By Hanna Park
(NEW YORK) The New York Daily News altered its cartoon of the New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang to make his eyes look larger after facing backlash from the Asian American community, NBC News reported Thursday.
The illustration, which was first shared on social media by its artist, Bill Bramhall, was slammed for mimicking age-old racist caricatures of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners having small, slanted eyes and buck teeth.
Daily News editor Josh Greenman defended the depiction was “not a racial stereotype or racist caricature.”
“Andrew Yang is a leading contender to be mayor of New York City, and as commentators, his opponents and The News editorial board have pointed out, he’s recently revealed there are major gaps in his knowledge of New York City politics and policy. Nor has he ever voted in a mayoral election,” Greenman told NBC. “Bill Bramhall’s cartoon is a comment on that, period, end of story.”
But critics say the caricature was more than a commentary on Yang’s politics but emulated racist stereotypes that many Chinese Americans had faced centuries ago to fuel arguments for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
In a statement on social media on Tuesday, Yang said in response, “Every time you say that I’m not a real New Yorker, you’re telling another Asian American that they don’t belong.”
"To paint me in the media as a perpetual foreigner to this city is wrong and subtly approves racism at a time when people are being beaten on the street on the basis of who they are," he wrote.
The cartoon showed Yang with small, slanted eyes running out of the Times Square subway station near a shopkeeper exclaiming, “The tourists are back!”
It referred to Yang’s recent interview with comedian Ziwe Fumudoh after he said his favorite subway stop was Times Square, an area notoriously avoided by native New Yorkers.
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