Check out Michael De Adder’s (a freelance cartoonist for the Toronto Star) editoral cartoon of the recent incident in Scarborough at Danzig street OH!

After the backlash on Twitter and facebook,  The Toronto Star deleted their tweet which linked back to the cartoon on their site, and De Adder took to his personal site to explain his illustration and what each caption meant

“How was it deemed acceptable to generalize with the word THEY in today’s illustration?”

-Twitter from a concerned reader.

July 18th, 2012: “They” in July 18th’s Toronto Star cartoon means “children.” It was intended to be a shortened version of “injuries to expect before children are two.”

I was thinking of injuries that children usually sustain before they are two, and books and online sites that help parents wade through what to expect. Books like this one: What to Expect: The Second Year.

So I wrote the caption “Injuries to expect before children are two:” And when I inked it in I changed “children” to “they.”

My thinking was that children was redundant because of the picture. And the example I read used “they” as in “they may experience this” and “they may be subject to that.”

In NO WAY, in bold type, did I intend “they” as anything other than “children.” The Toronto Star read that as the same thing. “They” is “children.” Nothing more.

De Adder also stated on twitter: “In my very humble and respectful opinion,children come in a wide range of different backgrounds. My cartoon was not “racist.”

Do you think the Editoral Cartoon was meant to be racist or just a clear depiction of the issue at hand?