Letter to the Editor
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Published June 12, 1999
by Vanesa 'Littlecrow' Colon-Ortiz
I would like to start this out by saying that I know what it's like to get beaten by young people who claim to be of my same ethnicity because I supposedly have "no race." I have experienced the humiliation of being looked down upon by teachers because I speak with an "accent." I have been told I am a bad person because I do not fit the puritanical heterosexist attitudes of middle America. I have been told by employers taht I was not hired for my merits, but because i added "divesity" to the workplace.
I am a member of multiracial America, and after reading Kristin Tillotson's revolting column of June 6, "Down on 'The Boondocks,'" I must speak out.
Creating a comic strip that pokes fun at prejudice and that shows a slice of life from the eyes of the oppressed is great. However, if the principal characters in "Boondocks" were white and treated the biracial character, Jazmine, the way they do now, one can be certain this comic strip would never run in a general audience newspaper. Like Jazmine, my heritage is mixed and now that I am a mature adult, I am proud of that fact.
If trying to understand all of the different ethnicities that compose the whole of me and my wondering about how I fit in society is, as Tillotson puts it, "emphasizing (my) whiteness," then I am either Uncle Tom or she is defending the token minority comic strip because of her white guilt and ignorance. I say toke because "Boondocks" happened to be the only minority comic strip in last Sunday's Star Tribune. If Tillotson ever had to put up with the garbage people like me have to endure because we are not white or black enough, then she would understand why the hateful behavior depicted in "The Boondocks" has no place in a general audience newspaper.
Vanesa is an artist, cartoonist, professional model, and owner of VasLittlecrow.com
Also by Vas Littlecrow
Copyright © 1999 Vanesa 'Littlecrow' Colon-Ortiz. All rights reserved.