Inktober 2018 by M. Rasheed

Muhammad Rasheed - Has it been a year already?! Good, because I've been looking forward to taking part in Jake Parker's Inktober hashtag challenge again. For those unfamiliar, it began in 2009 as a personal month-long daily challenge to improve Jake's own inking technique, but it quickly went viral and now it's a thing.

Last year I didn't deliberately start the challenge with a theme, but when the first three prompt words inspired ideas that coincidentally happened to be American slavery related, I just kept going to see if I could pull it off. As I created each one, I faithfully posted all 31 inked cartoons in the blog post linked below, as I plan to do with the Inktober 2018 creations. 

Although I don't have a particular theme in mind for these 31 cartoons, I have dedicated myself since 09 April 2018 to producing one editorial cartoon every day for my Weapon of the People: DECODED project. These are of an anti-racism and Black Empowerment focus, so the Inktober 2018 will continue in this direction since I currently can't spare the time to produce a cartoon for both. These 31 cartoons will be the black & white continuation of my daily editorial cartoon project.

Poisonous (1/31)
Cartoon illustrating the poisonous nature of disunity
and how it makes the Black community vulnerable to
the united forces committed to systemic racism.
Racism is worse than ever because the
Black American ethnic group is less united than ever.

Tranquil (2/31)
Cartoon illustrating the tranquil state of the over-entertained
during the modern era's Information Age.

Roasted (3/31)
Cartoon illustrating the aftermath of a dozens battle,
with the celebrating victors clowning in glee
as their roasted opponents retreat.

Spell (4/31)
Cartoon depicting a white woman faking a fainting spell,
initiating a grifter scheme to secure a coveted
6th floor apartment. Hilarity ensues.

Chicken (5/31)
Cartoon depicting a white social worker
terrorizing a Black family, and stealing children to feed into
the Integrationalist Assimilated Tokenism factory.

Drooling (6/31)
Cartoon illustrating the typical aftermath of an
early fight during the rise of an upcoming,
dominant, Black close combat sport champion.

Exhausted (7/31)
Cartoon satirizing the exhausting hard work of Barack Obama's
meticulously planned track to the White House, as compared to
Donald Trump's massive affirmative action handout White House gift.

Star (8/31)
Cartoon depicting the reality of racism's ever-present indignities across class lines.

Precious (9/31)
Cartoon depicting an older white couple who are
finally able to live out their fondest fantasies now
that they have adopted a Black daughter.

Flowing (10/31)
Cartoon critiquing the group consensus approach to the unfortunate
Brett Kavanaugh confirmation by the nation's political cartoonists.
The first 'sexual assault on Lady Justice' illustration
seemed gutsy and poignant, but when they ALL drew
the same thing it just revealed it as low hanging fruit,
and in fact, a porn orgy in the guise of socio-political commentary.
Level-up, guys. 

Cruel (11/31)
Cartoon depicting a typical anti-Black lynching episode in the color blind, post-racial era.

Whale (12/31)
Cartoon illustration depicting an unnamed "John Henry of harpooning."

Guarded (13/31)
Cartoon illustrating the dire need to remove the inherently hostile, biased
and unsympathetic white police officer from Black neighborhoods.

Clock (14/31)
Cartoon depicting the shocking new relationship to time
that the victims of the prison industrial complex experience
once swept up into its wake.

Weak (15/31)
Cartoon decoding the great display of strength by the West is masking
the cowardly weakness of the White Supremacist Ideology at its heart.

Angular (16/31)
Cartoon illustrating the savagery of the anti-Black mob
during the height of the Lynching Era.

Swollen (17/31)
Cartoon depicting the heartbreaking morgue scene when
Mrs. Mamie Till has to identify her son's deformed body.

Bottle (18/31)
Cartoon depicting the physical brutality arm of anti-Black systemic racism,
as the white supremacist infiltrated police force uses traditional
domestic terror tactics to harass the African-American community.

Scorched (19/31)
Cartoon depicting the continuing horrors of a common American
domestic terror event carrying through in the aftermath.

