Australian Artist Says Drawing Of Serena Williams Isn’t Racist: “The World Has Just Gone Crazy”

The Australian newspaper that released the controversial image of #SerenaWilliams as an enraged baby is defending its artist’s work.

Racist, insensitive, sexist and overall inappropriate is what many are calling cartoonist #MarkKnight after he released his exaggerated depiction of Williams losing the U.S. Open on Saturday. Williams was fined $17,000 for three violations for smashing her racket, arguing with the umpire and receiving coaching during the match. Williams maintained the umpire was sexist as there have been several male tennis players who were not punished for losing their cool on the court. The match ended with #NaomiOsaka winning.

Knight works for the newspaper the Herald Sun and drew Williams with a big nose and lips, jumping on a broken racket, with a baby pacifier by her feet. While Williams is the focus of the picture, in the background you can see the umpire asking a white woman if she could “just let [Williams] win.”  Osaka, who is Japanese and Haitian, is depicted as a white woman, which drew in more accusations of racism towards Knight.

But Knight says his work wasn’t racist at all. “It’s a cartoon about poor behavior … People said I’m racist because I drew Serena as an African-American woman. I drew her as a powerful figure, which is what she is. She’s strongly built,” Knight said in an interview. The newspaper followed up with their Sept. 12 newspaper cover that will read, “Welcome to PC World. If the self-appointed censors of Mark Knight get their way on his Serena Williams cartoon, our new politically correct life will be very dull indeed.” Knight added in another interview that, “The world has just gone crazy.”

Knight’s editor at the Sun Herald, Damon Johnston tweeted in support of Knight saying Knight’s “cartoon is not racist or sexist. It rightly mocks poor behavior by a tennis legend.”