{"id":3231,"date":"2019-04-26T09:19:34","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T13:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3231"},"modified":"2019-04-26T09:23:15","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T13:23:15","slug":"a-simple-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3231","title":{"rendered":"A Simple Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" height=\"410\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/JPA185.jpg\" alt=\"A Simple Debate\" class=\"wp-image-3232\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/JPA185.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/JPA185-300x220.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The\n most difficult thing about drawing this cartoon was deciding what the \ntwo people should look like. I ended up with two vaguely middle-aged \nwhite guys. But it took me a long time to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For\n cartoons where the appearance of age\/sex\/race\/weight has nothing to do \nwith the point I&#8217;m trying to make, I try vary the character types for \ndiversity sake. I am in fact a middle-aged white guy, so I fight \ndefaulting to my own biases. But this can be problematic, depending on \nwhat the characters are actually doing or how they are behaving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Say\n I have somebody in the background eating watermelon. It shouldn&#8217;t \nmatter the race of that person. But it very much does. There are all \nsorts of deeply racists connotations associated with black people and \nwatermelon. And with me as a white person drawing it&nbsp;\u2014 did I intend to \noffend? Was I unaware of the offense? Which would be worse? (Even \nwriting about doing this in the hypothetical makes me squeamish.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So after much due diligence, I drew what I drew to limit attention to the  characters themselves. (The first guy is roughly a self-caricature  because the rant is definitely my rant.) But in the end, I&#8217;m sure some  could be distracted by the two white guys and question my motives. I  know this because people make a point of telling me what offends them  and often it&#8217;s nothing I intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s\n fine. In fact, it&#8217;s great. I think it&#8217;s better to have discussions \n(however awkward) than it is to avoid having them at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most difficult thing about drawing this cartoon was deciding what the two people should look like. I ended up with two vaguely middle-aged white guys. But it took me a long time to get there. For cartoons where the appearance of age\/sex\/race\/weight has nothing to do with the point I&#8217;m trying to make, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,10,13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrewheller-com","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganpress-org","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3231"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3235,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231\/revisions\/3235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}