Breakable (20/31)
Cartoon satirizing the continuous sabotage of Black Progress by the diabolical,
greed-fueled agents of the White Supremacist Ideology.

Drain (21/31)
Cartoon satirizing the comical, but dangerously psychotic
mindset of Trump's fan base.

Expensive (22/31)
Cartoon illustrating the root cause of the infamous, ever-widening
wealth gap between the two racial groups.

Muddy (23/31)
Cartoon illustrating a modern lynching incident in Illinois
when the Weller family caught a Black 15 yr old boy
alone and attempted to drown him.

Chop (24/31)
Cartoon depicting AG Jeff Sessions' commitment to returning U.S. immigration
policies to those from the early 20th century, when the laws were
set up to protect poor whites to enable them to grow into the middle class.
The new political grift scheme is yet another affirmative action
come up for the "white working class."

Prickly (25/31)
Cartoon illustrating the not yet diagnosed medical disorder of ridiculous,
troublesome white women who are easily irritated while
watching Black people perform mundane tasks.

Stretch (26/31)
Cartoon depicting the ridiculous reaches the
members of the white racist aristocracy take in
trying to justify their anti-Black evil plague.

Thunder (27/31)
Cartoon illustrating the 1921 air attacks on an American town,
where domestic terrorists dropped firebombs on families,
their homes and businesses in the Black community
of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Gift (28/31)
Cartoon depicting a typical day in the life of a Trump supporter.

Double (29/31)
Cartoon illustrating the double consciousness concept of W.E.B. Du Bois
as described in The Souls of Black Folk as "always looking at
one's self through the eyes" of the white racist aristocracy,
and "measuring oneself by the means of
a nation that looked back in contempt".

Jolt (30/31)
Cartoon depicting the hate-fueled violence
produced from the rise of Trumpism.

Slice (31/31)
Cartoon satirizing the root cause of Western Society's problems,
and how the allowing of an ultra-selfish special interest group
to run amok with our government sabotages the nation's ideals
and lowers the quality of life for the majority.

See Also:

Inktober 2025 by M. Rasheed

Inktober 2019 by M. Rasheed

Inktober 2018 by M. Rasheed

Inktober 2017 by M. Rasheed

Implementing the Anti-Black Risk Response Plan

Q: Is racism normal?

Muhammad Rasheed - The concept of racism is about 400 years old, and over these many generations it has become a normal aspect of Western society, but that doesn’t mean it is normal to do it as a species, no.

Racism as we know it was birthed specifically from the New World colonialist effort to spare the immigrant poor European peasant class from chattel slavery by delegating it to the Africans. Conspiring across socio-economic class lines to pull it off, this plan created the “white racist aristocracy” and is directly responsible for the immense wealth gap between the races. Note that pretty much every single decision made by white politicians in the last 400 yrs can be argued to support the racist aristocracy in some way—racism isn’t encouraged in public discussion, but it is always forefront in the minds of the nation’s leadership.

The strict dictionary definition of the term ‘racism’ only reflects the common usage of the general populace, which has made the word synonymous with regular ‘skin color’ prejudice. The white supremacist community have proven eager to take advantage of this fact in their gaslighting Internet trolling campaign to “prove” racism is a “both sides” issue.

Reliving the Dark Deeds of Yesterday

CITATION
Rasheed, Muhammad. "Reliving the Dark Deeds of Yesterday." Cartoon. The Official Website of Cartoonist M. Rasheed 28 Sep 2018. Pen & ink w/Adobe Photoshop color.

Jaylin Pringle - Who was telling the truth, Anita Hill or Clarence Thomas?

Muhammad Rasheed - Ms Anita Hill was telling the truth.

The Republican Party leaders were bulldozing through any and everything to get their guy in Thurgood Marshall’s old SCOTUS seat so they could score a major, high- stakes chess move. They weren’t going to let a little something like morality, ethics, decency, integrity, etc., get in the way of that. Have they ever?

Gerald Welch - The FBI investigated and found that Hill's claims were unfounded. That doesn't stop many even today on believing her, based primarily on political grounds. Had Thomas been an RBG type, none of this would have happened because for the longest time, even still today Rep. Ellison, Democrats are given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to sexual allegations.

