Editorial cartoon comparing Betsy DeVos to Ruby Bridges defended by cartoonist
An editorial cartoonist defended a picture he drew comparing President Trump’s education secretary to a civil rights figure.
The News-Democrat of Belleville, Illinois, published a cartoon Monday showing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in the setting of Norman Rockwell’s 1964 painting “The Problem We All Live With.”
Rockwell’s painting depicts U.S. marshals escorting a black girl named Ruby Bridges to integrate New Orleans’ William Frantz Public School in 1960. The group walks by a wall with the n-word scrawled on it and the remnants of tomatoes thrown by protesters.
News-Democrat cartoonist Glenn McCoy’s picture shows DeVos walking by a similar wall with “conservative” in place of the n-word.
The cartoon sparked an uproar on social media. Chelsea Clinton posted a picture of Rockwell’s painting to her Twitter account after posting “What?! What?!” in reaction to McCoy’s cartoon.
According to the News-Democrat, McCoy’s cartoon was inspired by protesters blocking DeVos from entering a public school in Washington, D.C., last week after she was narrowly confirmed by the Senate.
“My cartoon was about how, in this day and age, decades beyond the civil rights protests, it’s sad that people are still being denied the right to speak freely or do their jobs or enter public buildings because others disagree with who they are or how they think,” he wrote on the newspaper’s Facebook page. “I’m surprised that you see ‘hate’ in this cartoon when I thought I was speaking out against hate.”
