{"id":3461,"date":"2020-06-12T07:59:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T11:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3461"},"modified":"2020-06-12T07:59:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T11:59:32","slug":"do-you-want-to-talk-about-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3461","title":{"rendered":"Do You Want to Talk About Racism?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am very happy not talking about stuff I find uncomfortable. And I especially prefer avoiding discussions about things that make me feel terrible. Racism would certainly be a topic that qualifies here. So, yeah, I can understand the inclination to deflect, side-step, or look-past the subject. But obviously that isn’t solving the problem. (Heck, talking isn’t even the hard part! It’s the doing after the talking.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here we are, America. Here we are again. We’ve been through this before. And we pretty much know what to do. All the post-incident commissions and panels and reports have identified the problems and recommended the solutions. We just somehow keep avoiding really talking about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will this time be different? I’m hopeful it will be. And I find that hope in three words: Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some find those words to be divisive. (Really, any words that address racism can be taken as divisive.) But I think the meaning behind these words, the true aim, is potentially something that can move us all forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t really understand this till it was explained to me. In 2016 I heard the cartoonist Keith Knight talk at a conference, and he was asked about Black Lives Matter. He\u00a0referenced\u00a0one of his recent cartoons\u00a0where he used\u00a0“Save the Rain Forests” as a metaphor<\/a>: “When you say, ‘Save the Rain Forests,’\u00a0you are saying\u00a0there is something uniquely important about rain forests that requires specific attention.\u00a0You are not\u00a0saying ‘screw all the other forests.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve seen variations of this in memes and other cartoons, but I think the point is clear and something to build on. (If we talk and that talk leads to doing.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am very happy not talking about stuff I find uncomfortable. And I especially prefer avoiding discussions about things that make me feel terrible. Racism would certainly be a topic that qualifies here. So, yeah, I can understand the inclination to deflect, side-step, or look-past the subject. But obviously that isn’t solving the problem. (Heck, talking isn’t even the hard part! It’s […]<\/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-3461","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\/3461","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=3461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3463,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3461\/revisions\/3463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}