White House Brief
In 1991, during his SCOTUS confirmation process, Clarence Thomas was accused of sexual misconduct by Anita Hill. His fiery response to the "high-tech lynching" is what everyone remembers. Thomas still sits on the Supreme Court to this day.

Muhammad Rasheed - It wasn't Thomas' "fiery" attempt to twist the accusations into a political grounds based partisan attack that I remember most, but how the Republicans were trying to replace Thurgood Marshall's old SCOTUS slot with a white conservative in blackface, all while dismissing Hill's testimony as an annoying inconvenience to their schemes.

Gerald Welch - So if you're not liberal, you're blackface? Really? Hill's testimony was investigated by the FBI and was found to be without merit, a fact that people leave out.

Muhammad Rasheed - Tell me how you feel about the FBI's investigation into the Hillary Emails thing, please.

Muhammad Rasheed - If you are a Black person who subscribes to the same political party and ideology that has the official endorsement of all of the domestic terrorist white supremacist groups, then yeah, that means you are a white conservative in blackface. Absolutely.

Gerald Welch - If you can't engage in an exchange of ideas without painting everyone with whom you disagree as a Nazi, then you have a problem.

Muhammad Rasheed - 1.) Tell me how you feel about the FBI's investigation into the Hillary Emails thing, please. I want to compare it to what you said about the Anita Hill FBI investigation.

2.) David Duke is on record saying he votes Republican and endorses Trump. The literal modern Nazi affiliate endorses Trump and self-describes themselves as "white conservatives." This isn't an abstract point.

Gerald Welch - My point is that I dread of debating issues, you're basically pointing you're finger and calling names. If I applied that standard, I'd call be calling liberals Che and Stalin and Mao

Gerald Welch - And be honest, can you RIGHT NOW store classifies Ingo on your home server? Can you then delete it after being subpoenaed for them and NOT be in prison?

Muhammad Rasheed - Gerald wrote: "...you're basically pointing you're finger and calling names."

A member of my own race subscribes to a party that consistently makes anti-Black political moves, and he supports this tradition. My ethnic group's literal enemy and hostile rival on the national stage aligns to that party, so "white conservative in blackface" is a deeper read than your dismissive "name calling." It's a full profile.

Gerald wrote: "And be honest..."

You're expressing confidence that the FBI's investigation into Ms Hill's accusations provided everything anyone needs to know about that topic -- despite the partisan song & dance going on around it, yet you are showing the same confidence over the FBI's investigation over an item that doesn't serve your partisan political needs.

How about you be honest? Here's your chance.

Conjuring Style

Siddhi Shelke - How can I create my own style in drawing?

Muhammad Rasheed - There’s two ways to develop your own drawing style:

1. Standing On the Shoulders of Giants
   The most common method is to begin the bulk of your practice time by copying the work of artists you admire most. As you increase in skill and competence, your work will predictably look like a clone of your idol. As you continue to practice you need to let go of the training wheels, so to speak, and start solving drawing problems on your own instead of relying on reference materials from your master. It won’t take long for your work to start developing into its own look, though some insightful critics may still be able to see your influences showing through.
   
2. The Art of Originality
   The harder way of developing a style is to draw from life (or photo reference) as much as possible—landscapes, passers by and models, still lifes, etc.—which will force you to solve drawing problems yourself without relying on the crutch of how the masters before you did it. As you gain competency and skill from consistent practice, an original style all your own will emerge.

The Lens of the Age

Amy Brinkley - If you were to recommend one book about your faith to someone who doesn't practice the same faith, what would it be?

Muhammad Rasheed - I would recommend the central source text, the Holy Qur’an itself. This is everything that the One God wants humanity to know and the guide to avoiding hell and achieving the eternal bliss of paradise. If there’s only going to be ONE BOOK, then it might as well be THE BOOK. I personally prefer the Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation, but shop as you like. The only translations I wouldn’t recommend would be the first English translations by Europeans during the colonialist era. They didn’t approach the material with a correct heart, and inserted a negative biased taint.

