Robot 6
College students upset by The K Chronicles, miss point entirely
From "The K Chronicles," by Keith Knight
Students at Slippery Rock University are outraged by a recent installment of Keith Knight’s The K Chronicles, bringing into question reading-comprehension levels at the western Pennsylvania college.
The strip, which appeared Sept. 25 in the university newspaper, opens with a black man in a noose saying, “You’re doing this because I’m black, aren’t you?” A white man in the crowd responds: “See? There you go again!! Pulling the race card …”
In response some upset students at the small school walked around campus with nooses dangling around their necks.
“They put this in the paper thinking it would be funny,” one student told a local TV station. “How funny is it when it’s real? When you see someone walking around with a noose on their neck, it’s not as funny no more.”
“I think the whole thing is racist,” another student said. “I don’t even understand why they would print this.”
Members of the campus NAACP chapter and Black Action Society reportedly met with editors of the newspaper on Monday, and plan a march through campus on Thursday.
Knight, who’s no stranger to controversy, posted an official statement on his blog: “A comic strip can be about more than cats eating lasagna or how stupid your boss is. Some of the best comic strips point out truths not only though humor, but through satire. … In the first panel of this specific comic strip, white people accuse a black man, who is about to be lynched, of pulling the race card. This is an exaggerated, satirical version of what we often see and hear in mainstream media: the victim gets accused of pulling the race card, which is an easy way to dismiss the real issues involved.”
- September 30, 2009 @ 05:37 AM by Kevin Melrose
10 Comments
Kevin
September 30, 2009 at 5:51 am
Not that this matters…but i’m black and i thought this was funny. Probably because I understood what the cartoonist was doing here. How could you not see the satire here?
Ian Thal
September 30, 2009 at 6:09 am
I would understand it if a middle-school audience misread this cartoon, since the ability to grasp irony isn’t very well developed at that age, but a college audience should have the reading skills to grasp that this is an example of gallows humor and that the barb is aimed at racists who deny what hatred motivates them and how they blame their victims. Furthermore, this cartoon said that far more succinctly than I just did.
That this cartoon was penned by an anti-racist should be obvious to an audience with a college reading comprehension level, even if they did not know that Keith Knight is African-American and they were previously unfamiliar with his work.
Wasn’t there somebody at either campus organization meeting who said, “hey, hold on for a moment, I know some of us are really upset by the imagery but I think Knight is making a statement against racism and lynching…?”
Wraith
September 30, 2009 at 6:12 am
Tell me this outrage is being faked?
Or at least tell me that it’s mostly freshmen–that at least leaves the hope that they still have time to learn how to understand things like satire and subtext before they graduate.
Ian Thal
September 30, 2009 at 6:33 am
It doesn’t help that the website of the TV station to which Kevin linked further inflames the controversy with the headline, “Students Upset Over Racist Cartoon.” So now professional journalists (who are adults and thus, should know better) irresponsibly increasing the conflict when their jobs is supposed to be providing informative context and understanding.
(How ironic! The race card is pulled in order to defame a cartoonist for taking a stance against racists who falsely accuse their targets of playing the race card! Well played, Mr. Knight!)
The more I think about this cartoon, the more convinced I am of Knight’s brilliance– and to think, before this morning I used to only think of him as “often very funny.”
Aaron Poehler
September 30, 2009 at 6:51 am
The lowest common denominator is an illusion — there’s no bottom.
fernald
September 30, 2009 at 7:35 am
You know back in the 80′s I would go to S Rock with my college debating team and I thought the gen pop of the campus was a bit slow, but I thought it was just me.
I see things haven’t changed much.
Josh Fitzpatrick
September 30, 2009 at 8:52 am
Lack of understanding satire is second only to a lack of civility these days.
agent_torpor
September 30, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Keith Knight is a subpar Aaron McGruder.
David R
November 7, 2009 at 10:53 am
No, Aaron McGruder is a subpar Aaron McGruder. (Sorry, couln’t resist.)
Great toon, though. Isn’t Knight himself black? Shouldn’t the campus naacp have been aware of this?
Wilddwarf
June 12, 2011 at 7:37 am
If you read the Bible, humans have been morons and bastards from day 1. Right off the bat some guy killed his brother because God like his offering better.