The Daily Texan, the student newspaper at the University of Texas-Austin, is facing charges of racial insensitivity after running a bigoted cartoon in their daily paper yesterday. The cartoon, seen below, calls Trayvon Martin a “colored boy,” and labels the news media’s coverage of the story “yellow journalism.”
Some conservatives have been waging a smear campaign against Trayvon Martin for the last week, hoping to distract from the fact that an unarmed black teenager was shot by a community volunteer with a history of violence who remains a free man thanks to Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law that was supported by conservative groups like ALEC.
As Campus Progress reports, The Daily Texan’s editorial staff has responded to the uproar by distancing itself from the cartoonist. The statement from the campus paper:
A controversial editorial cartoon on the Trayvon Martin shooting was published Tuesday on the Opinion page of The Daily Texan. The Daily Texan Editorial Board recognizes the sensitive nature of the cartoon’s subject matter.
The views expressed in the cartoon are not those of the editorial board. They are those of the artist. It is the policy of the editorial board to publish the views of our columnists and cartoonists, even if we disagree with them.
The cartoon: