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Thursday, July 12, 2007

Commission for Racial Equality in racism row over a comic strip

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) claims that black people "look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles". This claim is based on CRE's interpretation of Tintin In The Congo, a comic book written and drawn by the Belgian author Hergé in the 1930s. This is an example of what all the fuss is about.

I can't remember if I ever read it as a child, but I don't think so because I tend to remember things pretty good. I found the cartoon strip funny. I don't think it is racist. However, as I understand the law racism is defined as that which the offended person claims to find offensive. I think that definition is too wide and vague and is in effect a "catch-all" rule.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, what about "Mickey The Monkey"?

As a teenager I can remember altering this Beano? Topper comic strip to "Mickey The Rasta" and I drew telephone coil wire hair coming off the top of his head, drew a huge joint in his paw and altered all the wording in the speech boxes to include words such as "turned on" "spliff", "Yah, maan!" and soforth, (you get the picture)

I gave the finished result to a mate in school and it did the rounds and I had an instant fan base asking me to doctor even more strips to "Mickey The Rasta".

Does this make me racist? I haven't even got a racing car!

Anonymous said...

PS Even Lenny Lafonde, a black mate of ours thought it was shit hot and kept on asking me when I was going to do another one.

Anonymous said...

Another strip I altered was "Beryl The Peril"

At the time, her face just reminded me of something else, so I altered the strip to read "Beryl The Mong"

Not very adult, but then we were not adults and the rest of the school thought it was hilarious, even the headmaster, Mr. Mtogoa who took me up to his office and thrashed the life out of me with a broken bottle.

Life was never very fair in those days, but it was good.