I’ve always enjoyed Carmen Cerra’s cartoons and have generally found them to be insightful, informed, and refreshingly funny.

But I was perplexed and saddened by last Thursday’s “Poison Ink” of a man in a suit marked “ACLU” brandishing a giant copy of the U.S. Constitution, with which he’s helping a hooded klansman subjugate what appears to be a prostrated person of color.

That’s a pretty bold implication at best, a highly inflammatory misrepresentation at worst.

In helping to organize a new Iowa State chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union over the past year, I’ve found a surprising number of people at ISU know very little about the ACLU and its goals.

Those who have heard of us often have the wrong idea, thanks in no small part to misguided media coverage like this.

One of our biggest challenges has been to educate people about civil liberties and what our group stands for. A process that’s been frequently undermined by bad information, oversimplification and reactionary paranoia.

I would have expected Carmen, of all people, to be more cautious in his approach to an issue as volatile as hate speech as it relates to an organization that numbers among the most active anti-racist groups in the country.

Is it possible that he’s simply not aware of the ACLU’s strong positions against racism and discrimination, or its indispensable contributions to the civil rights movement?

Surely he knows that we have ACLU lawyers and activists to thank for landmark Supreme Court rulings and political action that brought down segregation and Jim Crow, making interracial marriage and equal voting rights a reality.

Since the 1920s, the ACLU has been a steadfast ally of the NAACP and other civil rights groups, arguing and winning historic cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia to lay the foundation upon which we continue the struggle for equality today.

At the end of the century, the ACLU is working to protect affirmative action, ensure equal protection under the law and to challenge the racist police practice of stopping drivers for “driving while black.” These are just a few issues of tremendous importance to all Americans.

I can only assume the cartoon I saw last week was an ill-advised jab at the ACLU’s commitment to freedom of speech for all Americans, including those who may espouse unpopular and even abhorrent ideas.

The American Civil Liberties Union has defended the First Amendment rights of racist groups in the past.

The Supreme Court has affirmed time and again that the constitutional right to free speech is indivisible.

Laws and policies meant to suppress the speech of hate groups can be and have been used against people like you and me.

Nobody ever said democracy was going to be pretty.

Free speech is absolutely essential in a free society, and sometimes that means hearing things we don’t like.

The really troubling thing about Thursday’s cartoon is its apparent suggestion that the ACLU is complicit in violence against minorities simply because it defends the right of racists to express their views.

That’s an extraordinarily cheap shot.

Supporting another’s right to spread a message, even a message of hate, is not the same as endorsing the message itself.

Carmen Cerra knows better.

One of the surest ways to nurture bigotry is to demonize and marginalize bigots, driving them underground where their influence can spread like a disease.

Only when grotesque and absurd ideas are exposed to the light of day can they be effectively deconstructed.

Cases like these represent only a fraction of the ACLU’s agenda. It’s frustrating that these aspects of our work receive disproportionate and badly skewed publicity.

It’s especially frustrating that Carmen, from whom we’ve come to expect thoughtful and original satire, could overlook decades of sacrifice and service to the cause of equality for the sake of a bad joke.

Josh Raulerson

Senior

Journalism and English