A college newspaper is under fire for publishing two racially insensitive cartoons, The Huffington Post reports. The cartoons are shown below.
The Whetstone at Wesley College published two cartoons created by Bryheim Muse, a black student, on Friday, The Huffington Post reports. The images each show drawings of black characters making racially and sexually offensive comments like “I’m late for my abortion” and “You just look like a hoe!”
The newspaper is a student operation independently run from the college, a fact which Wesley’s president made clear in an email to the campus community along with his dissaproval for the cartoons, according to The Huffington Post. However, the school and newspaper did work together to host a forum for students to voice their feelings and concerns about the issue.
“It is humiliating to know that we were dehumanized by a fellow African-American male. He essentially gave the white students a reason to disrespect and think less of us. That comic promotes hate speech,” Wesley student Shaylynn Bivens told The Huffington Post.
“I just feel like it’s inappropriate, and it kind of offends me,” another student, Tymira Holman, told WBOC. “I know that we have student events where students that aren’t minorities feel let out and discriminated again and then something like this is just not OK to me.”
Following the incident, several students, including those from the school’s black student union created a list of demands (including increasing the school’s percentage of black faculty and staff by 10 percent) to be presented to the school this week, The Daily Mail reported.