Bloomberg Businessweek Apologizes After Controversial Cover Draws Fire [2]
By Victor Garcia
Published February 28, 2013
Bloomberg Businessweek was forced to apologize after a controversial cover drew the ire of minority groups.
In last week's issue, the weekly magazine had a cover about the housing bubble that featured a money-filled, two-story house inhabited by two Latinos and two African-Americans. The cartoons look like they’re racist caricatures from the early 1900s greedily grabbing money, critics say.
The Columbia Journalism Review was taken aback by the imagery, writing a blistering piece that said the cover was “not okay.”
"It’s hard to imagine how this one made it through the editorial process," Ryan Chittum wrote for the CJR.
In a statement to Fox New Latino, Bloomberg Businessweek said they wish they had chosen a different cover.
"Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret," the statement said. "Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we'd do it differently."
The illustrator who was commissioned to do the cover, Andrés Guzmán, was born in Peru.
Here's this R. Crumb-like illustrator's blog [3]. Guzman's art isn't really to my taste, but I can see why Bloomberg employs him.
From a 2002 Housing and Urban Development press release [6]:WASHINGTON – Miami-based Cuban-American artist Xavier Cortada today unveiled his mural, Stepping into the American Dream, in a ceremony hosted by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez.
Cortada painted the mural at the White House Conference on Minority Homeownership, held on October 15 in Washington, DC. The painting illustrates the Blueprint for the American Dream Partnership, a collaborative effort of the Bush Administration and members of the housing industry to meet the President’s goal of 5.5 million new minority homeowners by the year 2010.
Here's the offending cover:
Of course, the reason the Racism Sniffers are out in force is the nagging thought in the back of the head that, uh-oh, the Sand State (CA, AZ, NV, FL) Housing Bubble of 2003-2006 and subsequent Bust did involve a whole lot [7] of borrowing by minorities [8]. Indeed, the people behind the Housing Bubble, such as George W. Bush, Angelo Mozilo, and Henry Cisneros, constantly trumpeted that the way to fight racial inequality was to undermine traditional credit standards. Here, for example, is Countrywide Financial's January 2005 press release [9] in which Mozilo and Cisneros promise a trillion dollars in minority and lower income lending. A trillion here, a trillion there ...