The student newspaper at the University of Florida printed a racially charged cartoon Sept. 13, igniting a campus-wide debate over race, language and the press.
The cartoon depicted rapper Kanye West holding a large playing card labeled "The Race Card" and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opposite him, exclaiming "Nigga Please!" It was in reference to West's recent comment on a televised fund-raiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
The response to the cartoon was instantaneous and intense. Beginning the next day, the paper began printing letters to the editor from the Black Student Union, the dean of minority affairs and concerned students and alums. Three days after the cartoon's publication, a group of over 50 outraged students and several administrators marched to the offices of the paper in protest. On the same day, the editor of the paper received a death threat. The president of the university wrote a letter on the following Monday demanding an apology from the paper.
The newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator, is staffed and run by UF students but is not affiliated with the university.
UF's student government president, Joe Goldberg, issued an executive order Sept. 20 halting all student government-funded advertising in the Alligator, despite a student government statute requiring that certain information be advertised in "the newspaper with the greatest circulation among University of Florida students," according to an article in the Alligator.
Goldberg's action was seen by many as an excuse for the student government to attack the Alligator, which frequently criticizes the student government, according to a student government senator quoted in the Alligator.
Andy Marlette, the cartoonist, said Goldberg was making a hypocritical attempt to be politically correct.
"The best thing that has happened (as a result of the controversy) has been exposing the hypocrisy of the (UF) administration," Marlette told The Herald. Besides the student government, the president of the university and other administrative officials have been accused of hypocrisy in articles and letters to the editor printed in the Alligator.
Many of the accusers have pointed out that UF is bringing West, whose lyrics have used language similar to that of the cartoon, to campus for a concert on Oct. 13. The Black Student Union has sent a letter to West requesting that he refrain from using offensive language at the concert, according to Marie Denise Jean-Louis, president of the BSU.
Jean-Louis, who called the cartoon "offensive and insensitive," said the BSU does not feel that West is the voice of the black community at UF, either in the language he uses or in his stance on social and political issues. She said that the BSU's opposition to the cartoon's language is not hypocritical because it opposes the use of such words by anyone.
Jean-Louis also said the university's and the student government's actions were "valid" because a large group of students of all races were offended.
Marlette said the intent of the cartoon "wasn't to piss anybody off" - that, he said, would be against the ethics of cartooning. The original intent was simply to juxtapose Rice and West, and the language was meant to be "ironic" because it was coming out of Rice's mouth, he said.
But Jean-Louis said she did not believe the cartoon had a valid point.
Marlette said people who complain about cartoons are usually upset because they take them too literally.
To prove this point, the Alligator reran the cartoon with the same image but different words. In the second cartoon Rice says, "As per the cultural standard of African-American entertainers deriding each other using a racial and/or ethnic context, I would like to address you in the same way. You are a rapper who constantly uses terminology denigrating to the African-American community. I am an African-American and close friends with President Bush; hence, Bush does not hate black people. Please."
UF President Bernard Machen said in a letter published in the Alligator Sept. 19 that "the ongoing problem of racial injustice in the country ... demands sensitive and measured discussion, not flip and irresponsible commentary."
But Marlette said the incident has exposed Machen's "politically correct talk" as "fascist censorship in disguise." Wednesday, the Alligator published a cartoon drawn by Marlette depicting the university administration as a wolf wearing a sheepskin labeled "political correctness." The wolf is sitting behind a desk with a picture of Joseph Stalin on it in a room labeled the "Department of Sensitivity."
Jean-Louis said she hopes the incident at UF leads to more discussions on race and sensitivity in classrooms, and that she wants "everyone who has been affected by this - white, black, purple and green ... to be educated" about how hurtful racist language can be. But she also said she supports Goldberg's decision to pull student government funding for ads in the Alligator.
Betty Stewart-Dowdell, faculty adviser to the BSU, said the university was considering removing the Alligator's on-campus distribution boxes but also said she could see some value in the discussion that has resulted from the cartoon, especially considering that the numbers of African-American students matriculating at UF decreased last year. The university needs to be a safe place for all students, she said.
On Tuesday, the editor of the Alligator printed a long-demanded apology "to those who felt real pain upon viewing these cartoons." But he also said that "censorship of any kind is dangerous to everybody" and quoted Marlette as saying "When free speech goes, the first people to suffer are minorities."
