an attack on a race. The word Negro means black in spanish…do we attack hispanics when they use the term to describe a black person?
The entire subconscious connection is a load of garbage and I think even the people who are “outraged” over it, know that.
we can not move ahead, when people are rooted in the past.
Urban B. Light,
The only thing that one can hope for you and others like yourself who love lies or maybe it is just that you truly can’t see because you have been blinded and in that case the only hope for people such as yourself and these ones is to hope you’re your sakes that you come to have a conviction of your hearts such as the one that Elwin Wilson had so that you will be able to com into in repentance then ALL those things that are twisted will began to straighten itself out.
Now on to the cartoon, I believe that the cartoonist is very intelligent with great wit and recognized the perfect opportunity to insult people mainly Pres. Obama and then turn around and PRETEND TO BE STUPID about what he intentionally set out to do.
I do not for one moment believe that it was subconscious. He pulled off what he intended to do. He will be laughing his rear off if he was able to get enough people to back up these ridiculous reasons for his intent. One is as STUPID as this artist is attempting to portray himself as being.
When I was in graduate school a book came into the library from a donated collection. This book was entitled “The Negro a Beast”. This book was printed in the early 1900’s. In 1901 there was a response to this book entitled “Is the Negro a Beast?”. You would have to read them for yourself to understand how prevalent this thinking was throughout the first part of the 20th - an amalgam of Biblical citations and Spenserian Evolutionary “thought”. For a graphic example of this go to the St Louis Holocaust center and look at the “charts of evolution” the Nazi’s were using. Cf the links below:
http://books.google.com/books?id=1sSIjN4lTYsC
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp33401
http://www.hmlc.org/
Sorry, but this “editorial cartoon” was tasteless and poorly supervised - regardless of what the Post & Delonas say.
Other racists:
H A Rey
Peter Jackson
David Selznick
Peter Gabriel
Damon Albarn
The cartoon could not have been about Mr. Obama. Presidents do not write bills. Congress writes the bills. Anyone with basic understanding of how our Constitution operates would realize this. Those decrying the cartoon are ignorant of the US Constitution and the political reality in Washington, DC.
If cartoonists are banned from drawing chimpanzees for the next four years, we are truly a nation of cowards.
PUBLIUS,
And you DO NOT appear to have a basic understanding of reality concerning our politics in America. Don’t tell me that you do not have the basis understanding of the FACT that any bill signed into law by any President, regardless of Congress being the one who wrote it, OWNS IT AND IT BECOMES HIS BABY?
Did not Obama give some guidelines to what he wanted to see in the Simulus Bill?
Oh yes, this is and will always be considered Obama’s Bill and rightfully so.
Now, is it really possible that you are truly ignorant of this or, is it that you are just attempting to manipulate us all with pretenses?