Reply #71: OK gotcha ...well look at it another way... [View All]

FYI I grew up in the South and my parents both worked for major southern dailies. Judgment calls like this are always split-second when you are working against publishing deadlines. Photographers will do a little spread of a few pix from a single photo-op (it's all about time constraints...can't ask them to go looking around for(for ex) people of all races eating watermelon if the pix were good with the kids they first came up with, and they have exactly 20.5 minutes to get the paper to press). I don't say you couldn't be right--it's possible some real jackass thought he was making some kind of ridiculous point I suppose. If you have seen other stories you thought were blatantly racist in this paper then I'd say there's more of a case for it. I agree newspapers are spineless these days but in my head that's another argument for why they wouldn't have taken a risk of offending anyone. Generally they're killing themselves striving for bland neutrality.

A couple of other things that lead me to question if there was actual pandering to racist readers...

#1-- What would the Limbaugh crowd GET out of this? I mean really, how could they use such an innocent image (I'm assuming all 3 pix were equally cute) to any possible advantage? How does this pander necessarily? If racist readers don't particularly want to see pix of black kids at all, how does a spread on them reinforce that?

#2 -- Many younger readers these days would have NO idea what this was about, and if their elders were to try to indoctrinate them in some put-down about black kids and watermelon, it would just be TOO lame. This crap IS fading and will be ancient history in another generation. Actors like Eddie Murphy have done a lot to ridicule such stereotypes, effectively deconstructing them.

I respect your judgment on it --and I really dont know enough to say--but am just trying to imagine another not quite so depressing scenario. I know racism is out there, but not so much in mainstream papers, one would hope. :)