That cartoon, a year on

Regular readers of The Australian will already have come across Quadrant contributor Anthony Dillon’s essay marking a full year since Bill Leak published the cartoon above, prompting his public burning on social media and unconscionable harassment right up until his premature death by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Anthony writes:

…The offence taken by the ­offended was accompanied by a Twitter campaign that featured many Aboriginal people showing photos of themselves with their ­fathers in an attempt to prove that there were good Aboriginal fathers out there. They might have had a point if Bill’s message was that all Aboriginal fathers were neglectful. It wasn’t.

Like all of Bill’s work, there was a context to this cartoon, and this was conveniently dis­regarded by the offenderati. The twitterati simply saw something that was not there. What they saw was more a reflection of their own deeply held ­beliefs and insecurities than anything Bill had drawn.

The full column can be read by those with subscriptions via the link below.

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