Political Cartoon: The Cities Are Full Of, uh, "Crime"

Barry wrote this cartoon, and I was happy to draw it. I went to public schools in predominantly-Black neighborhoods from Kindergarten through 9th grade, and I lived in Brooklyn on and off after college, so these neighborhood scenes felt familiar to me.

Speaking of political cartoons, there's a free political comic fair and panel discussion tomorrow (Thursday 10/9) in downtown Portland. Barry and I will have a table at the fair, if you'd like to say hi and see our printed cartoon collections! I'm familiar with all the speakers, so I'm sure the discussion will be good, too.

Barry's original Patreon post for this cartoon is below:

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From an article by Sara Libby in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Trump and other members of his administration, while often using false or misleading statistics, have cited rampant crime as the justification for deploying federalized troops within U.S. cities.

But these cities share another commonality: They’re led by Black mayors.

Critics don’t think that’s a coincidence. Trump’s focus on Washington D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, New York and Oakland is part of a larger pattern in which the president has suggested cities with majority-Black populations, or those led by Black leaders, are hotbeds of crime and corruption and symbols of American decline.

Right-wing fear and hatred of American cities is a theme Becky and I have explored before - see here and here.

It's no surprise that Trump's authoritarian attack on cities is rooted in racism. Trump has always relied on racism in his political demagoguery, going back to at least 1989, when he bought full-page ads in several New York newspapers calling for the Central Park 5 to be executed. (Trump's ad didn't explicitly name the Central Park 5 - five Black teenage boys falsely convicted of raping a woman in Central Park - but in context that's clearly what the ad was about.) Then he rose to political prominence as the face of the "birther" conspiracy theory, suggesting Barack Obama isn't actually an American. More recently, Trump campaigned successfully for re-election by slandering immigrants with hateful lies about Haitians stealing and eating housepets.

(That was, of course, far from a comprehensive list.)

In a better world, Trump would have been permanently shunned from public life for his over the top racism. Instead, he's found a welcoming audience for his racism on the right, and their support for racism has been crucial to Trump's rise to power. In a 2022 study in the journal American Politics Research, James Piazza and Natalia Van Doren summed up some of the research:

Several studies demonstrate that these racist and xenophobic utterances and policies were key to garnering the support of Trump’s electoral base. For example, Schaffner et al., 2016 found that racist and sexist attitudes were the most important predictors of voter support for Trump in 2016, eclipsing economic grievances and mistrust of politics and politicians. Trump’s explicitly bigoted appeals were a particularly crucial aspect of his popularity with less educated White voters in the 2016 race (Glick et al., 2002). Sides et al. (2019) demonstrate that Trump supporters in 2016 were animated by racism against African Americans, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant xenophobia and a fear of “demographic displacement” by non-White individuals. In a longitudinal study comparing the attitudes and voting behaviors of a cohort of respondents in 2011 and 2016, Mason et al. (2021) found that respondents who expressed racist and xenophobic attitudes in 2011 were significantly more likely to have voted for Trump in 2016, but not other Republicans running for office.

These findings are consistent with research in other democracies showing that xenophobia – particularly anti-immigrant attitudes – drive electoral support for extreme right populist political parties.

In their own study, they found that

...individuals who approve of former President Trump are more likely to endorse political violence, and to positively assess the events and participants of the January 6 event. We also find that Trump approvers are motivated by racial animus and mistrust and hatred towards immigrants and foreigners, and that these attitudes, in part, may make them more accepting of political violence.

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This is the sort of comic that makes me both grateful to have a collaborator like Becky, and green with envy for her ability to draw city architecture so well. Just look at those windows and awnings in panel two! Or all the storefront details in panel one! Aaargh!

While working on drawing panel four, Becky texted me "Fuck you for putting that muscular Trump poster in the script. 😛 And you're welcome."

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Becky and Barry last weekend, at the Comic Art Festival of Eugene

Becky again. Thanks, as always, for supporting me on Patreon!