If by chance I could provide a second book, I would recommend The Life of Muhammad by Dr. Muhammad H. Haykal which provides an excellent context as to what was going on at the time of the Qur’an’s revelation.

MAGA On My Left

Tyler Timm - Why do some conservatives think liberals are the racist ones?

Muhammad Rasheed - It’s just a tu quoque logical fallacy demonstration, typical from the right since they don’t actually have an argument and can’t defend their own blatant racist positions. So they tend to throw everything they have into offense which can be effective in the limited short term because they know that the left does indeed also practice racism against the Black community constituency. It's a tricky battle strategy, because there are things the conservatives know they CAN'T point out the left does without the thread leading back to their own right-wing dirty, racist wealth coffers, too.

Individual white liberals often lean conservative the older they get, but as a group they frequently practice a passive aggressive racism against Black people whom they string along with promises of a fully achieved progress that grows further and further away with each passing decade. Blacks can certainly reverse this trend by unifying into a strong special interest political force of their own, and working within the Democratic Party to achieve the Black Empowerment and Economic Inclusion that has long eluded them. The tendency to complain and wait for party leadership to take the initiative and do that work for the Black community is a silly pipe dream doomed to more failures.

Mustafa Muhammad - Peace and blessings, Am I to understand that protests without actions bore them? Is this the ethos personified, if so overstand the greater of two evils is bored also. How do you struggle without using your muscles

Muhammad Rasheed - It would appear that the boredom announcement came solely from being asked to clarify his position to the point where he would become "bored" on cue. It has now become a running gag, and thus ripe for caricature.

Peter Nack - @Rasheed... I don't see MAGA-ism running beneath the Liberal-Left community; rather the opposite. There is a forlorn sense that the promise of the '60s and on have been so thoroughly squashed. There is a sick-to-the-stomach feeling that we have been badly outplayed by the Right (which, backed by big $ and evangelicals, played a long game.) ..... That said, some of we oldsters don't get some of the new generation's social activism (#blacklivesmatter, most of all I think.) ....... But consider the ancient wisdom of Book of Ecclesiastes: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” ..... The Struggle has a long history. ..... Appreciate your work.

Muhammad Rasheed - Peter wrote: "That said, some of we oldsters don't get some of the new generation's social activism (#blacklivesmatter, most of all I think.)"

Remember when the Union soldiers abandoned the newly-freedmen to the barbaric Southern domestic terrorist groups, stripped away all the gains of Reconstruction and began the century long lynching era before implementing the jim crow second class citizenship laws? And then we found out that while jim crow was going on in the South, the North was just as enthusiastically preparing the prototype for the modern mass incarceration industry, only to spread the model South after the Civil Rights Act repealed jim crow?

The new thing under the sun is racism. That's new in the history of the human race. In this country it's guarded and protected across partisan, class and even racial lines. What's so hard to "get" about the anti-police brutality focus of #BlackLivesMatter? You don't get it because my goals are not your goals, even while you pretend otherwise.

Tica Mcgarity - The United States is unique in that it is in a constant state of change. We have already terminated many of the old toxic institutions that you seem to be referring to. The next toxic institution that we will probably impact is our system of welfare ... because, rather than lifting people out of poverty ... our current welfare system institutionalizes it. We actually solve problems. Sadly, the only thing that get coverage in the popular press are the screaming mobs of protesters who are so good at complaining... but not quite as good at proposing workable solutions.

Muhammad Rasheed - Tica wrote: "We have already terminated many of the old toxic institutions that you seem to be referring to."

If that were true there would be no America.

Tica wrote: "The next toxic institution that we will probably impact is our system of welfare"

This is your white conservative partisan rhetoric again and it lacks value for me since it is divorced from truth.

Tica Mcgarity - Sooo.... truth now is contingent on skin tone? How very racist of you.

Muhammad Rasheed - lol That comment of yours is a deliberate strawman effigy, and it was very deceptive of you.

The white conservative position on the "toxic welfare institution" involves support for corporate welfare and subsidies for white farmers, but a blanket hatred for Black people receiving government aid of any kind (see: Reagan's "welfare queen" myth).

