When a brown girl enters the ring….

While America debated Biden’s choice for Vice-President and India went over the moon about Kamala Harris and her Indian roots, this is what happened in Australia.

‘The Australian,’ a popular daily newspaper, released a cartoon of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the day after Biden announced his VP pick, sending the Twitterati into a frenzy. The cartoon by Jonathan Leak portrayed Harris as a ‘little brown girl’ triggering many to call out the sexism and racism displayed in the cartoon. A barrage of outrage tweets appeared on the subject.

Joe Biden’s actual words were twisted out of context in the cartoon.

Biden had said the following about Harris, in his speech –

Quote

“… this morning, all across the nation, little girls woke up, especially little black and brown girls, who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities, but today, today just maybe, they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way, as the stuff of presidents and vice presidents.”

End Quote

When The Guardian approached Chris Dore, the editor of ‘The Australian,’ he offered this clarification: “The words’ little black and brown girls’ belong to US presidential candidate Joe Biden, not Johannes Leak. When Johannes used those words, he highlighted Biden’s language and apparent attitudes, not his own. The intention of the commentary in the cartoon was to ridicule racism, not perpetuate it.”

Donald Trump, too had by then declared Kamala Harris as a ‘nasty’ woman. In Trump’s language, it was a code word for, “I feel threatened by this woman.” In Australia, Andrew Bolt, a popular white male TV presenter, brought on journalists to ‘womansplain’ the meaning of the word ‘nasty’ used by Trump. Bolt hid behind semantics to conduct a full-length interview on the use of the word ‘nasty’ by Trump by manipulating two ‘more than willing’ female accomplices to draw attention to the President’s ‘amazing respect’for the women who worked with him. The debate focused on how it was not unusual to use the word NASTY and that women who found it offensive were over-sensitive and lacked confidence. Bolt’s interview, also deliberately sidestepped the opportunity to present Kamala Harris, the PERSON — a capable, intelligent, and experienced US Senator.

When Harris entered the ‘ring,’ discussions in the media did not focus on her credentials and capability. It was not about her working hard and rising up the ranks against odds. The debate descended to how Biden had provided her an easy pathway to be his running mate, reducing Harris to a beneficiary of ‘affirmative action’ due to her gender and colour.

Leak and Dore from ‘The Australian’ succeeded in giving oxygen to this thought and went way off the mark of respect and decency. It left no room for a respectful discourse, one where everyone could participate and celebrate the appointment of a woman of colour. Most women dealt with it the only way they knew. They chose to ignore the cartoon.

Dore, the editor of ‘The Australian,’ wrote this to his staff about the cartoon, “We certainly have to be aware of our content being misconstrued, sometimes unintentionally, often wilfully, based on readers not having the full context readily before them.”

Isn’t good journalism about providing the full context to the readers and not manipulating it to suit the paper’s circulation? By denigrating Biden and insulting Harris, ‘The Australian’ had exploited the ‘ignorance’ of its own readers.

But for ‘the brown girls’ waiting to get into the ring, it was celebration time. Harris had pioneered a breakthrough on their behalf. No amount of ‘nastiness’ from others would change that fact.