Evelyn Yang, the wife of New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, blasted the New York Daily News for a cartoon depicting her husband as a tourist, calling it a “racist disfiguration” of him.
“I can’t believe my eyes,” Evelyn Yang said on Monday. “To publish this racist disfiguration of @AndrewYang as a tourist, in NYC where I was born, where Andrew has lived for 25 years, where our boys were born, where 16% of us are Asian and anti-Asian hate is up 900%.”
The cartoon, published and posted on Twitter Monday by Daily News cartoonist Bill Bramhall, depicts Andrew Yang as an excited tourist leaving the Times Square subway station and a local shop owner expressing happiness that people who are not from the city have returned.
“This is disgusting and wrong,” the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Victory Alliance said in a tweet responding to the cartoon. “Every single day Asian Americans have to fight the notion that we are foreigners. We are here and we’re not going anywhere. That’s why AAPI representation like @andrewyang is so important. Do better.”
New Yorkers mocked Andrew Yang after he said the station was his “favorite.”
In an editorial published on Sunday, the Daily News criticized Andrew Yang, who is running for mayor of the nation’s largest city, for what it described as his out-of-touch statements relative to everyday New Yorkers.
“Andrew Yang may be a quick study, but all the cramming he’s done since jumping into the mayor’s race can’t make up for years of inattention to New York politics and policies, best evidenced by the fact that he has never bothered to vote in a local election,” the newspaper wrote.
The newspaper mentioned Andrew Yang’s inability to answer a question last week about a local police law and mocked him for not knowing how much the local transit authority is in debt.
“The mayoralty is not just for wonks who know every intricacy of city government; it ought to go to the person with the best ideas, skills, instincts and priorities. But this is ridiculous,” the editorial concluded.
Andrew Yang briefly ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, cultivating a vibrant online following known as the “Yang Gang” and promising to deliver direct payments to all Americans if elected.
Josh Greenman, the editorial page editor for Daily News, defended the cartoon in the newspaper’s own coverage of the racism allegations, saying it is “not a racial stereotype or racist caricature.”
“Andrew Yang is a leading contender to be mayor of New York City, and as commentators, his opponents and The News editorial board have recently pointed out, he’s recently revealed there are major gaps in his knowledge of New York City politics and policy. Nor has he ever voted in a mayoral election,” Greenman said. “Bill Bramhall’s cartoon is a comment on that, period, end of story.”
Greenman also noted that that the cartoon had been altered for print editions after initial concerns.
“After Bill tweeted his cartoon yesterday, people reacted badly to how Yang’s eyes were drawn,” Greenman said. “Bill altered the drawing out of sensitivity to those concerns, without changing the concept of the cartoon, which he and we stand by.”
At a press conference on Tuesday, Evelyn Yang grew emotional as she ripped into the newspaper over the cartoon.
“We have lived in Hell’s Kitchen for over 15 years. So Times Square is actually the train station that we go to everyday to go home. It’s as simple as that,” she said. “Now why was that made to be a subject of a cartoon? Why is that funny? It’s funny because of the racial context.”
–Updated at 3:58 p.m.