A new installment of the Six Chix comic strip designed to tackle anti-mask rhetoric during the ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic from the perspective of the Black Lives Matter movement has been pulled from certain newspapers, with Bianca Xunise -- the cartoonist behind the strip -- issuing a statement in response.First launched in 2000, Six Chix is a collaborative comic strip distributed by King Features Syndicate, with Xunise currently serving as the cartoonist behind the Tuesday edition of the strip. Her most recent installment sees a Black woman (an analogue for Xunise herself) sporting a face mask and an "I Can't Breath" t-shirt in a grocery story, with an older white woman saying, "If you can't breathe, then take that silly mask off!"
As Xunise explains on Twitter, angry responses to the strip caused some newspapers not to print it, with one paper issuing an apology in its place. "Tuesday's edition included a Six Chix comic that was inappropriate and offensive," the apology reads. "We have notified the syndicate that provides the comic that we will no longer be running Six Chix in our newspaper as a result. We've also requested an apology from them. Our apologies for a cartoon that reflected the exact opposite of what we stand for as a newspaper."
In response, Xunise said, "So apparently the angry responses got my comic dropped from some newspapers and an apology that I did not approve of is running in its place. For the record I do not apologize for this comic and this is censorship." "I am the second Black woman to be nationally syndicated in comics history and I am being silenced over white feelings from a gag comic," she continued. "This is a complete step back in the wrong direction." Xunise went on to say, "To be clear there was no misunderstanding of the message of my comic. We spent due diligence explaining the 'hard to grasp' satire. They are standing against exactly what you think they are. Please stop giving the benefit of the doubt to people who silence Black voices."
Tea Berry-Blue, a Kings Features editor, joined in on the conversation, saying, "I'm Bianca's Syndicate editor. Yes, we support Bianca 100 percent, and this newspaper editor has been told as much."
On Tuesday, Xunise actually shared the comic to Twitter, as well as explained what exactly it is she's trying to say with it in a thread. "Here it is, the comic that launched 1,000 angry responses. Please clap," she wrote. "[Okay] now to explain this comic because everyone has been getting it wrong. It's easy to assume that the white woman talking to me is racist, that may or may not be true but that is not the point. The point is how white people see issues that effect [sic] Black peoples as trivial.
"The whole mask debate has been compared to oppression which I find incredibly offensive. The fact that white peoples want to claim oppression now for having to do their civic duty of protecting others is not the Black struggle whatsoever," she continued, adding, "[Yet people] have assumed for generations that racism is simply about our sensitivity and not a systemic issue. Furthermore I want this comic to challenge liberal whites who assume that every white person they feel superior over is racist. This is just a random white woman, [I don't know] her."