Herald Sun again for Serena Williams' latest controversy

"So, you basically have a cover page with pictures of Donald Trump caricaturizing for his hair, Tony Abbott being caricatured for his big ears, you know the prime minister as a muppet, a kind of insinuation that he would have it's ropes pulled … and I think it's fundamentally different from the racial caricature.

"We do not have a history of persecuted people because they have orange skin and strange yellow hair, or they are persecuted because they have big ears.

"What he's trying to say is that all people are caricatured, but the criticism of Serena Williams's caricature is that she's specifically racist, and there's a reason the Herald Sun can not put the other cartoons he reproduced in black. people on the first page.

"I'm not really opposed to satire by caricature, but it was just bad design, so I think there's really a misunderstanding of criticism."

Clarke also tried to explain the thought process behind the dubbing of the Herald Sun, suggesting that the newspaper was trying to take advantage of global attention.

"It's actually going to sell newspapers for days or weeks and I think that's basically what the first page reflects, it's not necessarily whether it's a PC or whether it's racist," she said.

"Repugnant on many levels"

The National Association of Black Journalists, however, condemned this caricature for its "unnecessarily similar to sambo" representation, a racist term for an African-American.

"The racist caricature of Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka by Mark Knight of the Herald Sun is disgusting on many levels," NABJ said.

"The caricature of September 10 not only expresses sexist and racist caricatures of the two women, but the representation of Williams is unnecessarily similar to that of a sambo.

The art of editorial cartoon is a visual dialogue on current issues, but this cartoon roughly portrays two women of color at the US Open, one of the biggest stages of the sport professional.

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The veteran cartoonist added Wednesday that he had suspended his Twitter account to protect his family and friends.

Before turning off his account, his cartoon tweet had attracted over 22,000 comments, most of them critical.

Knight called the uproar against his caricature as a sign that "the world just went crazy."

"I drew this cartoon Sunday night after watching the US Open final, and seeing the best tennis player in the world said it was interesting," he said on Wednesday.

"The cartoon on Serena is about his bad behavior the day, not the race."

The caricature has also sparked a new debate in Australia about racist and sexist discourse in this highly multicultural country.

Serena, 23-time Grand Slam champion, broke her racket and called the referee a "thief" and a "liar" as she lost the Saturday final against the Haitian Japanese Naomi Osaka.

She was the victim of three code violations by Carlos Ramos, which cost her a point penalty and then a match penalty.

This triggered a debate as to whether she was treated harder than male tennis stars like John McEnroe, who was famous for his tantrums.

The caricature of Knight showed a Williams and a big lip to the lips that jumped up and down on his broken racket, after spitting a mannequin.

Osaka has been described as petite and feminine with blond-jet straight hair – in real life she has dark curly hair with blond streaks and is taller than Williams.

Knight's detractors included author JK Rowling, who said: "Congratulations on reducing one of the biggest sportsmen to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second big sportswoman into a faceless stand.

<p class = "canvas-atom-canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – smt Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "With AFP"data-reactid =" 122 ">With AFP