Haha, it's funny because all black presidents eat watermelon, amirite?

Clearly they're appealing to their targeted readership demographic.

Watermelon is a waste of farm real estate. Flavourless crap.

the stereotype does indeed exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermelon_stereotype

So let us pretend it does not exist. Awesome.

It would only be racist if he suggested fried chicken tooth paste.

This lends a little more credence to it being a racial issue:

https://twitter.com/steveannear/status/517316330123706368/photo/1

Who the fuck are you to decide whats offensive and what isn't? How would you know, ARE YOU BLACK?

When was the last time you heard of watermelon-flavored toothpaste? Please, if you want to delude yourself, by all means have fun with it, but don't think others are so foolish as you.

He was an IMMIGRANT who SHOULD NOT BE HERE but OBAMA WANTS TO TAKE AWAY OUR JOBS.

Oh, he's a sick vet? Well, OBAMA HATES VETERANS AND DESTROYED THE VA BECAUSE HE WANTS TO SEE THEM SUFFER.

See? It's easy to turn absolutely everything into a pointless condemnation of Obama without any understand (or concern) for the real facts. Between that and complaining about lack of travel lanes and parking I don't know how they get though the day.

Calling a hispanic a "fence jumper"? That's a paddlin'.

And? Do you think all non-whites are one happy group of people that can't be racist toward one another? I hate to say, but that assumption is quite ignorant, or at worst, pretty racist.

Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race. I haven't seen where the fence jumper identified as "Black Hispanic" or "White Hispanic" or "Native American Hispanic".

That's your problem.

So, are you being naive or ignorant?

http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/african/3-coon/5-chickwatermel...

Please see my original post.

That is an over reaction. Not everything is racist, et. al. But stereotypes can be racist, such as in this case. There is enough historical precedent to back it up.

And the first thing I thought was "man, that cartoonist f-ed up royally."

My second thought was "has some company actually started making watermelon flavored toothpaste, thus making this a thing?"

I would like to think this was an innocent mix-up, but Holbert and the Herald need to do a big mea cupla on this one regardless.

Colgate does make a watermelon flavor kids toothpaste. Kids toothpaste comes in all kinds of weird flavors. If that's what he had in his house, I imagine he associates it with his kids, rather than a stereotypical food used to denigrate African Americans.

Too bad he doesn't use Tom's of Maine. Then he could have used "Silly Strawberry". I'm pretty sure I have a spare tube from when the Sprout grew out of it before we used the last tube in the stockpile.

Let's assume he did it because there's a half-empty bottle of Colgate in his house right now.

He also said this: "I didn't think people thought like this anymore -- I am just thinking about the flavors, and I love watermelon," Holbert said. ( http://www.wcvb.com/news/i-just-like-watermelon-cartoonist-says-of-obama... )

That right there tells me he was not naive to the history of pickaninny/watermelon racism. And at that point, he knows damn well the context of what he's writing and choosing to ignore it because "nobody thinks like that any more". Of course, that's a total bullshit statement. You think a political cartoonist wouldn't know about photoshops of Obama holding big slices of watermelon or as a witch doctor and all sorts of other racist imagery using Obama as the foil from the past 6 years?

Then on top of that, nobody at the Herald vetted it the same way his syndicate did and told him to change it for their purposes too? And when his syndicate told him to change it, he specifically decided not to inform the Herald of that change or replace their version for them?

He knew what he was doing with the Herald. They knew what they were doing in running it.

Colgate Kids 2 in 1 Toothpaste and Mouthwash Watermelon Flavor
$3.59
Walgreens.com

Colgate 2-In-1 Toothpaste And Mouthwash Kids Watermelon 4.6 oz
$3.47
Family OTC

Colgate Kids 2 in 1 Toothpaste and Mouthwash, Watermelon Flavor, 4.6
$3.99
Drugstore.com

Its a thing alright...........

VOID DUP double tap

We got here after at least 110 years of using it as a dog whistle for racism, let's give it a 110 year rest and then we can re-evaluate. Sound fair?

(including UHubbers) for reacting to an OPINION cartoon by crying "racism" and giving him that attention.

... even if I find the message of his recent work pretty one-dimensional and stupid. If one looks at what he did when he first went to work for the Herald, it was more varied (even if also generally pretty right wing in nature).

Yes, let's not call out racism or discuss it at all. Then we can return to those glorious peaceful days of the 1900s - 1950s when the races lived in harmony and nobody complained about anything.

"Boy the way Glenn Miller played..."

That people who call out racism must be the real racists. It . . . well, it stinks.

That's worked for years - for people who don't give a crap and don't want to be bothered to do anything at least. Phoebe Prince and others - not so much.

"By making such a big deal of it, the racism itself is perpetuated, not minimized"

That's like saying that by pointing out and treating an injury, you're making it less likely to heal. In other words, it's complete nonsense.

... worked really well at NOT achieving even a scintilla of equal treatment for the vast majority of black Americans.

Of the old days when you and the boys used to score blow at Lanes Lounge. Or how you persuaded Ed Brooke to run. Or how you stood in front of that crowd on Bunker Hill Street yelling at the buses "nigger go home" and said "Enough!".

Tell us about those days, willya?

Wow.

Just wow.

Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice all the Negro’s tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.

In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things, —

First, political power,

Second, insistence on civil rights,

Third, higher education of Negro youth,

— and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:

1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.

2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.

3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.

- W.E.B. DuBois

what in holy hell does that have to do with this cartoon? Do you genuinely believe that it's just African-Americans in the racial-grievance-exploitation business that are horrified and offended by this sickening bit of buffoonery?

Want to find some people who don't want the patient to get well? Try the so-called journalists who pander to the old-school racists that read the Herald. Besides local sports coverage, feeding that disgusting red meat to that dying breed is all that sorry rag has left.

How unsurprising that the usual Uhub suspects line up to defend something as grossly, patently, obviously racist as this. I'd say you ought to be ashamed, but we all know that ship sailed, hit a reef, and sunk to a deep, deep ocean bottom long ago.

As I said up above, do you really think the Herald would acknowledge that people dislike the President due to racism?

I take it (by your obsession with "The Baker Demographic") that no one in the "Coakley Demographic" requires your attention, you automatically assume.