Ruh-roh! Racist cartooning in Murdoch press

by Lauredhel on July 10, 2008

The Western Suburbs Weekly is News Limited’s trashy local rag for Perth’s western suburbs – the posh part of town.

According to the WSW who bills its distribution population as “Affluent, well educated, professionals”, 74% of people in the area were born in Australia, the UK, or Ireland. 6.5% are immigrants from Asia, and I know from experience that racism is rife in the leafy part of town – there is plenty of resentment that “new rich Chinese” are moving in and taking “our land”, especially land in Dalkeith, home of Jutland Parade, which used to be the most expensive address in the country.

Western suburbs residents, being the most affluent people in Perth, are also likely on average to be the biggest consumers. There’s plenty of green talk, but this tends to involve driving to the Claremont strip in an enormous shiny black Jeep, then feeling virtuous about the organic hemp shopping bags.

The WSW ran this cartoon yesterday.

chinesesteelcocartoon

[Description: a fat Chinese caricature straight out of the Gold Rush/Yellow Peril racist cartooning tradition sits behind a large, shiny desk. His deskplate reads "CHINA STEEL Co.", and there is a small Chinese flag on each corner of the desk. The picture window behind him shows a dim, smoggy sky with factories spewing smoke.

The man is holding a cigar in one hand and a newspaper in the other. The newspaper headline reads, "AUSTRALIA TO ADOPT CARBON SCHEME".

The man is saying: "HA... HA... R'OSE AUSSIES JUST QUACK ME UP ..."]

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This article was written by lauredhel

Lauredhel is a forty-something woman with a disability. She lives in her Western Australian family home where books, Lego, and soapmaking gear constantly compete for space. She blogs about feminism, reproductive justice, freedom from violence, the use and misuse of language, medical science, being disabled, her vegetable garden, and whatever else pops into her head. Lauredhel also blogs at FWD/Forward (feminists with disabilities), scribbles at her personal dreamwidth journal Selective and Arbitrary, and co-moderates Hollaback Australia. She joined Hoyden About Town in 2007.

lauredhel has written 1317 posts for Hoyden About Town. If you liked this post, you might like to subscribe to the feed via RSS or EMAIL to get instantly updated for more posts like this.

{ 2 trackbacks }

Weekend Worstoff 14 « The Worst of Perth: July 12, 2008 at 12:06 pm
The difference between satire and “satire” in political humour at Hoyden About Town: July 15, 2008 at 6:08 pm

{ 9 comments }

1 lilacsigil July 10, 2008 at 12:48 pm: …sadly, the first thing that leapt to my mind was, “R’ose? What kind of fake-Chinese is that?”

I think the answer is: that just goes to show that stereotypical accents make about as much sense as the stereotypes themselves.
2 Helen July 10, 2008 at 4:50 pm: The fact that the WA middle classes (including most of their readers, I would imagine) are cruising on a wave of mineral exports to China adds a crusty layer of hypocrisy.
3 Lauredhel July 10, 2008 at 5:03 pm: Crusty and smelly, Helen, crusty and smelly.
4 Klaus K July 10, 2008 at 5:20 pm: Without wishing to trivialise this, I must confess that when I first read the title of this post, ‘Ruh-roh!’ made me think it had something to do with Scooby Doo.
5 Lauredhel July 10, 2008 at 5:24 pm: Yeah – we’ve been watching a lot of Scooby-Doo lately. It was the ridiculous “R’ose” that brought the Scoob to mind for me.
6 ken July 11, 2008 at 10:36 pm: Needless to say that many Chinese families can trace back their ‘Australianess’ further back than many of us ‘Anglos’. The Gold Rushes date back to the 1850s and I understand that people of Chinese origin were here even before then, if my xenophobic, 70s, school history and my memory, serves me at all.
7 Deus Ex Macintosh July 12, 2008 at 2:58 am: Sing together now, “I’m so rhone-ree…”
8 Dumb east stater July 28, 2008 at 1:31 am: I thought the R’OSE had something to do with Rose Hancooky? No? Oh…
9 Lauredhel July 28, 2008 at 2:47 am: Assuming you mean Rose Porteous, formerly Rose Hancock, how would that make any sense? Would you explain the joke, please?