Editor,
It is interesting to watch the spectacle unfold in the wake of the cartoon depicting President Barack Obama as Rafiki from the movie “The Lion King.”
I believe that there is more to this than may initially meet the eye of the common reader. The editor-in-chief was seemingly forced to apologize, talk to the “African-American community” (whomever that may be) and spark a training forum for “sensitivity training.”
Why?
Is the cartoonist implying that Obama is equivalent to a chimp? Of course not. That is not the intention, in the same way a chimp from the movie is not equivalent to an African-American. In order to conquer the walls of racism, we must tear them down, not prop them up by highlighting it by a mere “interpretation.”
This only serves to build those walls further. If this is the type of university that UNM has become, unlike years past, I would refuse to contribute money as an alumnus.
Ideally, a university, particularly a university newspaper, must be a bastion for free speech. The freedom to express ideas, no matter how absurd, is crucial to understanding the nature and diversity of the world. Free speech, in American society, is the right to speak, the right to publish and, most importantly, the right to offend.
Free speech is meaningless without the right to offend. Otherwise why would we need it? In any case, being “offended” can also be completely subjective to the reader, as it is here.
On the other hand, free speech also entails the right not to read, to simply not pick up a university newspaper for fear of being “offended.”
But the actions of the editor-in-chief only diminish the value of free speech. He made the decision to publish, yet retracted and unequivocally apologized for what? Because a select few misinterpreted a cartoon?
I, for one, stand firm on the Daily Lobo’s diverse and unrestrained bounds on free speech and right to continue to publish entertaining and controversial cartoons, regardless of who is offended. I wish that the editor had stood for this principle and weathered the storm.
We are all adults, and must learn to conquer — within our own self-securities — the objectionable horrors of racism. And it starts by not viewing the world through race-colored glasses as the protestors of this cartoon did.
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Damian Erasmus
UNM alumnus
