The reaction over at Sociological Images to the above cartoon is a classic example of how loose and mindless definitions of racism have become in this country. It seems clear to me at least that the humor here has to do with the moral misshapenness of white supremacists in love; as Sociological Images (or at least as the author of the post, anyway) sees it, lynching is no laughing matter, and the mere mention of it is itself tantamount to an act of racism. Even worse, the explanation on the part of the student newspaper that published the cartoon--'Its intent was to ask how can someone show affection for one person while at the same time hating someone else enough to commit such a heinous act as hanging'--is rejected in the following manner:
[The Echo] explains that the intention was to point out the “hypocrisy of hate-filled people,” not make light of lynching, without interrogating the relative importance of intent and reception. One could argue that cultural producers are at least somewhat responsible for the myriad of ways that an item could be reasonably interpreted.This is a bit of a cop-out ('One could argue that...'). But let's say that the author actually committed to this argument instead of straddling the fence. The author is then using a line of reasoning familiar to oppressively censorious regimes, but not, one would have thought, characteristic of thoughtful, left-leaning sociological criticism. Why tolerate complexity, ambiguity, or doubles-entendres? We should hold cultural producers responsible for any reasonable interpretation of their texts, even if they might be demonstrably far from the intended meaning.
