Boycott the New York Post!!

I'm sure that most of you have heard about what happened in Stamford, Conn., this past Monday:

Sandra Herold's "pet," (maybe even paramour) Travis the chimpanzee, violently attacked her friend, Charla Nash, who's now recovering in the critical unit of The Cleveland Clinic. Travis was shot and killed by the police soon after the attack.

Sean Delonas, whose best known for his satirical cartoons that appear daily on "Page Six" of the New York Post, has received nationwide attention for the cartoon published this past Wednesday (shown above).

(Choose "February 18th, 2009" to view a larger image of the editorial cartoon):
http://www.nypost.com/delonas/delonas.htm

The cartoon shows two police officers standing over a dead chimpanzee and the caption above reads, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," which links the "Travis the chimpanzee" incident to the stimulus bill written by President Barack Obama. That's the punchline. I'm not laughing.

Delonas and the Editor-in-Chief of the New York Post both stand behind the cartoon and its satirical intentions.

When you look closer at Delonas' cartoon, you'll also notice a "Beware of Dog" sign hanging off of a post. Probably just a weird coincidence--or is it?

I thought about brushing it off as just another form of institutional racism that I've learned to live with in America. But as the day grew longer, so did my anger, my rage. I was enraged not only because of how this seemingly intelligent cartoonist could pass this cartoon off under the guise of satire, but more so because I didn't feel like I could do anything about it.

For years, America has involved black people in their sick sense of humor: coon songs, blackface, minstrelsy, bulging eyes, smiling white teeth to hide the fear and pain, and one-dimensional characters on film and television (butlers, mammies, buddy roles).

Just like the penultimate scene in Spike Lee's film Bamboozled, when will black people finally shout, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore"?

Now is the time to shout and demand real change. Don't do it for President Obama. Do it for yourself. Do it for our children.

Stop supporting companies that do nothing to support and uplift the black community. We have the power to cut off any and all financial support to these companies, who continue to not hire us, to demean and ultimately ignore us altogether.

Stop buying the New York Post!!