The St. Louis Post-Dispatch printed a letter today taking the newspaper
to task for its lack of diversity on their comics pages:
There is no denying it: Ours is a racist society. One of my plans is to advocate for change related to the Post-Dispatch comic pages. They are mighty white. There is not a single cartoon strip dedicated to African American subjects. There is the occasional side character in a white story line, but no major character. I would happily sacrifice other strips in return for a black cartoon strip.
The funny papers are a regular part of our daily lives but probably not of black St. Louisans. Why would they be interested in yet another display of our all-white institutions? Shouldn’t the Everyday section represent everybody?
Marcelle Soda • St. Louis
To be fair one comic strip does (co-)star a person of color.
(click images, then click again to supersize.)
But, for a major city with a nearly 50% African-American population,
that is an amazingly whitebread (no offense intended) two pages of comics.
The paper’s selected look at their comics past doesn’t change the perspective.
Be glad the St. Louis Post-Dispatch doesn’t carry indefinate rerun strips Peanuts, For Better or For Worse, Get Fuzzy, and Doonesbury.