Tica Mcgarity - You are totally clueless. I have been on government giveaway programs. I was told by the state employee that once on the program... 'they had me for life' It is just another form of slavery and it has nothing to do any ethnic criteria.

Muhammad Rasheed - Tica wrote: "You are totally clueless."

You should talk to your fellows more and get read into the script, Tica.

Tica wrote: "I was told by the state employee that once on the program..."

Why did you believe this person? Because you wanted to?

Tica Mcgarity - I don't generally talk to myself. Interesting that you would suggest this.

Muhammad Rasheed - I don't know what that means. lol

Tica Mcgarity - It means that I am commenting on my own, personal experience.

Muhammad Rasheed - Okay. Good. That means this:

"This fallacy takes an anecdotal statistical anomaly and inflates it into a planet-sized 'proof.'"

Anecdotal Fallacy | Truly Fallacious

Muhammad Rasheed - Thanks for playing.  :)

Tica Mcgarity - Bigotry. A position that dismisses any and all facts that may contradict a predetermined viewpoint on any subject. AKA prejudice. You would fit in the Bigotry and Prejudice Club nicely.

Muhammad Rasheed - I'm not bigoted against your ethnic group or class, Tica. I only hate the White Supremacist Ideology. That's all.

Tica wrote: "A position that dismisses any and all facts..."

I'm sorry, but anecdotal logical fallacies are not facts. Neither are your Reagan-era political talking points. You may safely discard the lot of it that you may finally be open to truth.

I'll pray that you are eventually successful in this endeavor.

Avoiding Reparations Payments, Spin Job No. 47

Gregory R. Francis - Why do some people apparently believe that Democrats want white people to apologize for being white?

Muhammad Rasheed - Well, there’s that and a whole lot of other stuff that represents little more than misdirection fluff within the heated, back-n-forth partisan rhetoric. The point of it all is to keep people focused on nonsense strawman effigies, recycling shallow debates and cleverly phrased talking point soundbites to distract from the real issues, so that the powerful 1% elitist class and their lower classed managerial support can maintain their global wealth & power unopposed while the masses continue to chase trivial shiny babbles.

Avoiding Reparations Payments, Spin Job No. 73

Q: Why do people say "get over slavery"?

Muhammad Rasheed - The primary reason is to avoid the national conversation that will open the door to dismantling slavery’s enduring legacy of anti-Black systemic racism. The logical fruit of that effort would lead to paying out 400 yrs worth of Reparations Justice in order to expedite building the Black community up and re-enfranchising them politically, for their economic inclusion as a group into mainstream society.

1.) Chattel slavery was the worse kind; this was the kind imposed on Black people in the West's "peculiar institution."

2.) The unique slavery form based on racial phenotype created the "whiteness" concept as a racist aristocracy. This was the birth of modern day "racism" as we know it. The strict dictionary definition only describes the common word usage among the populace, not the root cause meaning.

Christian Gunnerson - Muslims had far more black slaves then whites. Not only that, but the muslims castrated/sterilized their slaves so they couldnt reproduce.

Muhammad Rasheed - Hey, Mr. "Christian from Norway." Why are you posting this claptrap nonsense here? Why are you pretending to be an expert on "Muslim slavery"?

Christian Gunnerson - Not an expert. Just spreading facts.

History of slavery in the Muslim world | Wikipedia

Muhammad Rasheed - lol You're an expert on spreading false propaganda. None of what you provided are facts.

1.) Slavery didn't begin during the Islamic era in Arabia, but had already been practiced for centuries among most Old World cultures. Slavery is mentioned in the bible's OT, the books of which predate Islam by thousands of years in many cases. This new concept that's been circulating claiming that Islam actually invented slavery is patently false. Your Ronald Segal is an anti-Islamic propagandist, not a scholar. You should learn to be more discerning and less racist.

