Andrew Yang accuses New York Daily News cartoon of using racist stereotype to attack him

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang accused the New York Daily News of using a racist stereotype to mock him after being criticized for his choice of a favorite subway station.

Yang released a statement on Tuesday.

“Yesterday a Daily News cartoon was published that depicted me — or a racialized caricature clearly intended to be me — as a tourist in Times Square. The cartoon stemmed from an interview where I shared that my favorite subway stop is the one I’ve used to get home for 22 years,” explained Yang.

The cartoon was created by Bill Bramhall and showed Yang coming out of the Times Square subway station as a tourist.

Some have taken to ridicule Yang as being not native enough to New York City to run for mayor, but he and others have claimed this is resorting to a racist trope that all Asians aren’t American enough.

“I’ve seen images like this before — in history books from the turn of the century and World War II,” Yang continued. “Images of Asians having beady, slanted eyes and buck teeth have been a part of the American consciousness for a long time. It’s grounded in a history of casting immigrants and children of immigrants as perpetual foreigners of even subhuman – a stereotype wit has been used to divide and exclude people for hundreds of years.”

Yang went on to tie the cartoon with the rise in violence against Asian Americans.

“Every time you say that I’m not a real New Yorker, you’re telling another Asian American that they don’t belong,” he added.

“I’ve lived here for 25 years in this city,” Yang continued. “My wife Evelyn is from Queens, My children were born at St. Luke’s. I’m a public school parent. Implying otherwise is the repetition of a narrative that’s been used to tell Asians and Latinos and Jews and Muslims and Black Americans that we don’t belong.”

On Monday his wife Evelyn Yang made similar accusations against the New York Daily News cartoon and called it a “racist disfiguration” of her husband.

Yang is favored to win the mayoral election but Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams is close behind him in polling.

Here’s more about the Yang campaign:

Andrew Yang causes frenzy by naming ‘Times Square’ his top subway station | New York Post

www.youtube.com