By Amy W. Newhall
Arizona Daily Wildcat
September 23, 1997

Cartoon supports stereotypes

Editor:

For the last 30 years massive efforts by the nation's schools and by public information campaigns have been directed at teaching citizens of the social costs of stereotyping. Some progress has been made in this country: we no longer are assaulted by negative images of many domestic minorities.

Despite this progress, there seems to be an endless reservoir of need to defame and vilify some sector of the world's population. Mr. Strawderman's cartoon ("The Deep End") published in the Wildcat on Thursday, Sept. 11, draws from this apparently bottomless well of racism and stereotyping. It is ugly in the deepest moral sense.

Amy W. Newhall
Director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies