In recent weeks, UVA undergrad Grant Woolard has stepped inadvertently into the national spotlight for his drawing “Ethiopian Food Fight.” Published in the September 4 edition of The Cavalier Daily, the strip inspired an avalanche of criticism that the cartoon is racist for depicting Ethiopians as loincloth-wearing savages. The controversy eventually pushed Woolard out of the paper, where he was one of two graphics editors.
Almost 200 protesters staged a sit-in at The Cav Daily offices the day after the comic ran, and those protesting included some top University officials, including the vice president for student affairs, the dean of African-American affairs and the interim dean of students. Some students were not only offended by the “Ethiopian Food Fight” drawing, but also another strip published a few days prior showing Thomas Jefferson holding a whip with Sally Hemings sitting on the bed, saying, “Thomas, could we try role-play for a change?”
 This was one of two strips aimed at Christianity that got Bill O’Reilly ranting last year that President John Casteen should shut the paper down. Since the paper is independent, there wasn’t much Casteen could have done anyway. |
 This cartoon, published August 31, primed a reaction against Cav Daily graphics editor Grant Woolard. |
 The cartoon that broke the comic’s pencil, published September 4. |
On September 9, the paper’s managing board opted to fire Woolard, even though editorial staff had signed off on the cartoon. That decision sparked a different protest, with the rest of The Cav Daily’s cartoon staff quitting because of it.
The controversy isn’t the first to involve Woolard, who came under fire last year for cartoons depicting Christ crucified on an X/Y axis and the Virgin Mary (those cartoons even got Bill O’Reilly ranting that the paper should be thrown off campus).
C-VILLE wanted to see what our own cartoonists think about the uproar. Here’s what they have to say.
Pete Mueller, author of “P.S. Mueller”:
In a way, Woolard seems like my kind of guy. I have always been a fan of insensitive and cruel cartoons, AS LONG AS THEY ARE FUNNY. The problem here is the cartoon venue, not the cartoonist. Hence a grievous editorial mistake was made when the drawing(s) in question were published in The Cavalier Daily. (I have to admit that I’m a little jealous of the Christ gag, however.) It’s always very bad judgment to place humorous cartoons depicting race, tragedy or sexual preference before a group of young people newly immersed in their discovery of the self-ennobling power of outrage. Indeed, over the decades I have found that there is always someone out there somewhere, set like a hair trigger to go off at the slightest perceived affront to whatever identity-based issue may be at hand. That’s the way it goes. By the way, if you are wasting precious outrage on a few measly cartoons, you should save it for the war criminals who control our country. And they’re mostly a bunch of middle-aged white guys like me.
Emily Flake, author of “Lulu Eightball”:
I feel for Grant Woolard, especially given that looking at his apology he seems like a genuinely well-meaning guy—he didn’t give some blustery horseshit speech about how political correctness is ruining this county, yadda yadda yadda—he seems anguished that he caused anyone any harm. The problem here is—and I feel bad saying it—is that those two cartoons just aren’t funny. The Hemings one is unclear about its meaning and a little dumb—is she asking him to role-play right before he whips her anyway? Has she asked him to role-play and now they’re playing Master and Servant? In the absence of a joke, it reads as racist and weird. As far as the Ethiopian strip goes—I’m sorry, fella, if you’re going to claim to be making some kind of political statement, you’re going to have to work a little harder than that. It just comes off as callow and mean. So, should Woolard have been fired from the design gig? Probably not. Can he look forward to a long and brilliant career as a cartoonist? Ditto.
Jen Sorenson, author of “Slowpoke”:
The University does have an unfortunate history of race relations, which makes it an especially fragile environment. That said, the outrage over Woolard’s cartoons strikes me as greatly out of proportion to the offense given the ubiquitousness of real racism in our society. While the “Ethiopian Food Fight” cartoon may be in poor taste, I think Woolard was attempting gallows humor along the lines of the famous Onion article, “Burundi Beef Council: Please Send Beef.” In other words, it’s a dumb gag in a long tradition of dumb gags about starving people (see also: Karen Carpenter jokes). The depiction of loincloth-wearing natives is problematic, but no more so than we see in American pop culture on a regular basis, such as egregiously stereotypical “primitives” in Pirates of the Caribbean.
The cartoons about Thomas Jefferson, if anything, seem to be criticizing the fact that he owned slaves. It’s an irreverent jab at UVA’s biggest sacred cow. Only the cartoon interpretation-challenged would see these as being somehow in support of TJ’s slave ownership. I am reminded of the Tom Toles controversy of a year ago, when he was accused of making fun of injured troops when he was clearly criticizing Rumsfeld’s war policies.
Anyone who cares about social justice should be troubled by the response to Woolard’s work. It is counterproductive because it gives many Americans the impression that all claims of racism are as trivial as this one. Publicly branding someone a racist and calling for his or her firing is a serious matter, and can easily devolve into Bill O’Reilly-style mob justice. I say this as someone who favored the firing of Don Imus because of his long history of racist and misogynist remarks. This case is completely different. I applaud the other Cavalier Daily cartoonists who quit in protest of Woolard’s firing.
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