Political Cartoons and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Abstract

This chapter looks at how the cartoonists framed police violence, racism, and the movement itself. Political commentators, including cartoonists, began discussing issues of policing and racism. The chapter explores editorial cartooning and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. A political cartoon is a piece of art making a pithy statement about an ongoing political issue. Cartoons are often witty and humorous, and employ techniques of caricaturing well-known personalities and symbols of political life. Political cartoons have also had a role in generating and perpetuating racist and gendered stereotypes. Political cartoonists strive to create metaphors that capture the complexity of an issue while still being clear to a general audience. Policing was one of the central questions raised by BLM. Cartoonists framed the issue of police violence in alignment with one of the key positions advocated by BLM activists: that police brutality was caused by structural problems in law enforcement and not an individualized set of circumstances.