‘Little brunette girl’: Australian Biden and Harris cartoon sparks outrage

A cartoon published in Australia’s largest national newspaper was deemed racist on Friday, portraying US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden describing his new running mate, Kamala Harris, as a “little girl brunette”.

The Johannes Leak cartoon published in The Australian newspaper by Rupert Murdoch, known for his conservative views, showed a beaming Biden saying that Harris, the first black woman in a major party presidential running in America, would help “heal a nation divided by racism “while he went” to rest. “

“It’s offensive and racist,” Andrew Giles, an Australian Labor politician, said on Twitter.

Former Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, for his part, tweeted: “If The Australian has any respect for decency and rules, it must immediately apologize and not republish cartoons like this.”

But The Australian editor-in-chief Christopher Dore endorsed the cartoon, saying Leak was making fun of Biden’s own words.

“Words ‘girlBlacks and brunettes’ belong to Joe Biden, not Johannes, and were uttered by the presidential candidate when he named Kamala Harris as his running mate; she repeated them in a tweet shortly after, “Dore said in a note to the newspaper’s staff, provided to Reuters by Murdoch’s News Corp.

Referring to Harris’s election, Biden tweeted Thursday: “This morning, the girls littles awakened throughout this nation, especially the girlIt is black and brown that can so often feel overlooked and underestimated in our society, seeing themselves in a new way: seeing themselves reflected as presidents and vice presidents. “

Dore said that “the intent of Johannes’s comment was to ridicule identity politics and degrade racism, not perpetuate it.” Leak did not immediately return a request for comment.

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