2.) Because of the Qur'an's strong position of abolition as piety, chattel slavery was wiped out across the Muslim World early in its history. It was brought back hundreds of years later by greedy imperialists terrorizing across the Old World from Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia outside of the religion's instruction. Note that the radical villains of the ISIL terrorist group refer to the Islamic time period when slavery was gone as "a shameful abandonment," whilst celebrating the time when the unIslamic (but lucrative) practice returned.

3.) Since the Arabs themselves are a Black people, none of their modern slave taking is racial in origin, so despite the nature of the atrocity, it is still misdirection nonsense to attempt to distract from the West's anti-Black systemic racism (with its current Slavery 2.0 version in the for-profit prison industry) using this false equivalency fallacy.

Christian Gunnerson - guess you better go “correct” wikipedia then

Muhammad Rasheed - Not necessary. I can't clean up all the false information on the Internet by myself. The authors of such material will simply return the Wiki entry to the filthy cesspool state that attracted people like you.

Instead I will continue making my anti-racism cartoons and do my small part to fight the evil White Supremacist Ideology that continues to plague the world.

Christian Gunnerson - The article on wikipedia is factual tho. You can read about the horrors of islamic slave trade in most legitimate history book

Muhammad Rasheed - I just pointed out the areas where it wasn’t factual from my own expertise as an Islamic researcher into my own religion. You and Segal obviously don’t care enough to see pass your anti-Islam biases to be able to discern one way or the other. Or perhaps you can and you are merely on a professional anti-Islam troll campaign. Who knows? Either way, you bring no value here.

Flipping Over the Chess Board

El Mowafaq Shash - What would be a surefire way for humanity to kill every living organism on Earth, including itself?

Muhammad Rasheed - lol uhhh… before we start playing around with those kind of desperate scenarios, let me propose an alternative plan for those bent with this kind of mindset (I think I know where this is coming from… hear me out).

You’re feeling backed into a corner and want to detonate a trillion nuclear bombs at once (or whatever else is going on in your heads) because you don’t want the white supremacist era to end. You feel an overwhelming anxiety over just the very idea that systemic racism will be dismantled, Reparations Justice will be paid out to Black people enabling them to compete on a full socio-politico-economic footing with the former guardians of the White Supremacist Ideology and you can’t take it. This includes any members of the People of Color (POC)™ community who have allowed yourselves to be brainwashed into the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality, by the way.

Instead of acting out the ultimate psychotic expression of privileged entitlement (“If I can’t have the earth all to myself, THEN NO ONE WILL HAVE IT!!!!”), how about you lot pack up all of your stuff (YOUR stuff mind you; not the stuff you stole during your half millennium of colonialist conquering/pillaging/raping/exploiting/plundering) and get one of your “Bold, New Frontier” minded mega-corporations to send you to Mars or wherever to start anew? That way you won’t have to freak out whenever some Social Justice Warrior calls you out on your selfish foolishness, and make you feel guilty by continuously bringing up your cycling selfish, sociopathic history.

Think about it.




See Also: A Classic Case of Someone Who's Never Had Sh*t Coming Into Wealth

The MAGA Beneath

Alex Mills - Why did the comic book artist Robert Crumb move to France in the 1990s?

Muhammad Rasheed - In the 1994 'Crumb' documentary directed by his long-time friend Terry Zwigoff, R. Crumb explains that the French property's former owner reached out and offered to trade it for the cartoonist's sketchbooks from a certain date range.

I’m sure there were numerous reasons for why the family made the decision to move—including Aline being delighted with the idea—but I think Crumb’s primary reason for leaving was that he was getting an increasing amount of public disapproval for the inherently problematic content of his body of work. I suspect he predicted that the tilt in the direction of social justice as a movement would eventually reach a level of pressure that he would rather just as soon avoid, especially as far as the area of personal safety was concerned.

Even though R. Crumb himself never engaged in any “SJW” activism in his career, despite the numerous ridiculous mental leaps his True Fan supporters perform trying to paint him as a deep-level social satirist who only uses misogynist & racist imagery to ‘stick it to The Man!’ or whatever, it is worth noting that France has traditionally been a safe haven for counter-culture figures of all descriptions for well over half a century. I’m sure that was a major factor in the final decision.