*A newspaper in Australia is at the center of a firestorm over a racist cartoon that attempting to spoof Serena Williams at the U.S. Open.
Mark Knight, the editorial cartoonist for the Herald Sun in Melbourne, is standing by his sketch of the tennis champ that perpetuates the “angry black woman” trope after her loss to Naomi Osaka at Saturday’s U.S. Open final.
In the cartoon, as noted by The Huff Post, Williams is depicted with an exaggerated face and body, jumping on her smashed racket with a pacifier nearby. In the background, a blond opponent pleads with a chair umpire: “Can you just let her win?”
“Don’t bring gender into it when it’s all about behavior,” Knight tweeted after social media users argued that his cartoon was racist and sexist.
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Well Julie here’s a cartoon I drew a few days before when Australian male tennis player Kyrgios at the US Open was behaving badly. Don’t bring gender into it when it’s all about behaviour. I’ll accept your apology in writing? pic.twitter.com/NLV0AjPGsY
— Mark Knight (@Knightcartoons) September 10, 2018
The cartoonist, whose past illustrations have also been slammed as racist and sexist, has been blasted by athletes and celebs including J.K. Rowling who said, “Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop.”
Journalist Jemele Hill also noted the racism is “About as subtle as Fran Drescher’s voice.”
Knight attempted to prove his point about gender by posting a cartoon about male player Nick Kyrgios receiving a “pep talk” after appearing “sulky” during the tournament. But critics noted that the cartoon of Kyrgios only reinforced the point that women get unfairly penalized while men catch breaks― an argument Williams made after she was fined $17,000 for three highly criticized code violations during Saturday’s U.S. Open final.
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