MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA) – A cartoon which appeared in Australia’s biggest newspaper drew flak on Friday for being racist in portraying US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden describing his new running mate, Kamala Harris, as “this little brown girl”.
Sketched by Johannes Leak in Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, which is known for its conservative views, the cartoon showed a beaming Biden saying Harris would help “heal a nation divided by racism” while he went “for a lie-down.”
“It’s offensive and racist,” said Andrew Giles, a Labor politician and shadow cabinet minister, in a message on Twitter.
Former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus also Tweeted: “If The Australian has any respect for decency and standards it must apologise immediately, and never again publish cartoons like this.”
However, its editor-in-chief, Christopher Dore, stood by the cartoon, saying Leak was mocking Biden’s own words.
“The words ‘little black and brown girls’ belong to Joe Biden, not Johannes, and were uttered by the presidential candidate when he named Kamala Harris as his running mate yesterday; he repeated them in a Tweet soon after,” he said in a note to the newspaper’s staff.
“This morning, little girls woke up across this nation — especially Black and Brown girls who so often may feel overlooked and undervalued in our society — potentially seeing themselves in a new way: As the stuff of Presidents and Vice Presidents,” Biden had Tweeted.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field