Liberal hypocrisy on full display with racist cartoon

By Timothy Head and Clarence Henderson, Op-ed Contributors Tuesday, February 23, 2021

The media has long given Democrats and liberals a free pass to act with impunity. Honest mistakes, distasteful remarks, or even just unpopular opinions can easily ruin any Republican’s reputation, and possibly even their career. But outright slander or truly unconscionable behavior by Democrats is met with a shrug.

The recent actions by North Carolina’s WRAL provide a case in point. In response to a perfectly civil and reasonable debate about new standards for the state’s public school curriculum, WRAL published an editorial cartoon depicting Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson as a member of the KKK. And so far, no one in the mainstream media seems to care.

Now, there’s a lot that’s objectively wrong with this kind of vicious misrepresentation of a politician’s personal character and political views. Anyone would have a right to be offended by this image, especially in today’s environment when even the most groundless accusations of racism can generate a social media firestorm.

But Lt. Governor Mark Robinson has the right to be positively incensed, because he is the first ever Black Republican to hold the position of Lt. Governor in North Carolina. And instead of being celebrated for the diversity he brings to the GOP and to North Carolina, he is being cast as an anti-Black, racist villain.

We can only imagine the anger that Lt. Governor Robinson must feel. As a Black American, the scourge of the KKK’s racism and hatred must weigh heavily on his heart and mind. It’s a brutal, unconscionable slap in the face for anyone in the media to portray him as aligned with the goals, mission, values or history of the KKK.

Normally, events and offenses that truly pale in comparison to this are more than enough to unleash hours, if not days, of mainstream media coverage. Who remembers when we were subjected to unending media commentary about racism in NASCAR after a completely normal garage pull rope was photographed hanging in a Talladega garage? And who can forget that for the last four years, the media has jumped on every single thing that President Trump has said, using every speech he has made to argue that he was a racist or a white supremacist?

Yet now, when an editorial cartoon is, in fact, racist in its attack on a Black American, the media doesn’t care. After Lt. Governor Robinson gave a press conference asking for answers about the racist cartoon, the opinion editor for Capitol Broadcasting – owner of WRAL – released a lackluster and unapologetic statement claiming the cartoon was “creative and provocative” and just using “hyperbole and satire.”

The hypocrisy is truly dumbfounding. You can’t call racism “creative and provocative” just when liberals do it. If racism means anything at all, then it shouldn’t matter where it comes from or who it’s directed at. But WRAL’s editorial cartoon shows quite clearly that unless racism is politically useful to the left’s ongoing campaign to slander conservatives, it goes unnoticed, unacknowledged and swept under the rug. Liberals care more about weaponizing racism and whipping up moral fervor to bully their opponents than they actually care about Black Americans.

And make no mistake about it: we all know what would have happened if the cartoonist were Republican and the target of the cartoon were a Black Democrat. Let us run through the likeliest scenario for you. The cartoonist would be immediately fired. After days of mounting social media anger, WRAL would issue a heartfelt apology. The apology would have little effect. There would be protests in the streets. And for weeks, every mainstream media article would reference the incident as yet another sign that the Republican party is full of racist, ignorant hatemongers.

It’s appalling that we live in a cultural and political environment where the game is so blatantly rigged against conservatives. If it wasn’t already obvious, the mainstream media controls what “counts” as racism and what doesn’t. With that kind of power, why should we ever expect the media to be honest and fair again?

Timothy Head is the executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Clarence Henderson is the President of Frederick Douglass Foundation of North Carolina.